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Ep. 17. Joan Didion, 'Goodbye to All That' (with Danielle Cameron)
137 Plays2 months ago
In this episode, we do things a little differently. I talk to Dr Danielle Cameron about the opening paragraphs of Joan Didion's essay 'Goodbye to All That' from her collection Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968).
Danielle is a British Mauritian writer and academic based in London. She holds a PhD in American Studies from the University of East Anglia, and her interdisciplinary research focuses upon interrelationships between the writing of age in literature and sociological developments. Danielle is currently writing her first book, which explores how adulthood (as defined by marriage, mortgage and career) is a neoliberal construct, and the ways in which novels both reproduce and resist this norm. From the 2024/25 academic year, Danielle will be working as a Fellow in Interdisciplinary Social Science at the London School of Economics, where she will be teaching on the School’s flagship interdisciplinary course LSE100.
Episode references:
- Elaine Castillo, How to Read Now
- Danielle's book recs: Elaine Castillo, Moderation; Colson Whitehead, The Colossus of New York and The Intuitionist; Christine Smallwood, The Life of the Mind; Vauhini Vara, Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age; Ariel Saramandi, Portrait of an Island on Fire
Follow the show on Instagram. Find Danielle and LSE100 on Instagram. Please leave feedback here.
Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.
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Transcript
Introduction to Books Up Close
00:00:02
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Books Up Close. I'm Chris Lloyd. This is the close reading show for writers, readers and language nerds. In today's episode, I talk to Danielle Cameron about Joan Didion's essay, Goodbye to All That, from her collection Slouching Towards Bethlehem.
Introducing Dr. Danielle Cameron
00:00:17
Speaker
Dr Danielle Cameron is a British Mauritian writer and academic based in London. Her research focuses upon the interrelationships between the writing of age in literature and sociological developments. From September, Danielle will be a Fellow in Interdisciplinary Social Science at the London School of Economics.
Format and Focus on Joan Didion
00:00:34
Speaker
Welcome Danielle. Thank you so much for having me. So for listeners, like we're going to do something a little bit different for a couple of episodes where I talk to scholars that i love and admire and i like their brains.
00:00:48
Speaker
And we're going to talk about a text or an author that is not around anymore, that I can have this conversation with them. So this is why we're doing it this way. And Danielle and I have talked about Joan Didion a few times in the past, but never like fully explicitly. We've never got into the details.
00:01:06
Speaker
So today is that day, listeners.
The Art of Close Reading
00:01:09
Speaker
um We're just happening to record it and you can listen in to our rambling conversation. going talk about the opening of the essay because I think it makes the most sense to listen to it from the very beginning. We're going to talk about the first two paragraphs.
00:01:22
Speaker
But before we get to that, Danielle, I mean, usually i ask this to the authors whose work I'm like reading with them. but what are your thoughts and feelings about close reading? So, yes, of course, similar to a lot of your previous guests, I really love post-reading and I think it's one of the most fun things to do.
00:01:39
Speaker
But I do also recognise that there are past versions of myself that would be like, what do you mean it's the most fun thing to do? I've always loved reading. I've always identified as a reader, but I think the...
00:01:52
Speaker
context under which so many of us get introduced to the term close reader or close reading is within education, it's within it's within the context of it's going to be an activity that affords you a grade, right?
00:02:03
Speaker
And it ignores the fact that those kids that have grown up loving books like I was that kid, we've been close reading all this time. And it's been part of our be part of what we enjoy outside of our own structured education time, structured whatever time.
00:02:15
Speaker
But when we're taught that it is ah it is an activity that abides by a certain set of laws and metrics and grades, it really can suck fun out of it. And I think that was true, especially when I was a very, very anxious teenager around GCSEs and A-levels. I was like, I must do this right.
00:02:34
Speaker
But a passage and a kind of path of development that I've experienced for myself in relationship, in a relation to the close reading over the course of my time in academia, up until this point where I'm about to start my first full-time academic role, right, teaching and writing, is close reading ultimately is a form of play.
00:02:53
Speaker
And I think once I started gravitating back towards that notion, returning to that childlike joy with reading and being a reader away from it being something that's solely for grades, that liberated me a lot.
00:03:07
Speaker
So I want to return to that notion of it being a form of play. I think close reading is, previous guests have also remarked, a form of collaboration between reader and author, right? But is so also it's also this unstructured time with the text so I say this as somebody who has grown into an interdisciplinary researcher I know I've always been that when I look back I can see I've always been that like starting from undergrad when I was being told during my English literature degree that I was too political I was too concerned with history and what how that can enrich
00:03:40
Speaker
how we read a text. So, and as Chris has called me once ah more than once, I am a historicist. So I really do like seeing a big picture, but, and I think that's all needs exist.
00:03:53
Speaker
But when we're dealing with theory and we're dealing with different schools of thought, Those can act as kind of like landmarks on a map when you're reading a text, right? You're like, you're thinking, how can I see this structure in this text?
00:04:05
Speaker
How can I map out what's happening in this outside world onto what's happening within this text? I love that. I love having that roadmap to certain extent. I also love the fact that close reading feels like going off road.
00:04:18
Speaker
It feels like going into the text as terrain where you're just navigating, you're using your own instincts to pull out what really calls to you. and how you can build build your own picture of the text and see if that is in symbiosis or is in contradiction to what the wider consensus may be, whether that's critical thought in literature itself or other disciplines that may engage with the text.
Joan Didion's Prose and Cultural Context
00:04:43
Speaker
ah Okay, so now I have a million thoughts about that close reading process and about history. And I think Joan Didion is interesting, right? Because everyone talks about her sentences, right? She's like the sentence queen.
00:04:54
Speaker
But at the same time, she is also so historically, culturally, materially placed, right? And we can get into all of that later. Like, it's really interesting that you could, that most people talk about her as though she is just like prose, right? And actually her work is so...
00:05:08
Speaker
culturally, historically specific, right? She is responding to her moment more than most writers, you know, ah ah the 20th century in the US s at least. ah This is interesting, you're kind of like talking about that tension, which I think is so present in her work.
00:05:19
Speaker
How do you feel about close reading her today in particular? I'm really excited to be close reading nonfiction with you today. I'm really excited, like ah aside from Joan, I'm excited to read Joan, of course I am, but I'm excited to be reading a passage from one of her essays rather than than say one of her novels, or even one of the scripts that like she co-writ like she co-wrote with her husband, for instance.
00:05:39
Speaker
Because i think I think generally, culturally, we are somewhat guilty of letting nonfiction and kind of not get that close reading treatment. And I don't see why we should allow that to continue. like I think because ultimately words create worlds.
