Didion Interviews

So I’m a big fan of reading the interviews conducted for the Paris Review, and in searching through their archives I noticed that Joan Didion was interviewed twice. I’ll copy and paste the links below for those who are interested in reading. The first one was published in 1978 and the second one in 2006, shortly after her daughter’s death.

Joan Didion The Art of Fiction (1978)

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3439/the-art-of-fiction-no-71-joan-didion

Joan Didion The Art of Nonfiction (2006)

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5601/the-art-of-nonfiction-no-1-joan-didion

While the first interview is primarily focused on fiction and the second on nonfiction, the interviews were guided so that Didion would speak of both forms in her answers. I found it rather obvious, however, that Didion prefers (and yet also despises [in the way that an author loves the art of writing so that it becomes excruciatingly frustrating when producing quality work]) the act of writing fiction over nonfiction; her responses to questions on fiction were rather extensive, and after some time she seemed to guide the direction of the interview herself in speaking primarily of the craft of fiction. Writing nonfiction seems rather boring and uninspiring for Didion (at least prior to The Year of Magical Thinking). In response to a question asking the main difference between the process of fiction and the process of nonfiction, Didion explains, “The element of discovery takes place, in nonfiction, not during the writing but during the research. This makes writing a piece very tedious. You already know what its about.” Comments like this throughout the interviews reminded me of our class discussions when Luis told us that, like many of the writers read for this class, Didion was one who aspired to create successful, memorable fiction. Any while she is revered and respected for both forms of prose, it is—perhaps to her chagrin—her nonfiction that has stood to identify her as a writer.

I leave off with a bit that proved rather shocking to me, as it aligns her more closely with Hunter S. Thompson than any of our class discussions have been able to do. When asked what writers have influenced her style, Didion replied, “I always say Hemingway, because he taught me how sentences worked. When I was fifteen or sixteen I would type out his stories to learn how the sentences worked. I taught myself to type at the same time.” Interesting, considering that Thompson typed out Hemingway and Fitzgerald as well in order to learn how to write.