{"product_id":"the-year-of-magical-thinking-isbn-9780307386410","title":"The Year of Magical Thinking","description":"\u003cb\u003eIn this dramatic adaptation of her award-winning, bestselling memoir, Joan Didion transforms the story of the sudden and unexpected loss of her husband and their only daughter into a stunning and powerful one-woman play.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“This happened on December 30, 2003. That may seem a while ago but it won’t when it happens to you....” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMichiko Kakutani in \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times \u003c\/i\u003ecalled the memoir that was the basis for the play, “an indelible portrait of loss and grief ... a haunting portrait of a four-decade-long marriage.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe first theatrical production of \u003ci\u003eThe Year of Magical Thinking\u003c\/i\u003e opened at the Booth Theatre on March 29, 2007, starring Vanessa Redgrave and directed by David Hare.“Her book is thrilling ... a living, sharp, memorable book ... An exact, candid,  and penetrating account of personal terror and bereavement ... sometimes quite  funny because it dares to tell the truth.” —Robert Pinsky, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book  Review\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“An act of consummate literary bravery, a writer known for her clarity  allowing us to watch her mind as it becomes clouded with grief ... It also skips  backward in time [to] call up a shimmering portrait of her unique marriage ... To make her grief real, Didion shows us what she has lost.” —Lev Grossman, \u003ci\u003eTime\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“I can’t think of a book we need more than hers ... I can’t imagine dying without  this book.” —John Leonard, \u003ci\u003eNew York Review of Books\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Achingly beautiful ... We have come to admire and love Didion for her preternatural poise, unrivaled eye  for absurdity, and Orwellian distaste for cant. It is thus a difficult, moving, and  extraordinarily poignant experience to watch her direct such scrutiny inward.” —Gideon  Lewis-Kraus, \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Stunning candor and piercing details ... An indelible  portrait of loss and grief ... [A] haunting portrait of a four-decade-long marriage.” —Michiko Kakutani, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003eJOAN DIDION was born in Sacramento in 1934 and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1956. After graduation, Didion moved to New York and began working for \u003ci\u003eVogue\u003c\/i\u003e, which led to her career as a journalist and writer. Didion published her first novel, \u003ci\u003eRun River\u003c\/i\u003e, in 1963. Didion’s other novels include \u003ci\u003eA Book of Common Prayer\u003c\/i\u003e (1977), \u003ci\u003eDemocracy\u003c\/i\u003e (1984), and \u003ci\u003eThe Last Thing He Wanted \u003c\/i\u003e(1996).\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Didion’s first volume of essays, \u003ci\u003eSlouching Towards Bethlehem\u003c\/i\u003e, was published in 1968, and her second, \u003ci\u003eThe White Album\u003c\/i\u003e, was published in 1979. Her nonfiction works include \u003ci\u003eSalvador\u003c\/i\u003e (1983), \u003ci\u003eMiami\u003c\/i\u003e (1987), \u003ci\u003eAfter Henry\u003c\/i\u003e (1992), \u003ci\u003ePolitical Fictions \u003c\/i\u003e(2001), \u003ci\u003eWhere I Was From \u003c\/i\u003e(2003), \u003ci\u003eWe Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live\u003c\/i\u003e (2006), \u003ci\u003eBlue Nights\u003c\/i\u003e (2011), \u003ci\u003eSouth and West \u003c\/i\u003e(2017) and \u003ci\u003eLet Me Tell You What I Mean \u003c\/i\u003e(2021). Her memoir \u003ci\u003eThe Year of Magical Thinking\u003c\/i\u003e won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2005. \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e In 2005, Didion was awarded the American Academy of Arts \u0026amp; Letters Gold Medal in Criticism and Belles Letters. In 2007, she was awarded the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. A portion of National Book Foundation citation read: \"An incisive observer of American politics and culture for more than forty-five years, Didion’s distinctive blend of spare, elegant prose and fierce intelligence has earned her books a place in the canon of American literature as well as the admiration of generations of writers and journalists.” In 2013, she was awarded a National Medal of Arts and Humanities by President Barack Obama, and the PEN Center USA’s Lifetime Achievement Award.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDidion said of her writing: \"I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.” She died in December 2021.1\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis happened on december 30, 2003. That may seem a while ago but it won't when it happens to you.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd it will happen to you. The details will be different, but it will happen to you.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThat's what I'm here to tell you.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe had come home. \"Home\" meaning an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Early evening, maybe eight o'clock. We discussed whether to go out or eat in. I said we could stay in, I would build a fire.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe fire was the point.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn California we heated our houses by building fires. In Malibu we built fires even on summer evenings, because the fog came in. Fires said we were home, we had drawn the circle, we were safe through the night.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI built the fire. I drew the circle.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI have no memory of what I meant to have for dinner.