Slouching in my computer chair

Joan Didion was created to frustrate me. Her prose is impossibly beautiful and seemingly effortless. Taut like a snare and with rhythms that leave you feeling as if– ah! I’ve just discovered the mysteries of the universe (don’t worry I didn’t). She plays the reader with calculated precision. And it astounds me. It makes you feel more than just a twinge of jealousy. Can I only to hope to write as well as she does?

Yet, she is not perfect. She is grating. She is obsessed with herself– as I find most writers (especially ones prone to strokes of genius) are. But I can’t find it in myself to hate her. Even for regaling us with the hardships of world-ending migraines because of one thing that I wish I didn’t have to address– the terrible tragedies that have befallen her.

And that’s not fair. To Didion or to reader’s hoping to be subjective. Because I can’t. I know too much. Just like I know that Chuck Dixon is a homophobe or that Frank Miller is a crazy racist– I can’t read their works, no matter how brilliant without outside baggage. Hitler may have been a great artist, but he was hampered by the tiny defect of being Hitler. And while all these examples color something that may be good as automatically bad, for Didion it does the opposite- it gives her a free pass. Which no one deserves, right?

So I love her work. But is her or is it just me? And like all the worst answers you never want to hear, I have to concede– it’s somewhere in the middle. In the grey area where truth is sometimes gleamed. Or not. Who knows?