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Joan Didion's Notebook Analysis

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So what is a notebook, according to Joan Didion? For the majority of her essay, Didion seems to be beating around the bush about what her point actually is, as to some degree maybe even evading her own topic. She depicts many different entries incorporated in her own notebook, introduces the idea of what a notebook is not, yet never bring closure to this subject, and even goes to the extent of questioning herself about her notebook and answering herself. Nonetheless, Didion answers the main idea with small fragments throughout the essay and answers the question she has for the reader. As mentioned before, Didion does not use or have a notebook for literary publication, but for her own self, to remind herself of what she thought and how she …show more content…

In the next sentence she writes, "We are not talking here about the kind of notebook that is patently for public consumption, a structural conceit for binding together a series of graceful pensees; we are talking about something private, about bits of the mind's string too short to use, an indiscriminate and erratic assemblage with meaning only for its maker." (Didion 107), giving us some sort of lead as to some sort of formula for what a notebook is, according to Didion. She gives one specific detail as to the purpose of a notebook a couple sentences later saying, " But of course that is exactly it: not that I should ever use the line, but that I should remember the woman who said it and the afternoon I heard it" (Didion109), addressing one main use for a notebook. Most of the reasoning I have mentioned is only minor definitions for a notebook given by Didion, and I believe that is her main point. A notebook goes all over the place, never settling with one topic and inconsistency through the whole

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