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMemory stops. The frame freezes. You'll find that's something that happens.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI warned you. I'm telling you what you need to know.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYou see me on this stage, you sit next to me on a plane, you run into me at dinner, you know what happened to me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYou don't want to think it could happen to you.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThat's why I'm here.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJohn was in his office. I got him a drink. He sat down by the fire to read. He was reading a bound galley of David Fromkin's Europe's Last Summer: Who Started the Great War in 1914? I set the table in the living room, where we could see the fire.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI must have noticed that later. The name of the book. I eventually read it myself, but found no clues.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWait. I was telling you what happened.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe wanted a second drink. I got it. He asked if I had used single-malt scotch for the second drink. I said I had used whatever I used for the first drink. \"Good,\" he said. \"I don't know why but I don't think you should mix them.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI was at the table, making a salad. He was sitting across from me, talking. Either he was talking about why World War One was the event from which the entire rest of the twentieth century flowed or he was talking about the scotch, I have no idea which.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThen he wasn't. Wasn't talking.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI looked up. I said, \"Don't do that.\" I thought he was making a joke.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSlumping over. Pretending to be dead. You've seen people make that kind of tiresome joke. Maybe you've done it yourself. Meaning \"this was a hard day, we got through it, we're having dinner, we've got a fire.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn fact neither of us had yet said out loud how hard that day had been.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy next thought was that he had started to eat and choked. I tried to move him so I could do the Heimlich.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe fell onto the table, then to the floor. There was a dark liquid pooling beneath his face.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWithin what I now know to have been exactly five minutes, two ambulances came. The crews worked on the living room floor for what I now know to have been exactly forty-five minutes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI now know these facts because I obtained the documents. I obtained the Emergency Department Nursing Documentation Sheet. I obtained the Nursing Flow Chart. I obtained the Physician's Record. I obtained the log kept by the doormen in our building.\"Paramedics arrived at 9:20 PM for Mr. Dunne,\" the log read.\"Mr. Dunne was taken to the hospital at 10:05 PM.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe distance from our apartment to the ambulance entrance of New York Cornell is six crosstown blocks. I do not remember traffic. I do not remember sirens. When I got out of the ambulance the gurney was already being pushed inside. Everyone was in scrubs. I noticed one man who was not in scrubs. \"Is this the wife,\" he said to the driver. Then he looked at me. \"I'm your social worker.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd I guess that was when I knew.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThat's something else to remember. If they give you a social worker, you're in trouble.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLife changes fast.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLife changes in the instant.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYou sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe question of self-pity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThose were the first words I wrote after it happened.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd after that--\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI'm a writer--\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut after that I didn't write anything for a long while.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor several weeks after it happened I tried different strategies for keeping on the correct track. One that worked for a while was repeating to myself the last two lines of \"Rose Aylmer,\" Walter Savage Landor's 1806 elegy to the memory of a daughter of Lord Aylmer's who had died at age twenty in Calcutta. I had not thought of \"Rose Aylmer\" since I was at Berkeley, but now I could remember not only the poem but much of what was said about it in whichever class I heard it analyzed. \"Ah what avails the sceptred race!\" it begins. \"Ah what the form divine! When every virtue, every grace, Rose Aylmer, all were thine!\" \"Rose Aylmer\" worked, the lecturer said, because the overblown and therefore meaningless praise in those first lines gets thrown into sudden, even shocking relief by what he called \"the hard sweet wisdom\" of the last, which suggest that grief has its place but also its limits: \"A night of memories and sighs \/ I consecrate to thee.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A night of memories and sighs,\" he repeated. \"A night. One night. It might be all night but he doesn't say all night, he says a night, not a matter of a lifetime, a matter of some hours.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHard sweet wisdom. Clearly, since \"Rose Aylmer\" remained embedded in my memory, I believed it to offer a lesson for survival.