Joan Didion speaks in Oakland tonight

Joan Didion

Tonight, 7:30 p.m.

Carnegie Music Hall

(412) 622-3127

Joan Didion is a… Joan Didion

Tonight, 7:30 p.m.

Carnegie Music Hall

(412) 622-3127

Joan Didion is a champion of the written word. Her direct prose is eloquent and precise. She is an artist, crafting beautiful sentences full of poignancy. For nearly 50 years, she has been translating life – defining and redefining her experience of the world through language. Didion shapes sentences, tells stories and reflects them through words. She has no choice but to write. Writing is a part of her: It is a life-giving force within her.

In the essay, “Why I Write,” Didion declares herself a writer, “a person whose most absorbed and passionate hours are spent arranging words on pieces of paper.” Those subsequent arrangements exist now for us as readers, but the process was for Didion. In that same essay, she continues, “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.” Those hours are perhaps so absorbing and passionate because of their deeply introverted nature.

Didion’s work offers a glimpse into a world and into a mind. Didion’s book, “The White Album,” is an opportunity to experience the 1960s through observations and reflections of an astoundingly perceptive woman. Didion is drawn to details and can deliver them to us through her language.

In her essay, “On Keeping a Notebook,” Didion talks about the details of the world that captivate her. She doesn’t simply notice these “peripheral” things, she records them. “The impulse to write things down,” she says, “is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it.” Even her observations of other people and places are essentially observations about herself. The images and phrases that resonate in her head and on her page are somehow revealing a part of her, and sometimes those very things can reveal for us a part of ourselves.

Didion’s words are approachable and memorable. They pull us along and stay with us, a slight murmur in the backs of our minds. Tonight, former Pitt professor Patsy Sims will interview Joan Didion on stage as part of the Drue Heinz Lecture Series at the Carnegie Music Hall. It will be a rare opportunity to learn more about this amazing writer and her beautiful work.