Joan Didion's Notes From Her Former Selves

"I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not."

May 12, 2025

Joan Didion (1934-2021) has been much in the news lately. In a span of days, her archives at the New York Public Library opened to the public and a posthumous collection of her notes from meetings with her psychiatrist were released as Notes to John. I, of course, have thoughts on this publication—but I’ll get to them in this week’s post script because my ideas are tied to my experience in her archive, where I spent two days last week.

For those new to Didion, let me just say that Notes to John is not the place to start; there is little in the book that Didion doesn’t explore—with more beautiful language—in the works she published during her lifetime. And, if you’d like to learn more about her, I highly recommend this documentary

Didion numbers among our most incisive cultural critics. She cast her unflinching scrutiny on society, and, most remarkably, on herself. For example, Her investigation into San Francisco of the 1960s in Slouching Towards Bethlehem offered an unflinching look at how culture disintegrates. And, her most well-known work, A Year of Magical Thinking, is the soulful memoir she wrote after her husband John Gregory Dunne’s sudden death in December of 2003 (while their daughter, Quintana, was on life support). And, then, her haunting follow up, Blue Nights, focused on Quintana, who died of pancreatitis at the age of 39 in the summer of 2005. In other words, Didion did not shy away from the darkness in life. She sat with it, studied it, and extracted ideas which she formed into gorgeous prose. She also wrote novels and screenplays. She was always writing.

And all of that writing began as notes.

This is a black-and-white photograph of a couple and a young girl on a wooden terrace overlooking the ocean in Malibu, California. — Didion (right) with her daughter Quintana and husband John Gregory Dunne in 1976

Didion, On Keeping a Notebook

We know how to read Joan Didion’s notes because she told us how to read them.

Her notebooks appear in her essays as recurring minor characters. In one essay, however, Didion’s notebooks take the lead. “On Keeping a Notebook” is sacred for those of us who also keep notebooks. The following interview begins with Didion reading an excerpt from this essay:

As much as I love “On Keeping a Notebook,” I have always stumbled over the first line. It’s disorienting, though I suppose that was Didion’s point. Reading a notebook (even one’s own) can be disorienting because notes often lack context. Here is that first line.

That woman Estelle,’” the note reads, “‘is partly the reason why George Sharp and I are separated today.’ Dirty Crepe-deChine wrapper, hotel bar, Wilmington RR, 9:45 a.m. August Monday morning.”1

Didion claims that these lines in her notebook confused her too, and I can see why, given their seemingly random placement in this notebook, just above a quote from Jimmy Hoffa that Didion mentions later in the essay.2

Here is the notebook page she was probably referring to, along with my transcription:

I
“She is partly the reason why George Sharp and I are separated today”
(Wilmington-bar-9:45 August[?] Monday[?] Morning [?]—train station
Jimmy Hoffa: “I may have my faults, but being wrong ain’t one of them”

The page Didion probably was referring to in her essay on notebooks. It includes her note on George Sharp and Jimmy Hoffa. NYPL, Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne papers 230.2

In “On Keeping a Notebook,” she continues:

Since the note is in my notebook, it presumably has some meaning to me.3

Even Didion doesn’t always understand her notes. Even Didion knew her notes were not absolute truth.

How it felt to me: that is getting closer to the truth about a notebook.4

But what then, is the point?5 The point, Didion tells us is to stay in touch with younger versions of ourselves. She tells us:

I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not.6

So let’s look at some of the notes that Didion’s former selves left behind.

Didion’s Recipe Notes

Something that surprised me was the shear volume of recipe notes Didion accumulated. But, of course, she was a wife and mother in the 1960s, living for decades in an isolated beach house in a time before easy take out. Also, she was known for her dinner parties. In other words, Joan cooked a lot. And there are boxes and boxes filled with recipes written (or typed and pasted) onto index cards.

Given that she ends “On Keeping a Notebook” with sauerkraut, I thought it fitting to share a recipe that includes fermented cabbage:

Recipe cards, NYPL Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne papers

Didion was a woman who tracked things. I also read through an inventory of her silverware. But, perhaps the most significant thing she tracked was her family’s and her health.

Didion’s Medical Notes

Didion habitually took notes on medical information. She notoriously suffered from migraines—she published an essay on this affliction titled “In Bed.” Here she tells us how her migraines debilitated her. In her archives, I found that she also assiduously tracked them in a daily calendar.

Didion tracks her migraines in a calendar from 1984, NYPL, Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne papers 229.9

When Didion encounters menopause, she records hot-flashes in a similar calendar.

And then in 2003, when her daughter Quintana was hospitalized because of a flu that led to septic shock, Didion typed up notes of questions to ask the doctors. She mentions these notes in A Year of Magical Thinking.

Notes Didion typed up regarding Quintana’s condition. NYPL, Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne papers 230.1

When her husband John Gregory Dunne had heart problems she typed up information gleamed from his doctors.

There is a significantly narrowed artery in front of the heart…

She also documents her own health. On October 9th of 2002, just over a year before Dunne’s death, Didion records how she felt an “ache through my chest and back” while walking through central park.

Didion records feeling weak and dizzy after experiencing chest pains in October 2002, NYPL, Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne papers 230.1

All of these notes mark experiences and thoughts that might later assist Didion’s memory. As she wrote in Blue Nights,

Memory fades, memory adjusts, memory conforms to what we think we remember.7

All of these notes, it seems, were also preparation to write. But that is a story for another post.

Notes on Didion’s Notes

Capture fragments: Didion’s notes are often disjointed and incomplete. They are fragments distilled from life—whether an overheard conversation in a train station or information conveyed by a doctor. Didion’s notes teach us that our notes need not be orderly and complete. What matters is what we make from those notes.

Knowing the why: It is worth clarifying why you keep a notebook. What relation do your notes bear to your self-development, or even to reality? What versions of your self have you preserved in your notebooks?

Notes are records: Didion diligently tracked information related to her health. And she also captured snippets of time with her notes. As she admits, these notes cue her memory. Seemingly random words like “sauerkraut” conjure vivid memories.

I’ll give Didion the last word, from the last paragraph of “On Keeping a Notebook”:

It all comes back. Even that recipe for sauerkraut: even that brings it back. I was on Fire Island when I first made that sauerkraut, and it was raining, and we drank a lot of bourbon and ate the sauerkraut and went to bed at ten, and I listened to the rain and the Atlantic and felt safe. I made the sauerkraut again last night and it did not make me feel any safer, but that is, as they say, another story.8

Noted is fueled by you. Your ❤️’s and comments inspire me. As always, I would love to know your thoughts.