The year of magical thinking

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The Year of Magical Thinking (2005)

The Year of Magical Thinking ( English : The Year of Magical Thinking ) is an autobiographical book by American writer Joan Didion . Didion describes the sudden death of her husband John Dunne and the life-threatening illness of their daughter Quintana, as well as her grief, thoughts and feelings in the aftermath. General considerations about how people deal with grief and death are linked to personal experiences.

The year of magical thinking was first published in October 2005 by the American publisher Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. , the German translation by Antje Rávic Strubel in September 2006 by Claassen-Verlag . The book became a bestseller in the USA , won the National Book Award and received very positive reviews in both the American and German-language feature sections. In 2007 Didion adapted the book as a play.

content

On December 25, 2003, Joan Didion and John Dunne's adopted daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne Michael, was admitted to the intensive care unit of a New York hospital. The thirty-seven year old had married the musician Gerry Michael that year. The symptoms of the flu spread to pneumonia and septic shock . On December 30, 2003, returning from visiting his sick daughter, Didion's husband, John Dunne, had a heart attack while preparing dinner and died.

Joan Didion describes her following weeks and months: the emptiness in her apartment after the absence of a partner for a 40-year life together, her imagination that she should have saved her husband, her attempt to use magical thinking to fight realities by taking everything left in such a way that the dead can return at any time. Time and again, shared experiences and locations visited together become memory traps that let the past break open. Again and again the question arises whether other decisions would have made life different.

Didion reflects her own experience in medical and psychoanalytic books, in cultural history and in literature. While she laments how little space is left for mourning and mourning in the modern world of the 21st century, she feels understood and cared for in the simple and straightforward advice of a etiquette from the 1920s.

In addition to the loss of her husband, the struggle for the seriously ill daughter fills her next weeks and months. Didion acquires medical expertise in order to have a say in the treatment of her daughter and at the same time learns how skilfully she has to tact in order not to snub the doctors in charge. Didion has to deliver the news of the man's death to her daughter several times because Quintana's memory keeps interrupting. Only when the daughter is released from the hospital is the funeral ceremony for Dunne rescheduled.

In the end, Didion manages to break away from the grief for the deceased man. She realizes that none of her deeds could have saved the person with chronic heart disease, that none of her omissions are to blame for his death. She feels that she has to let go of the dead in order to live on herself. On December 31, 2004 Didion looks back for the first time on a whole year in which she did not spend a single day with her husband.

style

According to Robert Pinsky , Joan Didion's book is written with a great sense of timing, which is reflected in the structure of the scenes and the individual sentences. Her style is both unscrupulous and meticulously precise, free of banalities and always full of dry humor. Avoid any pomp and use few adjectives. The withdrawn language reveals its emotions, the inner freezing of shock through stylistic repetitions and precise observations.

Pinsky recognized several levels of language that permeate the book: the inner voice of “magical thinking”, which escapes from the narrator's desperation into a world of omens and rituals; an external voice of society that presses the mourners into conventions and does not want to let their usual course of action be disturbed; finally the medical jargon and the secret language of hospitals.

History of origin

Joan Didion, 2008

A few days after the death of her husband, in January 2004, Joan Didion wrote down a few sentences that begin The Year of Magical Thinking :

“Life changes quickly.
Life changes in an instant.
You sit down for dinner and the life you know ends.
The question of self-pity. "

After that, Didion wrote nothing for months. The impulse for the book arose when she was making notes on her daughter Quintana's bedside. It wasn't until reading it again that Didion realized that her notes went beyond purely practical notes. She wrote the actual book in 88 days, from October 4 to December 31, 2004. The process of writing helped her come through the grief. You had to "write" yourself out of the events. Writing things down is the only way for them to understand them. In doing so, she moved away from her usual style: "I wanted it really raw ... I didn't want it disguised as my style usually is."

After the completion of the book, Didion's daughter Quintana died on August 26, 2005 of an acute pancreatitis . Joan Didion made no further changes to the manuscript of the book. She announced to the press, “It's over.” The Year of Magical Thinking was released on October 4, 2005, a year after Didion started working on the book.

reception

The Year of Magical Thinking became a bestseller in the United States . The book sold over 600,000 copies in the first year alone. It won the National Book Award in the Nonfiction category in 2005 and was a finalist in the National Book Critics Circle Awards in the Autobiography category and the Pulitzer Prize in the Biography / Autobiography category . It was discussed very positively in both the American and German feature pages.

