Didion as an Oceanographer?

This is pretty interesting...

http://flavorwire.com/257272/joan-didion-wanted-to-be-an-oceanographer

 

Didion as an oceanographer is an interesting concept, particularly considering that her written subjects deal primarily with personal, political, or cultural observations and steer clear of plunging the ocean’s depths, even if through nature writing. If I read that Annie Dillard aspired to be an oceanographer, I would not be surprised. However, I suppose with Didion’s aptitude for reading and relating the human psyche, the idea of her studying oceanography is not an all too far off endeavor.

The Flavorwire post includes the link to the interview in which Didion reveals her passion for oceanography. In case you don’t want to read the entire interview, I’ll paste below the relevant transcription:

BLVR: Do you think if you hadn’t written, hadn’t been a writer, could there have been some completely other—

JD: Oh, I wonder. I wanted to be an oceanographer, actually. And when I was out of school and living in New York and working for a magazine, I actually went out to the Scripps Institute, which is now UC San Diego, but then it was just the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, run by the University of California, and I asked them what I would have to do to become an oceanographer. And basically they said I would have to go back to high school, you know. I hadn’t taken any of the science courses that would enable me to take the science courses that I would need to take in order to go to… any place. So I abandoned the idea of being an oceanographer, but I can see myself still as an oceanographer, if I could get to that point.

BLVR: Does it seem like a happier life?

JD: A happier life? I don’t know. I’ve liked being a writer.

BLVR: It’s a different way of going underwater.

JD: It’s a way of going underwater, yes. Well, I’ve always been interested in how deep it was, you know.

In her writing, Didion does not merely glaze the surface of her subject. Rather, she goes underwater and portrays what lies beneath. She studies the topography of a cultural attitude or personal belief and analyzes the qualities and tendencies of its inhabitants. Didion, in a sense, is a social scientist with her writing, attempting to reveal truths about society as conducted through studies and observations.

Didion as an oceanographer is a fantastic metaphor and one that I find entirely plausible. She may not have been able to achieve this alternate career, but I think her passion for it has guided her writing in a way that has made it entirely distinct and perceptive.