Joan Didion’s Blue Nights is a meditation on grief and aging that sucks its readers into its fears and anxieties
What matters are the details. The 60 baby dresses on miniature wooden hangers, the loose pearls in a satin-lined jeweler's box, the bright red soles of the wedding shoes, the white stephanotis in the bride's braided hair. These specifics do not add up to a story; they are a compilation of the past, a messy collage of what used to be. Some are memories to be avoided, ”reminders of what was, what got broken, what got lost, what got wasted.“ Read the essay at The American Prospect.
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