Joan Didion has kept notes from his therapy sessions.
In 46 entries dating from December 1999, she discussed alcoholism, depression, anxiety and complex relationship with her daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne. Addressed to her husband, John Gregory DunneThese unpublished notes have been found hidden in a binder next to the Didion office in his Manhattan apartment and will be published later this year in “Notes to John” – the first posthumous version of the American writer.
In 1999, the family of the Sacramento native crossed “a few difficult years”, according to a letter which she wrote to a friend. Offering an overview of the Psyche de Didion, personal accounts tackle the themes that she explored later in her writings in the early 2000s, including “where I came from”, “the year of magic thought” and “Blue Nights”. Each entry will be published almost entirely not published, with the exception of corrected striking faults and added bottom notes. Original manuscripts will be made available to the New York Public Library on March 26 as part of the joint archives of Didion and Dunne.
Based on the chronicle of the counter-culture of the 1960s and the 1970s with essays like “Slooung to-to-to-revers” and “The White Album”, Didion spent his life writing on his clever observations. The writer, who tried both in fiction and non-fiction, is considered one of the pioneers of new journalism. She suffered from Parkinson's disease and Died in 2021 at 87 years old.
The book, “Notes to John”, will be published in Hardcover and Ebook by Knopf on April 22. Penguin Random House will publish the audio book.
“Everything we would worship about Joan Didion is instantly apparent in these pages – the precision, fierce intelligence, perceive ideas, the interrogation withered from his own motivations. However, it is also Joan Didion as we have never seen before – Open, vulnerable, the editor and the publisher -chief – said Jordan Pavlin.” Extraordinarily intimate recording of a painful and courageous journey in the life of one of the greatest writers of our time. ”