So evaluated Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times : ". It is a profoundly shocking book that gives the reader an indelible portrait of loss, grief and sorrow, held to the smallest detail with the unwavering, journalistic view of the author" Jonathan Yardley said, in the Washington Post of “a work of supreme clarity and honesty.” John Leonard confessed in The New York Review of Books : “I can't think of a book we need more than yours […] I can't imagine without it this book to die for. ”Nearly all reviews included the death of Didion's daughter, and Claire Messud admitted in LA Weekly ,“ It is almost impossible to write about this book - especially now. ”Few of the critics closed however, adopts Adam Begley's skeptical judgment of Didion: “Trapped in the vortex or struggling to escape from it, she is unable to think about the reader. It's just too early. "

Andrew O'Hehir traced the media event that triggered Didion's book back to American society's obsession with "true stories" to compensate for its lack of experience. In addition, Didion describe a fate that awaits all readers. He interpreted Didion's family tragedy as a signal that the baby boomer generation was losing power . If the very woman whose job it was to explain American society and culture to the public through her works had to accept the collapse of her private cosmos, an epistemological rift would open up in the world .

Based on the book, Joan Didion wrote a theater adaptation that premiered on Broadway on March 29, 2007 . Directed by David Hare , Vanessa Redgrave played the sole role of the one-person play . The death of Didion's daughter Quintana was included in a final chapter in the play. This production was also staged in Europe, from August 11th to 13th, 2008 at the Salzburg Festival . The European premiere had previously taken place on January 17, 2008 in Hamburg's Ernst-Deutsch-Theater . In the German version, Daniela Ziegler played the solo role, directed by Boris von Poser .

expenditure

Secondary literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jerry Michael , website
  2. ^ Robert Pinsky: "The Year of Magical Thinking": Goodbye to All That In: The New York Times Book Review of October 9, 2005.
  3. ↑ Joan Didion: The Year of Magical Thinking (2006), p. 7.
  4. ↑ a b Emma Brockes : Q: How were you able to keep writing after the death of your husband? A: There was nothing else to do. I had to write my way out of it . In: The Guardian, December 16, 2005.
  5. ^ Sean O'Hagan: The years of writing magically . In: The Observer of August 20, 2006.
  6. ↑ Quintana Roo Dunne Michael, 39; Daughter of Joan Didion, JG Dunne , in: Los Angeles Times , September 3, 2005
  7. ^ Jesse McKinley: Joan Didion's New Book Faces Tragedy . In: The New York Times, August 29, 2005.
  8. ↑ Thomas Sperr: Die Leben . In: Frankfurter Rundschau of October 2, 2010.
  9. ↑ The year of magical thinking at perlentaucher .
  10. ↑ "It is an utterly shattering book that gives the reader an indelible portrait of loss and grief and sorrow, all chronicled in minute detail with the author's unwavering, reportorial eye." Michiko Kakutani : The End of Life as She Knew It . In: The New York Times, October 4, 2005.
  11. ^ "A work of surpassing clarity and honesty." Jonathan Yardley: A celebrated writer recalls the devastating emotions unleashed by death and illness . In: The Washington Post, October 2, 2005.
  12. ↑ "I can't think of a book we need more than hers [...] I can't imagine dying without this book." John Leonard: The Black Album In: The New York Review of Books, October 20, 2005.
  13. ↑ “It is almost impossible to write about this book - especially now.” Claire Messud : Dark Irony . In: LA Weekly of September 29, 2005.
  14. ^ "Caught in the vortex or struggling to avoid it, she's in no condition to worry about the reader. It's simply too soon. " Adam Begley : Didion's Annus Horribilis: How Grief Looks on the Page . In: The New York Observer, October 9, 2005.
  15. ^ Andrew O'Hehir: The long goodbye . On Salon.com on October 18, 2005.
  16. ↑ Ben Brantley: The Sound of One Heart Breaking . In: The New York Times, March 30, 2007.
  17. ↑ Peter Iden: http://www.fr-online.de/home/salzburger-festspiele-der-augenblick-der-veraenderung,1472778,2921912.html ( Memento from January 9, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) . In: Frankfurter Rundschau from August 15, 2008.
  18. ↑ Anja Michalke: The pain of loss comes on stage . In: Die Welt from January 12, 2008.