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e2\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI told you I knew when I saw the social worker but I didn't really.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOr more correctly--\"correctly\" is important to me--I knew but I refused to know.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere's a certain kind of personality--my own, maybe yours--that sets great store on seeing it straight. For certain of us this is a big ego point.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYou might think you'll see it straight but you won't.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYou'll be standing in some ER and at one level you'll have a pretty clear idea of whatever it was that just happened but you'll see it as a kind of first draft.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNotice the evasion there. \"Whatever it was that just happened.\" The actual words will have vanished from your accessible vocabulary. The only words at hand will have to do with how this can be corrected.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eReversible error.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIf you're a lawyer you're probably thinking she doesn't know what \"reversible error\" means, but I do.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere was a verdict here. Find the right error and the verdict gets thrown out.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd errors are easy to find.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIf you're me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor example this is the wrong hospital.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis is a perfectly good hospital but it's not \"our\" hospital. It's New York Presbyterian Cornell. \"Our\" hospital is New York Presbyterian Columbia, a hundred blocks uptown. So while I stand in line to show the insurance cards--nobody told me to stand in this line but I see it as a constructive step, proof that I'm handling the situation--I tell myself that as soon as he is stabilized I can move him to Columbia.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe will need a bed with telemetry. When I arrange the move I need to specify this.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNotice that only \"I\" can do this. I do not distrust those in charge here, but I do feel compelled to manage them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI go further. I see a plan falling into place. Once Quintana is stabilized I can also move her to Columbia.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMaybe I didn't mention this before.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNew York Cornell is not our first hospital of the evening.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe first hospital of the evening was Beth Israel North. You know, the one that used to be Doctors' Hospital. Across from Gracie Mansion. Where our daughter has been in an induced coma in the sixth-floor ICU since Christmas night with what began as the flu and is now septic shock.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnother case of the wrong hospital.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom my point of view.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut just try telling a grown child that the easiest emergency room on the Upper East Side doesn't necessarily add up to the right hospital.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTry telling her anything, once they sedate her for the endotracheal tube.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMust you always have the last word, John said when we fought.Which was often. Must you always be right. For once in your life just let it go.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen we saw her tonight in the ICU her hair was damp and matted from the fever. No one seems to have brushed it. I have been trying to brush it since the day after Christmas but cannot. I could always brush her hair. I could brush her hair even in Malibu, when it was long and bleached from the sun and green from the chlorine in swimming pools and she had been in the water all day. She would come up from the beach and John would wrap her in towels on the deck outside his office and I would brush her hair.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I love you more than even one more day,\" he said to her tonight in the ICU.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe said that on each of the five nights he saw her there.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOn the chance she could hear.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe said it tonight just before we came home and discussed whether to go out for dinner or eat in. Just before I built the fire--\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNo.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe lights are too bright in this hospital. It's too cold.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIf I hold focus I can arrange for both of them to recuperate at Columbia. Adjoining rooms. The McKeen Pavilion. I can go up in the afternoons and have tea with them in the atrium while the volunteer pianist in scrubs plays \"Isn't It Romantic.\" I can stay until eight and the car will be waiting and I'll come downtown and build a fire and make myself a hamburger. I'll think about John and Quintana in their adjoining rooms but I'll still have a fire and I'll still eat the hamburger and I'll still watch Chris Matthews on rerun.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBecause I will have arranged for them to be safe. I will have brought in the appropriate specialists. I will have made sure that each of these specialists appreciates the entire picture. I will have managed the situation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy social worker reappears. He leads me out of the insurance line and into an empty room away from the triage area. He tells me to wait. Part of my mind is thinking that this does not look good and part is trying to remember the words on a pink index card I have in my office.