This is from some time ago (early 2015).
Last week, before I knew she was the new face of Celine (also, before I knew was Celine was), I shared Joan Didion’s “At the Dam.” I was taught this essay, and I teach it. Not because Joan Didion is fashionable at the moment, but because it’s really good.
Flavorwire’s Elisabeth Donnelly has an interesting piece up today trying to take the pulse of the growing Didion-as-icon trend. Donnelly quotes Haley Mlotek in what feels like an especially prescient observation:
As she puts it, citing Joan Didion as your idol says that:
…we’re cool, that we’re educated, that if we are not young and white and slender and well-dressed and disaffected and sad and committed to the art of writing as an arduous and soul-sucking process that must be endured yet Instagrammed simultaneously, then we will be, at least, as close as possible to those identifiers even if it kills us.
Fair? True?
We’ve also been doing this with Leonard Cohen. Citing him as your idol signals different things, but the desire to look back and hold up great talents in their later years is nothing new. We do it, of course, with Betty White. We probably would have done it with Bill Cosby. I for one am not sure why we don’t do it with Dick Van Dyke or Marianne Faithful.
Head’s up: New York Magazine, a mere four hours ago, has issued a warning that loving Joan Didion is a trap.
Chris Cocca 