00:05:53
Speaker
And if we are looking at people who ostensibly are reporting and reacting to their cultural moment, we need to be conscious of the language they're using. yeah to respond. ah So in that end to that end, I'm really excited. And also relating back to how i was talking about how different disciplines have informed and do inform my literary kind of practice and how I even approach teaching students across all different disciplines.
00:06:15
Speaker
I love reminding people that disciplines are what we call disciplines, quote unquote, ultimately different ways of telling stories. I don't want that to sound super general, but ultimately, even if you think you're sitting in a school of geography versus a school of literature, we're still using words and language and using research to tell a story about the world and try and improve people's understanding of that.
00:06:38
Speaker
So everything, i i am an advocate for everything deserves close reading. We really need to pay attention to the language we're allowing to create the world and to identify the present at the same time. Yeah, I don't think actually listeners need to know anything about this essay. I think the opening really tells you everything you need to know. So I don't think we need to give context. You can look up when the essay was written if you really want. But like I think you'll get a sense quite quickly. Are you OK to read it for us?
Exploring 'Goodbye to All That'
00:07:01
Speaker
OK, so the beginning of the essay, goodbye to all of that. It is easy to see the beginnings of things and harder to see the ends. I can remember now with a clarity that makes the nerves in the back of my neck constrict when New York began for me.
00:07:16
Speaker
But I cannot lay my finger upon the moment to end it ended. Can never cut through the ambiguities and second starts and broken resolves to the exact place on the page where the heroine is no longer as optimistic as she once was.
00:07:29
Speaker
When I first saw New York, I was 20 and it was summertime and I got off a DC 7 at the old Idlewild temporary terminal in a new dress which had seemed very smart in Sacramento, but seemed less smart already, even in the old Idlewild temporary terminal and the warm air smelled of mildew.
00:07:47
Speaker
And some instinct programmed by all the movies I'd ever seen and all the songs I had ever heard sung and all the stories I had ever read about New York informed me that it would never be quite the same again.
00:07:59
Speaker
In fact, it never was. Sometime later, there was a song on all the jukeboxes on the Upper East Side that went, but where is the schoolgirl who used to be me? And if it was late enough at night, I used to wonder that.
00:08:13
Speaker
I know now that almost everyone wonders something like that. Sooner or later, and no matter what he or she is doing, but one of the mixed blessings of being 20 and 21 and even 23 is the conviction that nothing like this, all the evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, has ever happened to anyone before.
00:08:33
Speaker
Of course, it might might have been some other city had circumstances been different and the time been different and had I been different. Might have been Paris or Chicago or even San Francisco.
00:08:44
Speaker
But because I am talking about myself, I am talking here about New York. That first night, I opened my window on the bus into town and watched for the skyline. But all I could see were the wastes of Queens and the big signs that said Midtown Tunnel This Lane and then a flood of summer rain.
00:09:01
Speaker
Even that seemed remarkable and exotic, for I had come out of the West where there was no summer rain. And for the next three days, I sat wrapped in blankets in a hotel room, air conditioned to 35 degrees and tried to get over a bad cold and a high fever.
00:09:16
Speaker
Thank you for reading that. Like I'm trying to put into words how I feel about reading her sentences. i'm going to get into the critiques of Didion later, like don't worry listeners, I'm not just going to fangirl entire time. However, there is, it is really hard to pinpoint what it is about her sentences to me, right? Because she uses techniques like other people use, but there is something about like the tone the like, the voiceness of it.
00:09:40
Speaker
that feels so particular and feels so kind of inviting somehow. Right. Like, it's like, i always feel like I'm listening into She's kind of talking to us, but she's also talking to herself.
00:09:52
Speaker
She's like mixing modes and like styles. i don't know. There's just like so much going on here. Like even just listening to you, was like, it just feels so alive. I just feel like I want to talk about every single sentence, but like, ah we're going to like pick out bits of it.
00:10:04
Speaker
But yeah, I don't know whether you felt it differently as you read it even.
Didion's Style and Themes
00:10:08
Speaker
I really agree with like how alive ah alive it feels, but also similar to how I feel about a lot of Didion's writing.
00:10:18
Speaker
I feel the and but and the inviting tone that you mentioned, but I also feel a remove. I also feel a distance. And I like that in that it's inviting you to kind of come along with her. I don't think she's ever asking you to be identifying with her, right? Like you she invites you to walk alongside her rather than embody her experiences.
00:10:40
Speaker
And I like that very much. And I agree on a so like on a sentence level, she weaves magic and the range of topics and the range of experiences that she's written about.
00:10:51
Speaker
And yet she retains that very distinct style, but one that also develops over time, love. love I also remember when I first and when I first kind of really went into learning more about how she thought of herself as a writer once I realized the kind of discipline with which she writes which I appreciate we'll talk about later i was like oh okay cool that's reassuring because often especially when I was like younger I would be like oh you must be born with this ability and again we can get into the debates around
00:11:22
Speaker
what what tap what quote unquote talent is and to what extent you're born with it and you're not but the fact is she worked really hard at her writing yeah and I think that is encouraging to somebody who wants to write it's like you you do you can work at it basically it's not something that comes out of your fingers on the keyboard fully formed right yeah yeah you're right there's like lots of tensions there because everyone always talks about like the kind of coolness of her prose right and by cool they mean like cold right not yeah but you know like the detachment is both when she's looking down on you kinder but also there's like a detachment but I feel like she toggles back and forth right because that first sentence it is easy to see the beginning of things and harder to see the ends and you're like
00:12:06
Speaker
Is that true? i don't know. Like immediately you're kind of like, cool, I'll go along with that. Like this real kind of declarative statement. And then the next sentence, like this is the move that I don't think I would do, right? Like I would probably do another sentence there to like qualify it or something. But then she says, i can remember now, comma, with a clarity that makes the nerves on the back of my neck constrict when New York began for me. And like, it then it unfolds and unfolds right front of a couple of lines.
00:12:30
Speaker
Just like a real striking move from this general to the specific, and And she's moving back and forth between those, which feels like a trick almost, right? Like, you know, well while she is like, oh, no, you're not me, you're not on my side at the same time.
00:12:45
Speaker
She's trying to convince us of something too, I feel. Yes, I think returning to your comment about like the coolness of her and if ever there are passages, especially in this in this instance, if it feels as a notion of like a detachment to an almost condescension, i think that's also her potentially condescending to her previous self. Yeah. Because...
00:13:06
Speaker
ah Ultimately, this is this ah this passage that I just read, and then as you go through the rest of the essay, is is reflecting upon her arriving in New York at 20, convinced she's going to spend six months of her life there, ends up spending eight years, and then returns to California.
