Among the many things to catch my eye in yesterday’s Times was furthur evidence of their curious obsession with Joan Didion – who reminds me as she trots out the pinched-off lines that served her well decades ago but now smell of mothballs, of Frank Sinatra at the end.  He didn’t leave the stage soon enough and most of us tried not to watch. 

Now they’ve run one of her stream-of-consciously affected bits in Arts.  The subject — Joan penning her suddenly-dropped-dead (elderly) husband onto Broadway – is embarrassing enough without the posture.  But there is posture because it’s Didion.  Writing.  Writing on Broadway.  Writing on the writing of Broadway, on the writing of the show.  Of the show, it must go on.  All of it.

“I did not know how to write a play.

I repeated this.

I repeated it to Scott, and I repeated it to myself …

It was necessary to try something new.

Something the person I had been would not have tried. 

Something high-risk.

Something so high-risk …”

Etc. for three pages.  Think one-line paragraphs.  Think of a lot of them.   

It’s like your great-aunt Melba with her rose-red circles of rouge and crooked lipstick.  Don’t let her go on in the middle of the room like that, in August in her fake fur.  It’s no good.  I blame you, NYTimes.  (Incidentally, what little mileage Didion had left on her tread-worn self-conscious style, James Frey burned right through.  He took Didionesque and made a national mockery of it.)

Still, Kundera on the front page of the Book Review was a happy sight, and what a thorough and elegant treatment by Russell Banks.  Then the sun came out and it didn’t rain. 

More later.