3 ms·
On Self-Respect by Joan Didion (1961)
- vessenes 11y agoDidion is (and was) a force. Her book The Year of Magical Thinking has to be one of the best memoirs of the last 100 years; it perfectly takes you through the intersection between self indulgence, grief and healing in a single, very tough year for the author. You can feel her insecurities in it, and you can see some of the same ones in this essay 40+ years earlier, the "Will I/won't I/Can I Be?" and the shot at writing about it from an "I've made it now, I can think sagely about it" angle, but at a very young age. In the end, she's a hugely important American author who simply cannot resist namedropping repeatedly in the memoir of her grief over her husband's death; like most of us, she carries some of her gremlins through much of her adult life. I think this essay is so fitting an essay for this site; it sort of reminds me in a way of Sam Altman's sage advice at 30 -- much of it brilliant -- but still written by someone with a lot of life left to live. Ms. Didion had a lot of the same drive, insecurity and needs that drive the founders in our industry; she turned out some remarkable work; I hope that we as a group will too.
- niels_olson 11y agoThis is fantastic and unfortunate that it didn't stay on the front page longer. First time in a long time that's I've felt the urge to go read some old novels. Literature if you want to make it sound that way.