00:13:21
Speaker
And I think and this passage is the beginning and is a very strong example of her trying to make sense of who she was when she arrived. And using that hindsight, that retrospective kind of view, perspective,
00:13:35
Speaker
to be able to narrate herself in a way she wasn't able to when she was young and and that includes her kind of basically not well struggling to relate to who she was at 20. yeah you get what i mean and that kind of that that detachment because again parentheses here i know this is not in the passage itself but it does mention that she arrives in new york at 20 but she the overarching kind of feel and and and meaning of the essay is at 28 she felt too old for new york And as somebody in their 30s, that hit me get me in a different way than it did 10 years ago when I would have read for one of first
00:14:14
Speaker
one of the first time Yeah, because I think it's later on that she says like, oh, most people say that New York is like a city for people with money. And she's like, no, no, New York is a city for people who are young. right It's like really like spinning that idea.
00:14:27
Speaker
and want to jump to that. and want to Let's jump a bit later on now because you've mentioned this about the relation to her previous selves. Right. Because even in that second sentence, she says the exact place on the page where the heroine is no longer as optimistic as she once was. Like she's moved from I can remember now to the heroine by the end of the sentence. She's already done like a little step back to kind of see herself.
00:14:51
Speaker
And then I love that there's the song on the jukeboxes. Right. But where is the schoolgirl who used to be me? Even that line. Right. Like what she didn't write is is remarkable because it's not.
00:15:02
Speaker
Like, who is the me that used to be a schoolgirl? But like, where is the schoolgirl who used to be me? um Not I used to be the schoolgirl, right? It's like the the wrong way round almost, which is utterly brilliant that she would then pick that up.
00:15:14
Speaker
Because it relates to, and I can't remember essay it's in, where she, the line which I think about like almost every day, I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be.
00:15:25
Speaker
Yeah. I've already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be. And you're like, like that cuts deep. and And I think, yeah, that that's kind of what you were starting to say, right? That this essay is, its detachment or its coolness might be as much about her relating to a previous version of herself or like her younger self and and the relationship that self had to New York.
00:15:44
Speaker
Completely. And I want to say, yeah, it was specifically in the context of this. I think her style can mean different things in different essays, but we are not discussing those essays right now. But yeah, I think in this particular instance,
00:15:55
Speaker
yeah it's a lot about stepping back and she's because she's also writing this from the perspective she would have been writing this while in california right so she's already geographically removed from the space yeah that she felt she needed to evade but returning back to your lovely reading of that second sentence of how she moved from the eyes to the heroine it is yeah it's all about stepping back and it is fascinating And it's the notion that it's a notion that she can write her way back to there. But again, but we're talking about this kind of almost spawning of different selves and realising that those are separate from you now in a lot of respects.
00:16:33
Speaker
Kymia is contradicted by the bodily language that's used in this paragraph. So it's like with a clarity that makes the nerves in the back of my neck constrict, right? And I cannot lay my finger upon Her body is still remembering, yeah right? Like that time, even if mentally she's just like, I feel so removed from from being that 20 year old.
00:16:53
Speaker
The use of her body language throughout this and also even at towards the end of the passage, I'm sorry if I'm jumping around too much, but it ends with her saying like she's got a cold and ultimately her first three days in the new city was spent being ill in bed yeah in one room rather than, you know, like venturing around Midtown or something like that.
00:17:10
Speaker
And so there's there's this kind of tension throughout this passage about body versus mind and memory. Yeah, I mean, what we should also say is that like in that second sentence, even though she's doing all of this stuff about the body, about like perspective, she's also then beginning to play with sound and and the commas, right? I can remember now, comma, with a clarity that makes the nerves in the back of my neck constrict, the C's, the N's, right? Like those sounds.
00:17:38
Speaker
like those sounds comma, when New York began for me, comma, but I cannot lay my finger upon the moment it ended, comma, can never cut through. Like she really builds up her clauses, right? In a way that feels ungrammatical, but you're going with it.
00:17:50
Speaker
What it's doing is pretending to be like the unraveling thought. Right, it's it's like evoking ah thought unraveling, even though you know this is like clearly very carefully constructed.
00:18:03
Speaker
You know, the second starts and broken resolves to the exact place on the page. Like you've got siblings, then you've got like the the P repetition. So all of this is happening with like sound play that is drawing us 100%.
00:18:16
Speaker
drawing us in and ah hundred percent and Again, I think this is this is another reason why I'm so happy with reading ah nonfiction essay, right? Because still looking at the use of sound and the use of play in that regard and how we are ostensibly reporting on a city, right? Reporting on a quote-unquote real place. That's not me kind of questioning the reality of New York. I'm just saying, like again, attention underneath this passage is her deciphering between the myth and the reality of the city, for sure.
00:18:46
Speaker
and And in terms of when you're talking about that very crafted unraveling of thought. I then obviously would love to move to the third sentence, which is really hard to read out loud because there are seven commas.
00:18:59
Speaker
And also something that she, it also does something that she doesn't, often do I don't think which is repeat phrases so the repetition of old Idlewild temporary terminal again we we're playing with that alliteration with that sound it's it's like kind of just like a kind of almost like it aids this feeling that it's quite a stuttery start that she has to her time in the city and and then this unraveling and and and in the case of this third sentence the way that she uses commas to kind of
00:19:32
Speaker
Paul's continuity, but also really and in their own kind of sets of commas and stuff, embalm the different influences that she has in regards to the city.
00:19:42
Speaker
So after that second mention of old Isle to Wild temporary terminal, we then get notions and mentions of programmed by all the movies I'd ever seen and all the songs I'd ever heard sung all and all the stories I had ever read.
00:19:55
Speaker
so again, quite sensory language there as well. and And in terms of like it's all been these external influences that she has to contain in this one sentence. yep And that speaks also to a ah feeling of overwhelm as well, I think. It's an unravelling but also this kind of like saturation.
00:20:13
Speaker
saturation and of feeling and and being overwhelmed with the notion of, right, I've read about this place and I've seen it represented on the big screen and all of these influences that I've chosen to take into my life.
00:20:28
Speaker
But now I'm in the belly of the beast almost. And what does that mean? Yeah, like that's in that line is where she really sets the the idea of New York, not simply as a place, like a geographical place, but also like a space of culture, influence, construction, image, all of these kinds of things, right? Which I know you are super interested in, but like the, and it, yes, it's myth and reality, but it also, it kind of seems like there is no New York outside of its representations. Right. Like I kind of what you said earlier, but kind of almost like to push back that she's kind of postmodernist in a kind of way here in that, like, all there is, is like the image of the place.
00:21:08
Speaker
And she's the same about LA too, right? It's not like she doesn't say that there, but it's almost like the only access to the city is through all of these other kinds of cultural texts. And I wonder whether that is like, maybe that answers the question I had, which was the second line.
