Title: Blue is (not) the warmest colour: contradictions of grieving in Joan Didion's Blue Nights
Source document: Brno studies in English. 2017, vol. 43, iss. 1, pp. [171]-183
Extent
[171]-183
-
ISSN0524-6881 (print)1805-0867 (online)
Persistent identifier (DOI): https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2017-1-10
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/137092
Type: Article
Language
License: Not specified license
Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.
Abstract(s)
Six years after publishing her acclaimed memoir of spousal loss, i.e. The Year of Magical Thinking (2005), in which she memorably wrote about the death of her husband John Gregory Dunne, Joan Didion returned to the field of (auto)thanatography. This time Didion produced a devastating account of the death of her daughter Quintana, who died at the age of thirty-nine, only twenty months after John. However, Blue Nights (2011) turned out not to be a conventional memoir of loss which would easily succumb to the laws of the genre. On the contrary, instead of exclusively paying tribute to the memory (and life) of her daughter, or trying to testify to the process of grieving, Quintana's demise invited Didion to turn her attention to her own self and address such issues as ageing and loneliness, parenthood, displacement, as well as her own impending death. Consequently, Didion wrote the most paradigmatic form of autobiography, which, as Nancy K. Miller famously stated, is an act of "writing against death twice: the other's and one's own" (Miller 1994: 12). The aim of this paper is to discuss Blue Nights as a narrative of grief and/or death. The conceptual framework of this analysis will be provided by an inquiry into the (titular) colour blue and its cultural contexts.
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[15] Henke, Suzette (1998) Shattered Subjects: Trauma and Testimony in Women's Life-Writing. New York: St. Martin's Press.
[16] Jarman, Derek (1995) Chroma. Woodstock, New York: The Overlook Press.
[17] Jolly, Margaretta (ed) (2001). Encyclopedia of Life Writing: Autobiographical and Biographical Forms. London and Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers.
[18] Kübler-Ross, Elizabeth (2003) On Death and Dying. New York: Scribner.
[19] Mallarmé, Stéphane (1986) Poésies. Paris: Imprimerie nationale.
[20] Miller, Nancy K. (1994) "Representing others: Gender and subjects of autobiography". Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 6(1), 1–25.
[21] Nelson, Maggie (2009) Bluets. Seattle: Wave Books.
[22] Nelson, Maggie (2016) The Argonauts. London: Melville House.
[23] Novalis (von Hardenberg, Friedrich) (1842) Henry of Ofterdingen: A Romance. Cambridge: John Owen.
[24] Novalis (von Hardenberg, Friedrich) (1891) Novalis: His Life, Thoughts, and Works. Chicago: A.C. McClurg.
[25] Pastoureau, Michel (2001) Blue: The History of a Color. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
[26] Rossetti, Christina G. (1872) Sing-song: A Nursery Rhyme Book. London: George Routledge and Sons.
[27] Saunders, Frances Stonor (2011) 'Don't give me grief'. The Guardian Book Review 20.08, 1–3.
[28] Smith, Sidonie and Julia Watson (2010) Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.
[29] Thomas, Dylan (2003) The Poems of Dylan Thomas. Daniel Jones (ed.). New York: New Directions.