If you write, read Joan Didion’s South and West – Book Reflections
Why notebooks are important - a book reflection
I posted this a month and half ago but it seems relevant even now with the South and West. What’s changed since then?
In between poetry, I read books too. I have several on my nightstand, in the house, kitchen, on the coffee table, shelves, floor and windowsills. Ordered randomly and double lined on bookshelves.
It’s important to read. Like an investigator, I look for a good story, a word or an author to tell me something I know already but in a way not heard before. Some books are worth my time and others are not. This week, I want to recommend Joan Didion’s South and West.
First time I heard of her was through a recommendation of The Year of Magical Thinking. I’ve heard of another newer book, I’m not a Mourning Person by Kris Carr but Joan Didion’s book might be a predecessor on how to deal with pain, loss and grief.
As the book was unavailable, I got the next best thing. In fact, I got what I needed. The blurb said something about her notes from travels in the American South. I’ve never been the American south so would a book based on notes from the 1970s have any relevance to me today? It took me three walks between the digital catalogue on the computer and the non-fiction bookshelf of the library to find the book. Back and forth I went locate it. It wasn’t in alphabetical order.
I read it in a few days. Why did I need this? As one who takes notes, but went through a teaching program and teaching kids not taking notes as if it is something to look down upon, I realise note taking is a craft and a skill of the olden times. But note taking is so important as is the notebook. This is the aim of this piece although I fear some of you will make it political and then try to push this and me into a box, a label. This is why it’s taken me months to publish this piece.
Notebook hello! Here’s a woman, an author who’s written a book based on her notes? Not a diary, not a Bridget, not at all personal but affecting us all today. South and West won’t teach you how to take notes, but it will show you how they flow beautifully as Didion tells a story of each place she visits in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi. I find out more about her through subtle interpretations and questions I have. The actual article she intended to write was not done upon completing these travels. But she wrote this book instead.
The power of the notebook is that you set off with one thing and do another. The power of the notebook is that you write and as you write the muse appears. The power of the notebook is that as you write your random thoughts, perceptions, reactions and encounters, the actual story finds a way to look you straight in the eye and grab your attention as you hold on to your pen.
Nothing ever beats the power of writing something down by hand, in a notebook. It does not even matter what the notebook looks like or whose it is. Write and write you must to evoke your muse.
Noting things down are reminders of how we break and pierce the vacuum we find ourselves in. For me writing is a ticket out of hell. For Joan Didion her book South and West is a portrait of how notes resemble poetic prose in which she observes the south eastern American states. We get a vantage point into Joan Didion’s thoughts on race, class and American heritage. She is not imposing on the reader but the more we read we can understand she’s from a privileged background. Can she make a case for what she doesn’t represent? Are the notes self-inflicting thoughts and do they represent the underdog of her story?
Her book paints the American cultural and political landscape. It very much seems like a bit of luck and a bit of chance she gets to write the stories she certainly didn’t expect.
In her final chapter California Notes, Didion writes: “At the centre of this story there is a terrible secret, a kernel of cyanide, and the secret is that the story doesn’t matter, doesn’t make any difference, doesn’t figure. The snow still falls in the Sierra. The Pacific still trembles in its bowl.”
She asks the questions we still ask today. “How could it have come to this? I am trying to place myself in history. I have been looking all my life for history and have yet to find it.”
I close the book and open my notebook. I stare at it and try to figure out where I fit in the history time line and if I’m one with my thoughts or do my thoughts hit a time line further afield from where I stand? The clock ticks and drags me with a strong undercurrent. How will I find history if she hasn’t?
“In the South they are convinced that they are capable of having bloodied their land with history. In the West we lack this conviction” Didion writes.
It’s a subtle hint how history evades us these days and how it repeats itself. We didn’t start the fire but we live in a world that’s burning; yet advertisement, parody and tv-shows take over our history and we barely wince.
The West does not include every single nation. Some are more western than others some are a bit of their own. Balkan states are west but are rarely regarded as such. The Eastern states become more west and finding it hard to catch up. Who is in charge after all? When does history teach everyone a lesson?
As I read her book, I wondered if she was red or blue. And this may seem an American or non American thing to do. Should it matter? As a journalist she knows how to tell a story. Knowing her Republican favouritism and then latter turning to the Democratic side, who knows how those two worlds collided and co existed. The matter is that they should not come in the way of good writing. Blue and red colours have become stronger, but their politics have faded into a melting pot and remain unclear as to who is who? It’s easier to see from the outside of US. When one candidate is out of order, the alternative is raised to pedestal hero status. Politics become too far out of reach without enough insight for the common person to understand. If you have been starved, you’d eat anything.
When you think you’ve got it good; when the system is failing you because you attribute it to black and white, or red and blue or old and new and there’s no seeing forward then you live in an atrophic today. We evolve without evolution. The more we read, the more we look for authenticity. A danger to some, a pain relief to others depicting the narratives that don’t belong in a world of freedom, peace and democracy. Where we are now is a result of where we have been and we pay or don’t pay attention. Notebooks form narratives and upon looking over them we find the stories we did not know we had to tell.
If you cannot afford to buy the book from an independent book seller, you can borrow from a local library or get it second hand from booksellers online and charity shops.
Fascinating review!
Memphis was the starting line, born there—a city of sweating streets, gospel choirs, and barbecue pits billowing thick smoke. But Mississippi was the proving ground, the mean-spirited heart of a South that thrives on its own venom. I survived the South: it’s no mythic garden of Gone With the Wind nonsense. It’s a brutal machine, grinding out misery with unrelenting precision. The magnolia trees may bloom, but they bloom against a backdrop of ruin. This place revels in its darkness, wears its cruelty like a badge of honor. Beauty? Hell, no. The South doesn’t give you beauty—it gives you ghosts and demands you call it charm.
I'm so happy you did finally publish this piece!! I want to keep using my notebooks, and in recent times, I have been drifting away - there is a giant distinction between analog and digital thought recording.