00:21:23
Speaker
i can remember when New York began for me. Yeah. Right. As though New York is like, you know, it's like a it's a temporal thing. Right. It's like when it began as a thing for me. And then the the next line is when I first saw New York, I was 20 and it was summertime.
00:21:40
Speaker
Like not the first time I was in New York, but like the first time I saw it is that like the first time I actually understood it. Right. Yeah. But both when New York began and when I first saw New York are like the unexpected words to describe like being in a place.
00:21:54
Speaker
So that's like super interesting to me. And then it's in that long sentence, which, as you said, is like really hard to read, partly because of like all the commas. But she also does the ah and, and, and, and parataxis, right? She goes quite in intensely with those ands.
00:22:08
Speaker
But she does also like, and I got off a DC-7. And you're like, like, you've got to kind of know what that is, right? Like, that is a kind of aeroplane. But she doesn't say like, I got off the aeroplane. She says, I got off a DC-7.
00:22:21
Speaker
DC-7. Like, it just sounds good, right? You know that she wrote down aeroplane the first time and was like no, no, it needs to sound better. And then as you say, like at the old Idlewild temporary terminal, like she doesn't have to add that in.
00:22:33
Speaker
but The sound of it adds stuff, right? In a new dress, which had seemed very smart in Sacramento, but seemed less smart already. Like the the S's come back and the warm air smelled of mildew and some instinct programmed by all the movies. i Like she's moving, like every single clause, we're we're jumping from one thing to another, right? The senses, the places, the like references. Right.
00:22:54
Speaker
you would You would probably tell someone like and in one sentence, like try and like stay with one thing, right? But she's like, no, we are jumping back and forth across the senses and the body and like the place. I think it's like quite remarkable.
00:23:06
Speaker
Oh yeah, it is really remarkable and it does need it does need a certain amount of control. As I've talked about, this is a very crafty sentence. This is not ah just a, let me just ramble for a little bit.
00:23:19
Speaker
It is such a controlled and crafted sentence and it's brought into such contrast by the next one, not to get us jumping around, but i think like seeing those two together is such a Didion turn to have that really long sentence, right? We're moving around a lot.
00:23:33
Speaker
And then the next sentence is so short. It's, it's what five words. In fact, it never was. So returning to your point of like, is she questioning, is she questioning in quite a postmodern way?
00:23:44
Speaker
Does a city like this only exist in its representations? Can it only exist yeah as basically an abstraction? And i have my own view, I respect that my own views come from outside of what she's written here.
00:24:00
Speaker
When I read this paragraph, I see have kind of grappling with, if you're unwilling to see past the representations, you can't access it. If you're if you remain couched in that, like, just kind of ecosystem, you're of how New York and how a lot of global cities are mythologised and narrativised before you even arrive.
00:24:23
Speaker
If you're not willing to kind of let the reality in or if the reality is different to what you expected, it makes you think, did this place ever exist for me? But then i returning to your identification of the temporality in the beginning, so that use of, it's easy to see the beginning and then also looking at that start of the sentence of when I first saw New York, right?
00:24:48
Speaker
and That then also seems contradicted by later on in the very same sentence is saying all of the movies I had ever seen. So this isn't the first time she's seen New York, right? yes It's not.
00:25:00
Speaker
But she used, again, I agree it's purposeful. She says the first time I saw New York, so which which New York is she seeing for the first time? And ostensibly it's the quote unquote real one.
00:25:11
Speaker
This is like a short essay, which probably also, is like, that doesn't ruin the close reading, I think, to, like, suggest. is It's like, it's not that long. In my head, it was much longer than when I read. I was like, oh, yeah, let's talk about that essay. And then I reread it. i was like, oh, this is quite a short essay, actually. um Because it ends the book as well, the action towards both heaven, which is, like, interesting.
00:25:30
Speaker
So, yeah, then, so we've got that short sentence. Then she goes to the jukeboxes that we've talked about. And then she does... what I was kind of suggesting earlier on, like, I know now that almost everyone wonders something like that.
00:25:43
Speaker
Like, you know, like, where is the school girl who used to be me? And again, you kind of, she doesn't want you to pause on that for too long, right? Because then you might start questioning being like, is that true? Do I, do I think that, like, what is my relationship to that?
00:25:56
Speaker
Because she says, I know now that almost everyone wonders something like that sooner or later, and no matter what he or she is doing, but one of them, so again, right, those commas are really dragging us through the sentence. Like she's not slowing down.
00:26:08
Speaker
too much. and But one of the mixed blessings of being 20 and 21 and even 23 is the conviction that nothing like this, all evidence to the contrary with notwithstanding, has ever happened to anyone before.
00:26:21
Speaker
Like that's a really grand way of saying, you know, like young people are just like, oh my God, this thing happened to me as though no one had ever experienced it before. But that sentence like really amps up, I think.
00:26:34
Speaker
And it's the bit, the funny bit for me that made me laugh is like, but one of the mixed blessings of being 20 and 21 and even 23. Like why that? what Why not just say like of being 20, of being early 20s, right? Like she missed 20 and 21 and even 23 as though, you know, 24, like you're a goner, right?
00:26:54
Speaker
Yeah, I'm also kind of like, I love the even before the 23, because she doesn't say 22. She doesn't say 20 and 21 and 22 and 23. It's not that kind of like boring a listing, but it's like this kind of like pop of literally naming ages where you still have this kind of,
00:27:11
Speaker
energy of youth to animate you believing that I am experiencing this emotion for the very first time nobody else has ever experienced ever before. and I mean, I love that melodrama, don't get me wrong. But her yeah how again, use of and.
00:27:29
Speaker
So in a different In a different version of this open passage, there could be so many more commas and it could just be like, like it could be so many different lists in that kind of very like staccato way of using loads of commas.
00:27:42
Speaker
Instead, she's still using a lot of commas, but she's also using a lot ands really draw out how long that stage of life can feel. And yet with her kind of hindsight, because when thinking about when this was written, she would have been in her thirties by this point when she wrote this.
00:27:58
Speaker
and so she like with this time like she's she's kind of yeah narrating it and using it and spending literally spending out those ages and using that even and even 23 to be like that felt like a massive time but ultimately no it it it was a flash in the pan like almost yeah I think it's just like a really brilliant like choice and of like those specific numbers again i like something I don't think I'm not trying to compare myself to Joan Didion. You know, like I don't think it's something I would think to do linguistically. I think you'd be like, oh, that's just like wasting words like it's getting in the way of the thing you want to say.
00:28:33
Speaker
But actually the pausing on those specific numbers really, i don't know, it's like really sharp in that sentence. it Yeah, very sharp. And it's like, it also, I think for the reader conjures up the image of what they were at that age.
