On Keeping a Notebook | Joan Didion
Appreciation
8
Importance
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Date Added
11.29.25
TLDR
A personal notebook is not for facts but rather for us to preserve and remember ourselves. Even when we write about others, the primary subject is ourselves. Even when our memories lie, they tell the truth about how life once felt to us. “How it felt to me: that is getting closer to the truth about a notebook.” (Joan Didion's reflections on what keeping a notebook has done for her.)
2 Cents
Didn't enjoy/get it on the first read-through, but came to really appreciate it as I understood it more. I should revisit to add thoughts and comments!
Tags
Will revisit and add notes. For now enjoy:
It all comes back. … We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were. I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be…
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.