The hit of the fall book season is bound to be Joan Didion's
The Year of Magical Thinking, a chronicle of her grief and
shock after the sudden death of her husband John Gregory Dunne in
late 2003. The New York Times Magazine ran an irresistible
excerpt last Sunday.
Now everyone knows the team of Didion-Dunne was quintessentially
liberal-literary. But Tom Mallon has also called Didion, "arguably,
a great American writer," which is good enough for me. She writes
with a directness that is disarming. It's good to learn that she
had poured her husband a second scotch just before he fell dead
from a massive heart attack. It's amusing to read how important it
was to her that the Los Angeles Times not learn about
Dunne's death from a New York Times obituary. It's
instructive to observe how hard the couple worked at being who they
were.
Even at a restaurant they would take notes. One of his last,
which he said she could use for her own book on sports, complained,
"Coaches used to go out after a game and say, 'You played great.'
Now they go out with the state police, as if this were a war and
they the military. The militarization of sports." Huh? For as long
as I can remember, college coaches, especially in what have become
the red states, have been escorted by state troopers on leaving the
field. Militarization has nothing to do with it. Important coaches
are bigger than important political figures. Police protection is
nothing more than the homage a perk plays to status. I think the
Dunnes would have enjoyed that insight.
topics:
Sports, Military
