Joan Didion On Keeping A Notebook Analysis
In her dreamy half essay half-diary entry “On Keeping a Notebook”, Joan Didion weaves together stories, associations, reflections, and suggestions to reveal the personal value of using a diary or notebook. While the reader cannot be sure whether the essay is written for anyone else to read, Didion makes her ideas highly compelling through the use of ambiguity, anecdote, circular narrative, stream of consciousness, a casual structure, and subtle self-exemplification. The result of this is an artistic and thought provoking journey into the mind of a notetaker.
The drive of the essay is often that of confusion which slowly evolves into interest, a clever strategy to intrigue the reader. Rather than begin any boring old thesis, Didion jumps directly into the action with a diary entry which is intentionally ambiguous, “ ‘That woman Estell - is partly the reason why George Sharp and I are separated today.’ Dirty crepe de Chine wrapper, hotel bar, Wilmington RR, 9:45 a.m August Monday Morning.”
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This is done through Didon’s circular narrative style. Each example gives no indication of exactly where the writing is going, but there comes a point when all of their significances are circled back to at the same time. Three stories of a baby, an expensive house, and a dreadful hangover are scattered through the first half. With one line Didion lines them up, “I would like to believe my dread then was for the human condition, but of course it was for me, because I wanted a baby and did not then have one because I wanted to own the house that cost one thousand dollars a month and because I had a hangover. The effect of the connection is the sudden, unspoken realization of her point, that one needs a notebook to remind oneself of all of the seemingly insignificant details in order understand
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