Bright Light on Grief

Brilliant in several senses of the word, Joan Didion is inquisitive, worldly, and extraordinarily intelligent. When Didion seizes upon a topic, she shines her mighty powerful brilliance on it. I picture it as a hot white light, so intense, in fact, that it can sometimes overwhelm, flattening out colors and feelings.

The Year of Magical Thinking is Didion’s 2005 account of her year of grief following the death of her husband. He was her soul-mate, though she does not call him that. He is John Gregory Dunne and John through the book. John suffered a massive sudden heart-attack at the dinner table in their New York City apartment. John had a heart condition, so his death was not wholly unexpected, but it was extraordinarily traumatic. He was with her and then he was not. Didion is unsparing in her account of the impact, nature and effect of her loss. She processed, engaged, disengaged, and imagined all manner of things. It was a year that her brain simply could not accept the sadness of the unacceptable. Yet she persevered.

The year was further worsened by the grave illness of Didion’s daughter. Her book reports on both with clinical precision. At the same time, she knows that there can be no final clarity, no resolution. It is, after all, of thinking and not thinking, of numbing loss and overwhelming tears.

I can’t say that I was comforted by Didion’s book; nor would I say that she wrote it to provide comfort. It is not a broader study and it did not shed much light on grieving and loss writ large. I have experienced enough loss already to have formed some thoughts and to have done a fair bit of research. This book is not a source for any of that.

What The Year of Magical Thinking does extraordinarily well is explain Joan Didion’s experiences, her processes, her feelings. She’s a frightfully clever and interesting writer – and that, in and of itself, makes this an important book. It underscores, in a myriad of ways, the isolation of loss, both direct and existential. She writes with great courage, with precision, and insight into herself and what made her who she is. It is powerful prose.

The Year of Magical Thinking also made me wonder if it might sometimes be healthier healthier to think a little less. Asking and answering hard questions, it seems to me, may not always the best path to understanding.

David Potash

February 29, 2020 Reviews, Things someone who grew up in NJ might write

Hard Lives and Hardiness in Kansas

Sarah Smarsh is a fifth-generation Kansan who grew up amid grinding poverty. She found a way to get an education and become a journalist. Her first book, Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth is a heartfelt and powerful account of her extended families and community. It is not a rags to riches story. It is not about luck or personal triumph, and it is not a political call for government action or this policy or that policy. Instead, Heartland is an empathetic and critical account of poverty, an up close look at the millions of ways that being poor affects one’s life.

In the trilogy of race, class and gender, Smarsh effectively carves out a perspective that offers a deep understanding of what it means to be poor, white, and a woman in the Midwest. She does it with care and an outstanding eye for detail. (It isn’t what mobile one home one lives in that matters – it is where the mobile home is parked) Readily acknowledging the problems of racism and the difficulties of class identity, Smersh situates herself and her family within larger structures of power and disadvantage. The book’s greatest strength is perhaps in its attention to how women work, work even more, and endure in extraordinarily difficult circumstances with limited options. She makes clear that for her and many of those around here, only one small mistake – a problem that could be readily overcome by someone in the middle class – could effectively derail a person’s life.

Smarsh attributes her education and career to some family stability, to good fortune, and to not becoming a teenage mother, something very common in her family and community. She explores the impacts of domestic violence, the cycle of power exercised by the powerless on those with even less agency. She also calls out the policies and practice that seem aimed at further marginalizing or simply punishing women. Some are known; others are less visible.

For example, women often move regularly out of necessity or fear. Smarsh’s maternal grandmother, Betty, moved constantly. When Betty found a good and reliable match in her seventh husband, Arnie, they were able to keep a farm. The farm, a very modest place, was an anchor, a haven, in Smarsh’s childhood. But like many other family farms that barely make enough, the farm eventually was lost when Arnie died. Just about everyone is working hard, but financial stability is elusive. Rural life in Kansas is tough and unforgiving. Nearby cities, Wichita and Topeka, are not easy, either.

Smarsh mixes government policies and big picture events with local histories. Politics is part of the climate. It is present, it has an impact, and it seems as though it cannot be changed. Smarsh clearly wants to see opportunities and at least some semblance of economic and social justice for many, but that’s not the thrust of her book.

Instead, what is haunting throughout the narrative is the everyday heroism of her kith and kin. Yes, they are flawed and yes, they do not always make the optimal choices. But they often make understandable choices. They are mostly good people and a few are really outstanding – loving, caring and deserving of much more of the good life. They struggle and work hard. Smarsh paints their stories with care and without romanticism. It’s an effective and moving memoir.

Heartland is very easy to read. It’s well written, really beautifully crafted. It is also difficult to digest. The unfairness is raw and uncomfortable, especially in a nation that has so much. If you give Heartland deep consideration, it will haunt you.

David Potash

February 5, 2020 American Culture Today, Reviews