NOTES TO JOHN

The late novelist and journalist records her innermost, deeply personal struggles.

Didion died in 2021. Afterward, a file of private notes was discovered among her things, including notes addressed to her late husband, John Gregory Dunne, recounting sessions with the noted Freudian psychiatrist Roger MacKinnon, “a staunch defender of talk therapy.” Talk they do, with Didion serving up a battery of problems and MacKinnon offering wise if perhaps non-actionable responses to them, for instance, “Nothing about families turns out to be easy, does it.” It’s not easy, for sure, and Didion’s chief concern throughout is her daughter, Quintana Roo, who died after a long illness, the subject of Didion’s 2011 memoir Blue Nights. Indeed, so many of the conversations concern Quintana that Didion—by design, one supposes—skirts her own issues, although MacKinnon identifies some: “I did think you might have developed more self-­awareness,” he says, referring to Didion’s habit of squirreling herself away whenever difficult subjects arose. Didion counters that she cherishes privacy, adding that she sometimes left her own parties to shelter in her office and admitting that her long habit of overwork was a means of emotional distancing. It’s not wholly that Didion lacks that self-awareness, but that the keenest insights about her come from others, as when she records, “I said a friend had once remarked that while most people she knew had very strong competent exteriors and were bowls of jelly inside, I was just the opposite.” That Didion was constantly anxious, sometimes to the point of needing medication, will come as no surprise to close readers of her work, but the depth of her anguish and guilt over her inability to save her daughter—she threw plenty of money at her, but little in the way of love—is both affecting and saddening.

Of great interest to Didion completists, though a minor entry in the body of her work.