Did Joan wash her hands at the same sink?

Joan Didion, the celebrated writer, went to Columbia Elementary School for awhile. The old building, made of red sandstone (as well as I can recollect), not the modern version that occupies the lot these days. I have been drunkenly reading her work, admiring the western cleanness, the spare and unsentimental way she captures the world, […]

Telling stories

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” writes Joan Didion in The White Album.   I was reading the book last night while I waited for my younger son to arrive home on snowy roads, reading it because I knew she would sweep me away from my worry and I could think about things like […]