00:28:46
Speaker
and And it delineates, it says this this was this year and this was the next year. yeah These aren't continuous. yeah right yeah yeah and And in between all of this language we've had so far, most of it is quite plain, right? Like none of it is super complicated language-wise in this essay.
00:29:03
Speaker
or even the grammar, right? But then she says that nothing like this, comma, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. Like, it's such, like, a different, it's like, it's a register shift. As though, like, we're hearing, like, older, later, Joan Didion reflecting on that younger self, right?
00:29:18
Speaker
Has ever happened to anyone before. Like what she does, I think, is that like she really nails voice in like most of her work that like you can hear a particular person speaking. And but here in this sentence, I feel like she's doing like double voicing, right? Where it's like, yeah, she's talking then and now.
00:29:35
Speaker
And even the now is is like a different kind of version. I don't know. I just think it's like a really good that little clause, all evidence to the contrary, notwithstanding. 100% because it's also bringing in that shift of register is also a shift towards the more journalistic.
00:29:50
Speaker
Yeah. Which is something we can associate with the older Joan. Yep. and And so she's almost investigating herself. She's ah she's reporting on herself. Yes. That's exactly what that is. That's exactly what that is.
00:30:02
Speaker
Thank you. That's all that's me. Then new paragraph. Of course it might have been Smother City. Like, of course. of course Again, she's going into a different tone again, maybe. Like this, um you know, it's almost like she can hear us being like...
00:30:16
Speaker
I don't know. It's almost like a response like what we might be saying to her. Like, doesn't everyone say this or, do you know, like you're not original here. and She says, of course it might've been some other city had circumstances been different and the time being different.
00:30:30
Speaker
And had I been different again, that repetition, yeah which you pointed out from the earlier bit, which is really, i mean, it's a very obvious thing to say, but like repeating different three times is a way of saying there is something so utterly specific about the New York experience. that Like it doesn't, all these other places don't matter, right? It's not that, right? It's not that. It's like, that seems really important. It might have, might have, been not it might, might have been Paris or Chicago or even San Francisco. Again, that even.
00:30:59
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. But because I am talking about myself, I am talking here about New York. That ending. But because I am talking about myself, I am talking again, repetition again. But it's it's it's like quite funny. It's quite a funny little line.
00:31:15
Speaker
It's a funny little line, but it also captures the ineffability of what what it mean what it means to have such a unique experience. like And I think each implied or what one can infer from that listing of might have been Paris or Chicago or even San Francisco is that there will be a unique experience set to each of those major cities as well yeah but it's also like the repetition and they ultimately not really going into much depth on what those differences might be between new york the experience of New York, Paris etc is also speaking to the it's really hard is really truly hard to pinpoint exactly what makes a city that specific city for you
00:31:54
Speaker
And for me, I'm reading New York for Joan Didion as the kind of cauldron within which she seems to feel like she either came of age or failed to come of age in certain respects, right? she's She arrived when she was super young. She grew older, but how did she grow older? like There's a lot of that feeling of like, how did how did I get to this this point, right?
00:32:15
Speaker
And I say this also frequently. with the kind of wider context I know I should be sticking closer to the text but in terms of where my research stems from as well obviously as you mentioned I have this interest in New York and I my ah whole PhD thesis is on representations of New York and its relationship to age in the relationship to how we write about adulthood in particular And how we can think through adulthood is defined through marriage, mortgage and career as this kind of neoliberal construct that has been sold as a norm for the last 50 years almost.
00:32:49
Speaker
And Joan's writing here precedes that, but it's showing the kind of circumstances within which cities have always been held up as places where you go to find success or find yourself or it's where adults, quote unquote, are.
00:33:01
Speaker
should go to fully become themselves whatever that means and so that's why she in this sentence this kind of had circumstances been different and the time been different, had I been different, then and of course she would have had a different coming of age or a different kind of experience of early adulthood.
00:33:16
Speaker
But no, this is a very particular to this city. And that is why her feelings are so intertwined with the city in such difficult ways. Because ultimately ultimately, she's like holding up a mirror to the city in a way that's holding up a mirror to herself and how she feels about herself.
00:33:32
Speaker
Yeah, and maybe that's something about the title, right? Goodbye to all that. Right? Like, there's there's something elegiac about the essay, too. Not just an analogy for New York, but an analogy of, like, herself in New York, or, like, what it means to be young in New York, etc.
Symbolism in 'Goodbye to All That'
00:33:48
Speaker
And goodbye to all that is also the title of Robert Graves' autobiography about, which i I hadn't like made the link. I kind of like Googled it. I was like, oh, of course. And his autobiography is thinking about the kind of societal shifts after World War Right. So goodbye to all that means like goodbye to like when things were, you know, the kind of pre-modernist moment, right. Of like goodbye to like order and normality and things held together. Right. And then the war and,
00:34:14
Speaker
All this stuff fractured everything, right? Like we know that story of modernism. so it's interesting that she's using that title there as well, because this essay is marking something about then, now, looking back, who am I in relation to that? And and I think there's this really good line, the the next the next bit that we listen to you read, that is that quite funny in a way, right? That she like gets caught in the rain and then she can't turn the air conditioning off in her room and doesn't want to ask anyone because doesn't know what to do about that and then gets a cold and a fever.
00:34:44
Speaker
but the But the opening of the line is that first night, right? Like, ooh, that precision, that first night. I opened my window on the bus. My window on the bus, not the window.
00:34:55
Speaker
don't know. Just I opened my window on the bus into town and watched for the skyline. Gorgeous phrase. Like, you know, she's like waiting for like that famous New York skyline, right? The one that we could all draw out.
00:35:08
Speaker
But all I could see were the wastes of Queens and the big signs that said, capital letters, big town tunnel, this lane. And then a flood of summer rain. She's not content with layering those three things. She then puts brackets in, parentheses for American listeners. Even that seemed remarkable and exotic for I had come out of the West where there was no summer rain.
00:35:28
Speaker
she doesn't really need to give us that parenthesis, right? She doesn't need to give us that, but she has to mark that like a flood of summer rain is not just a flood of summer rain. It's like something completely different for her. It's completely aberrant from the way she experiences like,
00:35:41
Speaker
weather right in in her city i think there's something quite striking about this layering of of stuff in this sentence because it's really where things start to kind of go awry right like that the yeah the myth of new york like the idea of the new yorker that even just the image of it right the skyline what you get is just like waste dumps and signage midtown tunnel this lane like really just like plain stuff and it made me think of like frank o'hara right like when like in the middle of his poems suddenly just like he's describing like a signage or you know these capital letters i think i feel like she's borrowing from also like a lineage of new york writing as well yeah yes yeah i agree with that but then also returning to your point about the position of that very opening that first night i opened my my window so it's her first night
00:36:32
Speaker
it's her window it's her perspective yeah yeah yeah yeah like it's it's she's so like again she's very good here like contain telling her reader this is this is my experience right that you are by reading this you are bearing witness to it in a certain regard but this is mine and yeah and and she's building on the lineage of new york writers in that in that way interestingly as a kind of contrast An almost contrasting way to the influences that she names in the previous paragraph, yeah right? So she's she's already identified the kind of omnipresent nature of New York in representations of what it means to be in America and what it means to, like, what what success looks like.
