I know I mentioned the title of this book—Salvador (1983)--in our first week's discussion as an example of Didion's more "objective" reportage. Though, I think I also said that she views even real, factual events through her emotional prism.
I pulled the book off the shelf just now to find a good passage to give you. Much of the book is, in fact, documented, factual reporting, but she is definitely there as the "eye" who sees what she is telling us. Here is one passage early in the book where she brings the two (the personal and the objective) together:
"One shadow sat behind the smoked glass windows of a Cherokee Chief parked at the curb in front of the restaurant; the other crouched between the pumps at the Esso station next door, carrying a rifle. It seemed to me unencouraging that my husband and I were the only people seated on the porch. In the absence of the headlights the candle on our table provided the only light, and I fought the impulse to blow it out. We continued talking, carefully. Nothing came of this, but I did not forget the sensation of having been in a single instance demoralized, undone, humiliated by fear, which is what I meant when I said that I came to understand in El Salvador the mechanism of terror" (26).
The next page begins with a long paragraph quoting a report from the US Ambassador to El Salvador on "The Chronology of Events Related to Salvadoran Situation." This book is a report on a rebel insurgency made up mostly of peasants and indigenous people against the crude military government of El Salvador, yet another corrupt, dictatorial regime propped up by the US in its efforts to thwart Communism. Ah, where did those times go?
Anyway, let me call a few things about this passage to your attention and you will see how it connects to our earlier reading. She is talking about how it "seemed" to her and what her "sensation" was in the situation. But look at the realistic details in which she has wrapped the emotional sensations: the depiction of the threatening "shadow" in the car, which is identified by make and model, the armed man kneeling between the specifically-named "Esso station" gas pumps, and we have the sharp image of the faces of Didion and her husband, well-lit targets, illuminated by a simple candle flame. There's the tension in her "fight" with herself, not to call attention to themselves or do anything startling by blowing out the candle, and that lovely word "carefully," where we might expect "quietly." "Carefully" is such a beautifully chosen word, because it goes so well with the tension of the situation, with their awareness of their watchers of whom they need to appear unaware, of the delicate terror of the scene.
What a pleasure prose like this is!
The whole book is also a factual report of events, observed by a real person, who feels real emotions in the situations. She's not necessarily there to empathize with the victims, but to show us, the readers identifying with her and feeling her emotions, their starkly displayed, realistically drawn corpses.
She can be both detached from the events and filled with emotions that are expressed indirectly. Her prose is not over-the-top emotional, but pared down and direct. Her vocabulary is simple and the sentences are straightforward, not convoluted and complex.
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6 years ago
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I'm just going to say that I absolutely love reading Joan Didion's work. That passage is something you would see in an anthropology course. From my experience it is those personal accounts (and why so many travelers consider themselves anthropologists) that really illustrate a culture or cultural/political turmoil. I worked very closely with an anthropologist named Mariana Ferreira in San Francisco and she writes some of the most compelling ethnographies on the Xivante of Brazil. She's the lead anthropologist of Brazil and has unveiled numerous atrocities done to indigenous people by the Brazilian government. I'm almost positive that Joan Didion's experience in El Salvador was beyond any terror I have felt and her writing is amazingly descriptive within a couple words (something both journalists & novelists can appreciate). Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteAshley, I like the connection you're making to anthropology. If I recall correctly, later in this book (which is only 108 pp), Didion recounts the finding of bodies, of which there were so many in El Salvador. An anthropologist, especially a forensic anthropologist, would describe the event objectively, leaving out speculation or personal, emotional reactions. But, there, too, Didion is able to infuse an event with emotion, AND describe objectively, while conveying those emotions indirectly. She uses details such as those discussed in my post to infuse scenes with emotions at the level of the individual word. She would never say, "I feared for my life," but that candle-lit scene says it for her.
ReplyDeleteI love when a Literature class introduces me to a new author to fall in love with! On the way down to FL, I will be listening to The Year of Magical Thinking by Didion on audio. The essays that we read drew me right in. Her style felt familiar, like a conversation, and yet her thought process was new. Shortly after this assignment, I was in Barnes and Noble and came across the paperback of Magical Thinking in the section marked "Staff Recommends". I sat and read a portion of it and had a very hard time leaving without purchasing it. In your piece above about Salvador, I like how she uses certain objects to place the reader in a certain timeframe (the Cherokee Chief and the Esso gas station). I am sure in Magical Thinking, I will see a lot of her use of fact and emotion blending. I will be sure to share!
ReplyDeleteWhen I first started teaching, there were several Didion essays in the textbook I used, so I set myself the task of teaching the essays to freshmen. I had heard of Didion, but hadn't read anything by her. WELL! I read the essays with the eyes of someone who wanted to teach her use of structure, prose, the well-chosen image, and so on and I learned to love her writing. I can usually get into her mood and sometimes her frame of mind, though I also get impatient with her occasionally. But her prose is so stark, yet so rich, it's a joy to teach and, when I'm in the right frame of mind, read.
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