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Night Moves: Joan Didion @ Kelly Writers House
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Night Moves: Joan Didion @ Kelly Writers House
Don't know what to do tonight? Don't worry, we've got you covered.
In my ninth grade English class, I got lucky. While my friends' teachers believed that reading Little Women and Wuthering Heights was a good enough introduction to women writers, my own thought otherwise — he had us read several works by Joan Didion, including "Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream" and "Goodbye to All That." The first inspired me to pursue journalism (which, at the time, meant writing articles about why the drinking age should be lowered to 18); the second made me want to pack up my bags and move to New York City.
Didion's great strength is being able to write beautifully about the darkest aspects of life, without being macabre or exploitative — in her coverage of a small-town murder in "Some Dreamers...," she somehow employs symbolism and foreshadowing into a news piece without it appearing forced. She's also got a knack for extraordinary, biting sentences, like "It is the season of suicide and divorce and prickly dread, wherever the wind blows." At tonight's reading, though, she likely won't be discussing her '60s and '70s works. Instead, I bet she'll read from her book The Year of Magical Thinking, which covers the untimely deaths of both her husband and daughter. Always a tough broad, Didion shows her unyielding emotional strength in this work — which, contrary to my initial guess, is far from depressing.
Mon, March 30, 6:30pm; Tue, March 31, 10:30am, free, Kelly Writers House, 3805 Locust Walk, 215-573-WRIT.
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