00:37:12
Speaker
So even if this, you know, predates what we understand as neoliberalism, York already was being held up for various, various reasons that obviously are aside the parameters of this text as this place you go to find success. Yeah. um But then when she's like, when it comes crashing, a bit crashing down to earth with the views of the the dumps in Queens and then just looking at the tunnel, like, yeah, you essentially you're on a road going through a tunnel yeah and go like and so and circulating around pretty much ubiquitous things that you'd you'd see in most cities. It's like, oh, it's coming crashing down to earth. And like you say, it's it's similar to the play you start to see with people like Frank O'Hara and wanting to chip away at the myth.
00:37:52
Speaker
So, and I think that's interesting that ultimately I, at least in my opinion, it takes writers who have lived in New York or like are familiar with New York like Didion was and like O'Hara, etc, etc, to kind of to try and trip away at that myth.
00:38:08
Speaker
Because it is when you're outside of ah physically outside of the city. you don't have that personal experience or personal relationship with the city, with the built city, to be able to pull away yes in this way that this sentence does, which is like, this is not stepping out of a glamorous minicab in the middle of Times Square. This is arriving being like, all right, what do I do with my life now? And things aren't going right. And I also would like to compare that to what what the novel Brooklyn does really lovely as well, in terms of dispelling that myth.
00:38:37
Speaker
um so yeah that's a tangent but I just wanted to share it there because that evokes this this passage revokes that novel for me as well I kind of want to end there not only because we've heard like the train and the sirens in your city backdrop it feels so like pertinent but also yeah that this text is like enmeshed with like other texts that came like before and after it which is which is quite exciting um we've talked a lot about this extract like the way the sentences seem very like considered even while they feel so flowing,
Didion's Writing Process
00:39:11
Speaker
right? it It feels like she's just like, it's just flowing out of her, but we know it isn't.
00:39:16
Speaker
Could you tell listeners like anything about Didion's like writing style? Do we know how she like put stuff together? So like her process towards this, yeah towards this um like at once kind of effortless, but so honed yeah ah style of writing.
00:39:31
Speaker
Yeah. So i I know, I know bits and pieces from different, from both her own writing interviews that she's done. And then also obviously the documentary that came out yeah of years ago as well. So as I mentioned previously, she was a highly disciplined writer and really, really found value in having routine ritual and ah set place to write.
00:39:53
Speaker
Again, that She never commented on it, but part of me is like, I see that and I'm like, I respect I respect the routine and the discipline, but also to have that set place to write is also a very privileged thing to have, right? But she, throughout her life, always, wherever her and her husband moved, she would craft that place, which is hers, to write.
00:40:11
Speaker
But also within that, within the routine that she had, there was a hell of a lot of rewriting as well and revision. and So again, I don't know if this was like universally true for every single thing she ever wrote,
00:40:23
Speaker
But for instance, she would make handwritten notes, it kind of expand them on the typewriter. And then from that, extract things she wanted to go into the final essay.
00:40:34
Speaker
so that is like layers upon layers of drafting, but in a different way to what you might envision drafting as Word document. It is in different media. It's her kind of almost collaging an essay together. And I say this as somebody who hates drafting I i i edit it as I go then and that's always been the way and that was a battle throughout throughout all of my writing to date but her patience to hand write versions type versions cut up versions and then stick them back together fascinating and also obviously embedded within that rewriting and and kind of revision process is her
00:41:12
Speaker
crafting those sentences so deciding which ones will stay stay as they were which ones need kind of you know seven different commas in them or and I also was like revisiting interviews from her recently and I listened to her telling the anecdote of how she taught herself how to type by typing out passages from Hemingway yep And i get I think you can see, like if she was, if those were kind of the very early influences for her, I think you can see that coming through in her writing all the way, yeah but especially her essays.
00:41:47
Speaker
ah into And in terms of also that kind of removed narrator, right? Like I am an observer, but I am also a writer. And again, I know we're going to get, there's there's a tension there that sits uneasily with me a little bit in terms of how much did,
00:42:02
Speaker
didion see herself as somebody who could or see herself or even see writing as something that could intervene intervene into a situation rather than just being a record of it i'm gonna pin hemingway for two seconds it's making me Like A, that revision and rewriting and like taking bits out and like moving around like that is really interesting on the kind of craft level.
00:42:24
Speaker
The other thing, and I was looking up this morning because I forgot where it was, but it was in Blue Nights that she talks about writing process when she's making those handwritten notes that sometimes she's just making like marks on the page is what she says. I don't like the wording, but she'll put like X's down instead of words.
00:42:41
Speaker
Like she'll know that a word that goes there needs to be three syllables. Right. She's working like on syllable level on like rhythm. and And most people, most writers will be like, oh, i I want a rhythm in a sentence. Right. Like I want to think about how the thing flows, which is one thing. Right. And like poets do this lot.
00:42:56
Speaker
But she's saying like rhythm is coming before the words. Right. Like most of the time she's like I've got these ideas, I've got stuff, but like at the sentence level, I know what the rhythm needs to be.
00:43:07
Speaker
And she says something like, I let that rhythm tell me what I was saying. Right. So it's like the rhythm is, yeah the rhythm is leading her to the words or or to the content, quote unquote.
00:43:19
Speaker
And that seems like super interesting to me that like she might put a ah single X or like four Xs and she's like, well, that word needs to be longer. It needs to have like beat to it. And like typing out Hemingway is like interesting in that regard.
00:43:32
Speaker
There's an essay on the New Yorker called Last Words where she like goes through Hemingway, like an opening paragraph, one of Hemingway's books. i can't remember which one. And she like counts the ands and the commas. And she's like, she goes down to the level of like the beats in the sentence.
00:43:46
Speaker
Which, i know, there's something about me that makes that makes it sound like writing is all just technique and not like the ideas almost, right? Like there's like a there's a weird tension there that it's like, actually all I'm doing is just like transcribing sound and rhythm, not, do you know what Like rather, like as though language is just, is like detached from it. And I don't think, and she would, I don't think if she would say that, but it it kind of sounds like all this is, is just like technical, not emotional, intellectual aesthetic or anything.
00:44:15
Speaker
I think that is a very good point. And and i think it's I think it's fascinating because ultimately, even though she seems to have shared a lot of her personal life with us through her writing, I actually think how much there is out there about her process, about what that kind of translation of intellectual emotional life actually meant to her and what looks what that looked like in process, actually obscured by the amount we know about her technical process.
