Didion's Year of Magical Thinking

This is the first and last audio book I will ever indulge in! No pages to dog-ear. No highlighting or underlining worthy phrases. No circling unknown words to look up. It takes forever to find a reference point. What was I thinking? Audio books are not the least bit suitable for the hardcore bibliophile! Regardless, once I was able to get past the whole lack of highlighting thing (or rather, .once 95 South bored me enough!) and I really listened to Didion attempt to mourn for and understand the death of her husband and severe illness of her daughter, I was able to get into it.

I didn't like the first part of the story; the husband dying part. Didion seemed rather removed from the situation, devoid of any emotional attachment whatsoever. At times, I wondered if she was talking about the death of someone she even knew. She seemed stoic and clinical about the whole thing. At this point, I identified more with the narrator, as though a fictional story were being told to me by a third party. As she progressed, however, more emotion surfaced. Her initial coolness was probably due to the shock she felt at the time, and if so, she conveyed this perfectly.

The story bounces around quite a bit. As one would convey one's life story in a face-to-face conversation, she tells the tale of their 40-year marriage in a broken fashion, jumping around time as memories surface. If this story were a film, for instance, it would be constant flashbacks. I'm curious now to see the video of the stage production starring Vanessa Redgrave, who tragically lost her daughter just yesterday to a freak skiing accident. I couldn't help but think how ironic it was that I had just finished this book about a woman who lost her husband and daughter and the star of the stage production just lost her daughter. There was a strange sense of connectedness. . .like I felt when I came across that autobiography of Simone DeBeauvoir, whom we just read about in my Jan intersession class, The Second Sex: French Women in Film and Literature. I had never heard of her before, and here we were, on vacation, a thousand miles from home, in a remote out-of-the-way used book store and there she was. . .but I digress. . .

I actually didn't know until further researching Didion's life that her daughter died 18 months after her father, just two months before this book was released. Didion considered revising it prior to release, but could not bring herself to complete the task. She stated that mourning for her daughter, in actuality a grown child with a husband of her own, is different than that of mourning a husband. The book, she felt, was complete as was.

The most touching and poignant parts of her story centered on their nuclear family. The traditions, the special phrases they shared (John always said to Quintana upon departing, "I love you more than one more day."), the intimate look inside a 40-year relationship, its quirks and rhythms. They were well-traveled and this proved the most challenging part of Didion's mourning process. Everywhere she went after John's death, there was a memory. Her mind, easily prompted by a place or object, would drift back in time to experiences, vacations, shared work, homes established and cared for. This kept John alive, but at the same time kept her stuck. She could not bring herself to get rid of his shoes because he might need them when he came back. By the end of the book, I felt I had journeyed with her through a trying and emotional year, hoping towards the end that she was able to let go, or as she stated, "let John stay dead."

Despite the beginning, the novel was filled with much emotion. I cannot imagine getting through this ordeal only to turn around and have to repeat it 18 months later through the loss of your only child. Unfathomable. Throughout the book, Didion, while visiting her daughter in various medical facilities, would whisper to her daughter, "You are safe. I am here." She works through this statement in a portion of the book, realizing that no mother can truly keep her child safe from all danger. I am sure that this thought process factored heavily in her mourning Quintana.

Overall, a good read. It is a thought-provoking look at the mourning process by a woman who must write to work through emotion. You can't read it without envisioning yourself in a similar situation and wondering how would I manage that? Would I be able to write about it? Would I be able to get up each day and breathe?

Ready to Move On. . .

This morning, I was going over in my head what I have to do today. Work, errands, set up the pet steps in my bedroom before we leave for FL, and continue with Week #4 of In Cold Blood. I sighed at that thought. I'm sick of it. I'm tired of thinking about this book and I'm ready to move on. I'm sick of talking about it and analyzing it. And then it hit me. If I'm sick of it, imagine how Alvin Dewey must have felt investigating every angle of it for four years. Imagine how the townspeople must have felt living with the uncertainty of the murders and the knowledge that the killers had not been caught. Imagine how Capote must have felt by the time of the hanging. It was a new angle for me. The novel doesn't do justice to the fact that it took years to solve this case and bring justice to the people. Just a thought. . . . .

Formal #1: Strange Connections

Through our discussions, we’ve surmised that the New Journalism took fact-reporting, blended it with some human emotion, and provided society with a form of non-fiction that invokes a response from the reader. There are probably as many different responses as there are personalities and values reading the story. There are some facts, however, that stand out when looking at the individual relationships that are formed in the book. You have the duo of Perry and Dick as murderers. You have Alvin Dewey and his team of KBI investigators, as well as his wife, Marie’s, responses to the murders. You have the townspeople and their speculations and resultant actions. Capote chose to elaborate more on certain individuals than others, which is not surprising; every novel, no matter the style, needs main characters to follow. Perry was the murderer he draws the reader closer to.

It is evident throughout the novel that Capote has a closer relationship to Perry than he does to Dick. The extensive background/childhood information that the reader is given regarding Perry (scattered throughout the novel, but primarily seen from pages 123 through 147) imply that Capote had a “special interest” in Perry, some sort of “connection,” or perhaps a combination of both. The reader is given details about Perry’s childhood through letters from this sister and testimony of his father that make the reader feel at times that Capote is trying to get the reader to sympathize with Perry, feel sorry for this lost boy who was never loved, who lost his abused mother, and had a heartless father.

It is Perry’s confession that we read, not Dick’s. We are simply told that they corroborate. The reader sees the murder occur, towards the end of the book, through Perry’s mind's eye. We are told that he “didn’t realize what I’d done till I heard the sound. Like somebody drowning. Screaming under water. I handed the knife to Dick” (244). In the movie, In Cold Blood, Perry, played by Robert Blake, is shown in the murder scene as having flashbacks to happy times shared with his mother and his father’s abuse of him and his mother, in the presence of Perry and his siblings. It is during these flashbacks that Perry cuts Mr. Clutter’s throat. At this point in the book, I think Capote had done all he could to evoke compassion for Perry. All that was left were the details of the murder and subsequent sentencing. The emotions of the reader, as well as Alvin Dewey, are raw and exhausted.

We know that Capote initiated this New Journalism, this form of Creative Nonfiction that combined facts and fiction that was knew to this audience at this time, 1965. At this time in history, while personal feelings were not knew, the social discussion of them was, to some degree. I’d be willing to bet that tying a murderer to human emotions was rare. I personally want to know exactly what it was that drew Capote to Perry. What was it that he felt connected them? I understand that New Journalism, written in a fictional context, cannot elaborate these minute details. And this served Capote well. The suspense, the creepy inside-out look at this hideous murder drew the readers in. And still does.