Joan Didion Blue Nights

Overview

Joan Didion Blue Nights Pdf

Blue Nights sono le ore lunghe e luminose della sera che a New York preannunciano il solstizio d’estate, «l’opposto della morte del fulgore, ma anche il suo annuncio».Sono passati sette anni da quando Joan Didion e John Gregory Dunne festeggiavano il matrimoniodella figlia Quintana Roo nella cattedrale di St. John the Divine in Amsterdam Avenue. Joan Didion ripensa a quel giorno, ai gelsomini del Madagascar nei capelli di Quintana, al fiore di frangipani tatuato sulla spalla. I ricordi rievocano istantanee dell’infanzia di Quintana: Malibù, la scuola di Holmby Hills, la California Meridionale e le sue stagioni «che arrivano in modo così teatrale da sembrare colpi di un destino inatteso». I ricordi spingono Joan Didion a interrogarsi sul suo essere madre, ora che la figlia non c’è più. A rileggereogni singolo evento della vita di Quintana alla ricerca di segni che forse non aveva voluto vedere.A fare i conti con la propria, inaspettata vecchiaia.Come L’anno del pensiero magico, Blue Nights colpisce per la precisione chirurgica con cui parla del dolore.

Blue Nights sono le ore lunghe e luminose della sera che a New York preannunciano il solstizio d’estate, «l’opposto della morte del fulgore, ma anche il suo annuncio».Sono passati sette anni da quando Joan Didion e John Gregory Dunne festeggiavano il matrimoniodella figlia Quintana Roo nella cattedrale di St. John the Divine in Amsterdam Avenue. Each film blends Didion’s incisive prose with images and mementos from her daughter’s life. From one of our most powerful writers, Blue Nights is a work of stunning frankness about losing a daughter. Richly textured with bits of her own childhood and married life with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and daughter, Quintana Roo, this new book by Joan Didion examines her thoughts, fears, and doubts. Seamlessly woven in are incidents Didion sees as underscoring her own age, something she finds hard to acknowledge, much less accept. Blue Nights—the long, light evening hours that signal the summer solstice, “the opposite of the dying of the brightness, but also its warning”—like The Year of Magical Thinking before it, is an iconic book of incisive and electric honesty, haunting and profoundly moving. Blue Nights opens on July 26, 2010, as Didion thinks back to Quintana's wedding in New York seven years before. Spotify not responding mac. Today would be her wedding anniversary. This fact triggers vivid snapshots of.

Blue Nights

Didion writes fairly frankly about Quintana's alcohol dependency in Blue Nights, and has referred to her late daughter as 'an alcoholic' in interviews. Mambazham kavitha lyrics in english. Much of the book explores Quintana's history.

Genre: Memoir

Shafer, Audrey

Date of entry: Dec-23-2011
Last revised: Dec-22-2011

Quintana Roo Dunne Michael Wedding

Summary

Joan Didion's memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, chronicled the overlap of two catastrophes: the critical illness of her adopted daughter Quintana Roo and the sudden death of her husband of forty years, John Dunne. Between the writing of that memoir and its publication in 2005, Quintana died at age 39. She had suffered a 20 month illness which started as a flu, advanced to pneumonia and sepsis, with intracranial hemorrhage and other complications necessitating 5 surgeries and extended intensive care unit stays. Blue Nights is a meditation on Quintana, and her mother's consuming sense of loss over the tragedy of her only child.
Blue nights refer to the quality of the light during evenings around summer solstice, a time of year which the author feels starts the whole cycle of diminishment and death. The memoir begins with a reminiscence of Quintana's wedding in July 2003 (the same year she falls ill and Dunne dies), as seen 7 years on by Didion. Throughout the description of the wedding are particulars of dress, flowers, design choices and locale which are not only precise, but also hold tremendous meaning to Didion. The branding of clothing, furniture, dishware, hotels etc, is dominant in many parts of the book - the Didion-Dunnes' family life was filled with movie stars, glamorous restaurants, and the hard work of writing. We see Didion on book tours and backstage during the Vanessa Redgrave one woman show of A Year of Magical Thinking.
Although Quintana's death and dying are prominent in the book, her whole life is explored. Issues of her adoption, her mental illness(es), her precociousness and talents, and above all, her relationship with her mother are intimately explored. The reader is given her childhood poems and descriptions of her nightmares and toys.
Another prominent theme is aging. The author was born in 1934, the same year, she notes, as Sophia Loren. Didion experiences neuromuscular problems and describes a particularly frightening episode of loss of consciousness and bleeding. She fears the deterioration of her cognitive abilities and laments she is unable to gain weight. She has a supportive and loving family and network of friends, but ultimately she ponders her aloneness, the lack of someone's name to write down on hospital forms as her emergency contact.

Commentary

Didion uses precise descriptors and phrases as leitmotifs – to capture in shorthand certain scenes and times. These phrases, like “Sara Mankiewicz’s Minton dinner plates,” or “After I became five I never ever dreamed about him,” are repeated numerous times throughout the text, like sporadic choruses or echoes. Didion takes on potential detractors who might feel less sympathetic due to the luxury of Quintana’s upbringing (Didion shops at Saks for baby necessities). She posits that Quintana’s suffering in her illness and dying outweighs any ‘privilege’ she may have experienced as a child and young adult (page 76). Whether one has issues or not with the boutique preciousness of some of the branding, one ultimately has to have an admiration for Didion’s work ethic and her choice to continue to create despite, or perhaps because of, her losses.

Loadingadvance878

Joan Didion Blue Nights

Overview