00:44:40
Speaker
Yep. And i ah I ultimately think is that is that an area that she remained most private about? And again, coming back to what I was mentioning right at the beginning of this episode, it's like what what instincts and and what instincts are then translated into quote-unquote talent are we kind of, are we inherently kind of born with or develop over our lifetime without trying to hone skills that we can in terms of like revision and rewriting?
00:45:06
Speaker
I wonder whether, because I don't want to say she definitely was or anything, but I do i do wonder whether Didion was just a writer who who knew the kernel of the idea she wanted to get out there very, very quickly.
00:45:18
Speaker
She knew that, but she wanted to, in that kind of constrictive expansion technique that she had, she was like, I want it to sound and look and feel a certain way. yeah it is not enough to but it was not enough for her to just write it as, say, a stream of consciousness.
00:45:34
Speaker
right But again, that brings in notions of journalism, because ultimately ah the movement that she was tied into and one of the pioneers of with being new journalism, that is part of journalistic writing, is you have the information you want to convey, but you want to convey it in a very particular way, Yeah.
00:45:51
Speaker
like I would love to talk about new journalism with you, but like that, I feel like that takes us away a bit too much from the close reading and I'm trying to be disciplined as a close reader. It's really hard. realise, oh, actually I realised the other point I wanted to say. So like this, her attention, her attention to detail to down to like the granular, to say that like this is the syllable level.
00:46:10
Speaker
I think, again, if we're thinking about her as a writer who who can identify what she's wanting to communicate very quickly, but ultimately takes her time with how she wants to communicate it. I think the going down to the syllable level, and I know this may just be influenced by the passage and the essay we've been talking about today.
00:46:27
Speaker
i think that also comes back to the bodily sensory language we saw in the passage today. she wants it Whether it's being read out loud or read just inside a reader's mind, she wants a certain soundscape yeah to accompany her writing yeah in almost the same way that a city has a soundscape.
00:46:46
Speaker
And wherever wherever we're experiencing text, we are always surrounded by different things impacting our senses. So she wants her text to impact you as well in as many different dimensions as it can. Yeah, this is what i want to ask where I want to ask the thorny question then, if we're talking about like impact and like her placement.
Critique on Didion's Racial Politics
00:47:02
Speaker
like We are both big, big fans of Elaine Castillo.
00:47:07
Speaker
And in her book, How to Read Now, she has an essay or a chapter, I guess, on Joan Didion that is probably like one of the clearest and probably one of the first for me anyway, proper critiques of Didion's work.
00:47:21
Speaker
at the level of Didion's weird, by weird, I mean dubious, problematic kind of racial politics that seeps into the text, right? Whether it's explicit racial politics or just the way it like is part of her viewpoint and the way she writes, right?
00:47:37
Speaker
And as well as the kind of ethical moral dilemmas that this cool, disaffected, I'm over here, writer, journalist, like the weirdness of that and what she can get away with or what she thinks she can get away with and what readers seem to like...
00:47:49
Speaker
love about her right or or some readers do anyway i'd love to hear your thoughts on that chapter and like that that reading of didion where that sits for you and what we've just done here Yeah, of course. i And also I wanted to because I almost used, I wanted to just shout out the the title of the essay that where Elaine Castillo goes in on Joan Didion is called Main Character Syndrome in How to Read Now.
00:48:13
Speaker
And I almost used that phrase in regards to in regards to how Joan Didion's writing about herself, right? So that step away, calling herself, like implying herself as the heroine. yes Taking that step away, being that like past school girl, lost school girl. Yep.
00:48:29
Speaker
that self mythologizing is you know main character behavior and that's fine i am fine with that when it's about oneself right and it's and it's and it's joan didion reflecting on herself what elenca didia's brilliant essay does is unpack not only the problematic and at times like racist behaviors within joan didion's text Castillo's essay also brings home how the the' kind of holding up of Joan Didion as this symbol, which is something I don't think Joan Didion ever, and don't think she dissuaded, but I don't think she went into her writing career expecting that to happen. and
00:49:06
Speaker
But Elaine Castillo really unpacks like how if we continue to hold up Joan Didion as this epitome of cool and what being a cool girl writer means, then we are risk replicating these dubious problematic tensions through the writing of not just America but more broadly America like the empire of America's impact on the world and I also think ah well I remember when I first read that assuming character syndrome and it felt weirdly liberatory to read that because I say that as somebody who's grown up admire I think like the thing is I would always say I'd admired i admired Joan Didion's writing and I really admired her I still really in admire her career i think she is Joan Didion is a rare example of a woman who like we we have what like
00:49:54
Speaker
decades upon decades of her writing in existence. I think that's excellent and and sadly still quite rare to have that kind of overview of somebody's career like that and for her to have been an active writer for all of that time.
00:50:06
Speaker
but i when I say I found reading main character syndrome strangely liberating, Elaine Castillo put into language stuff that I'd felt and but never never dwelled upon, never allowed myself to dwell upon when reading some of Joan Libyan's work.
00:50:22
Speaker
And like her kind of, when she writes about Hawaii, for instance, and that's another thing that's tackled in McCarrick's syndrome, is Joe Gillian is like, well, I'm not going to talk about these people over here. Their experiences, their experiences, I'm not going to like narrativise that. I'm not interested, like ultimately, I'm not interested in writing about that.
00:50:40
Speaker
And Sadly, as a woman who is not white, I have grown quite used to seeing that happen in different texts. It's not just Joan Didion who does that. And Joan Didion, especially in the writings of the 60s and 70s, especially when I was younger, I'd be like, well, it was a different time.
00:50:56
Speaker
it's not like she's writing now and doing that somehow that makes it better I don't think that's necessarily true but younger me would have thought like that i was like different times it is what it but when reading Ming character syndrome I just felt like Elena gave a lot of language to that discomfort I was feeling and this discomfort brought me this resignation to how I identified or like kind of helped me kind of unpack how I'd become resigned to this illusion of non-white experiences in quite canonical texts.
00:51:30
Speaker
And that was a lot of what How to Read Now, the whole essay collection by Elaine does. ah And so I just, yeah as you can tell, I really love it. I really love that essay. really love Elaine's writing. But also I wanted to say what that essay in particular, Character Syndrome did well for me is, yes, and kind of uncouple both the writing the writing from the mythological figure of Didion And I say that also as somebody who I think my very first memory of really paying attention to Joan Didion would have been on Tumblr.
00:52:02
Speaker
And that will ah help people situate me and my which generation is she? um so As if we didn't know, Danielle. and so I think I would have heard the name before probably but I think the first time i ever paid attention and like sought out Didion's work was when I was like 17 and that would have been you know seeing you know seeing something that I got a lot of reposts on Tumblr and that that stereotypical image of her with the big sunglasses looking like Yeah, again, kind of disaffected or and not disaffected, like ah like just cool within chaotic situations.
00:52:41
Speaker
And i think, again, that's another way in which Jo and Dillian really intervene in a very masculine culture, was showing herself as a woman who... is not yeah you know stereotypically emotional about things all of those like horrible sexist stereotypes.
00:52:56
Speaker
But then I think we, and I think you know the the image that was promoted to me and the image that I first received and and the first impressions I had of her work, we allow that kind of win for for women and and gender stereotypes kind of override or obscure the not good elements of her writing in regards to other ah racialized ethnic identities. yeah That's a perfect summary. And like, yeah, the essay really just like was a gut punch. And I feel, i felt like very uncomfortable with myself, almost quite ashamed that i had let Didion's prose ah kind of like cloud my eyes a little bit. It's like the weirdness that was going on in there, right? Like I feel like with most writers, I'm very like hyper alert to weirdnesses, right? Like I feel like i I've trained myself so much that I'm going to be like, that feels weirdly whatever, right? Like,
00:53:47
Speaker
racist, transphobic, you know, you name it. Like I can just smell it coming in writer. I can see it. But like there's something again, maybe we've been talking about, the kind of like the smoothness of the prose, right? and And the image that she cultivated and that has been cultivated by the culture around her that stops us from looking closely.
00:54:06
Speaker
and i And I think how to read now that book is is a really good, she does this with like multiple writers, right? But like the how we should read now, the argument of that book is is like really attentively, right? Especially in our kind of contemporary moment, which is, you know, why I've done this podcast, right?
00:54:22
Speaker
Close reading is needed. because everyone loves bloody large language models and you know the evacuation of meaning right and like no no we need to like re-attend to meaning because this is how the planet ends right if if we don't do that sorry to get too grand there so yeah like thank you for bringing that in i think is really
Danielle's Book Recommendations
00:54:42
Speaker
important and and i'll link to that essay in the book and and stuff for people to listen to um please Okay, I always ask people this at the end of the episodes, and I'll ask you as well, like, what books are you recommending?
00:54:55
Speaker
Part of me thinks, like, do i know what you're going to recommend? And then I'm like, no, maybe don't. Well, I will preface this with, you didn't give me a limit of how many I could recommend, so I'm coming to you. So I think building off of our discussion of Elaine Castillo's excellent work, of course, already was saying with our full chests, we're recommending How to Read Now by her, but I also recently finished her most recent novel, which is Moderation, which is engaging with kind of like themes of racialised labour, the tech sector, VR, AI, what does life look right now but like right now as we're trying to navigate these things.
00:55:31
Speaker
But also in a really playful touch, ah that novel also centres around two characters who are very much convinced they know what genre of their like what genre or kind of text their life belongs to. so one of them thinks they're in this kind of ah like kind of corporate espionage thriller where he wants to seek revenge for various things.
00:55:53
Speaker
And another character is just like, she's she's thinking she's in Terminator 2 and she's just trying to survive. Like there is no place for emotional vulnerability. is And enmeshed that, their relationship gets them to confront the fact that they can't predict what their lives will bring. They can't predict what genre and they can't pigeonhole their lives into any one genre and I love i loved it.
00:56:14
Speaker
um and And then also kind of returning to the topic of New York and the writing of self in New York, I wanted to recommend Colson Whitehead's Colossus of New York as a really supreme excellent collection that again troubles the boundaries between non-fiction fiction is it memoir is it essay is it just a bunch of short stories we don't know and with also his first novel the intuitionist is uh just a brilliant writing of new york and in a again very formally and genre playful way
00:56:47
Speaker
And then my final one around New York recommendations for this, but ultimately i could have an infinite amount. A recent novel was The Life of the Mind by Christine Smallwood, ah which is just a really good gut-wrenching look at the life of an adjunct professor.
00:57:04
Speaker
and looking at what it again a theme kind of a common theme between this book and moderation by elaine castillo is thinking what does labor mean in millennial and gen z life and what does precarious labor mean so i would say for anyone who has experience with that go in with caution but it was it was like i really really love that novel we did not know the bigger one ah then Then other things that I've read recently that I would really highly recommend, again on the topic of AI and digital selfhood, is ah Vahini Vahra's work, which recently came out this year, which was Searchers and Colon Selfhood in the Digital Age.
00:57:48
Speaker
And it's a collection of essays and an overarching kind of memoiristic piece looking at and tracing the notion of self through the last like 25, 30 years as the internet has grown.
00:58:00
Speaker
And one of the chapters that really got to me in a way that I did not expect was her looking at her Google searches as like material for for understanding who you were back in the day.
00:58:11
Speaker
And I just, ah like I loved it. She also um at intervals within the book, she's conversing or appearing to converse with an AI and getting them to feed back on what she's written so far.
00:58:24
Speaker
It's a fascinating book, fascinating book. And so the final book that I'm going to recommend that I've read recently is a collection of personal essays centred around Mauritius, which is where my mum is from.
00:58:37
Speaker
And that book is called a Portrait of an Island on Fire by Ariel Saramandi. And Saramandi covers so much ground and in the essay collection. So starts off with a whole history of the island, so looking at the different periods of colonisation that happened there and then the after effects and and looking at what life on the island has been like since independence in the 60s.
00:58:59
Speaker
But then also talks about the legacies of how surnames and religion obscure different racial ethnic identities and different hierarchies on the island. We're also looking at how Mauritius navigated COVID and the different levels of lockdown that happened, which were really quite briefly enforced.
00:59:18
Speaker
ah Also looking at the political structures on the island and what the 2024 election meant and why it was such a momentous time. And then also finally, she also talks about climate change and climate crisis and how ultimately it's going to be nations like Mauritius in the global south that will be already experiencing what living in climate crisis means and calls attention to the fact that we need we need resolutions now.
00:59:44
Speaker
ah So I know that's a whole range of books. so but um but yeah I hope there's something there that your listeners can enjoy look these are recommendations people right like Danielle is the reader who I turn to for recommendations so you will do well to buy all of these books or borrow them from your local library, but like buy them from a local independent bookshop, please do not buy them from Amazon, or I will not let you listen to this podcast somehow. But like, don't do it.
01:00:12
Speaker
Just don't do it. Thank you so much for your time, your thoughts today. I really, really appreciate it. It was so nice talking to you. Oh, thank you so much for having me. This has been great. And I really enjoyed chatting through all of the things.
01:00:25
Speaker
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01:00:37
Speaker
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01:00:49
Speaker
This show is made possible by an Impact Accelerator Award from the University of Hertfordshire and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.