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen he comes back he has a subteen in a white coat with him. He introduces the subteen as \"your husband's doctor.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere is a silence.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI hear my own voice. What I hear it saying is this: \"He's dead, isn't he.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe doctor looks at the social worker. \"It's okay,\" the social worker says. \"She's a pretty cool customer.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey take me to the cubicle where he is. They ask if I want a priest. I say yes. A priest comes. He says the words. I thank him. They give me the silver clip in which John kept his driver's license and credit cards. They give me the cash from his pocket. They give me his watch. They give me his cell phone. They give me a plastic bag in which they say I will find his clothes. I thank them. The social worker asks if he can do anything more for me. I say he can put me in a taxi. He does. I thank him. He asks if I have money for the fare. I say I do, the cool customer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe uses that word, the \"fare.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWouldn't it have been more colloquial to say the \"taxi\"? Do you have money for the taxi? Wouldn't that have been less troubling? Less as if I were taking some kind of mystery tour?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen I walk back into the apartment I see John's jacket still lying on the chair where he dropped it. I pick it up. A Patagonia windbreaker, the crew jacket from Up Close \u0026amp; Personal. All pictures have crew jackets, there used to be a joke about a picture so bad the crew won't wear the jacket.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe dark liquid is still pooled on the living room floor. I see now that it is blood.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe EKG electrodes are still on the floor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe empty syringes are still on the floor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe pink index card.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI had typed the words on the card because they had to do with a plot point in another picture, one we started and abandoned because we could not figure out how the accidental killer who is also the DA gets the body out of the house. Here are the words, which I had copied from the Merck Manual: \"Tissue anoxia for \u0026gt;4-6 minutes can result in irreversible brain damage or death.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI consider irreversible brain damage. I stop.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThat isn't exactly what happened.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSomething else happened but I can't afford to access the word.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere are people I need to call. I can't call Quintana, Quintana is where we left her, unconscious in the ICU, the IV lines still dripping the medications that are what they mean when they say \"We're giving it everything we've got.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Everything we've got\" doesn't do it for me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI want the names. I wrote them down. I looked them up. There were the antibiotics. Vancomycin. They call it \"vanc.\" By now so do I. Azithromycin. Gentamicin. Clindamycin.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThen there was Xigris.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eXigris is Eli Lilly's drug for septic shock.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSaid to improve the survival rate from 56 to 69 percent.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYou might want to file that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor when you're standing by your child's ICU bed and the vanc isn't working and somebody mentions Xigris.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSpelled X-I-G-R-I-S, pronounced ZY-griss.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"This costs twenty thousand dollars,\" the nurse said tonight when she changed the IV bag.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"We still don't know which way this is going,\" one of the ICU doctors said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDid he say that tonight?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOr did he say it last night?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYou want to know how this happened.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJohn asked that question.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA perfectly healthy young woman.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMarried five months.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe and Gerry had just had their first Thanksgiving dinner. They pureed turnips, they unpacked their wedding china.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe weekend before Christmas she \"felt terrible.\" She went with a fever of 103 to the Beth Israel emergency room and was diagnosed with the flu. Stay in bed, drink liquids, it's going around. No chest X-ray was taken. Three days later she went back to the emergency room. Her pulse was elevated, 150-plus. Her white count was almost zero. There was pneumonia on one lung. She would go to an ICU overnight for monitoring but it was \"nothing, what we used to call walking pneumonia.\" By morning her fever had passed 104, she was intubated, there was pneumonia on both lungs, her blood pressure was dropping, she had entered septic shock, and they did not know which way this was going.","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304153174245,"sku":"NP9780307386410","price":15.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780307386410.jpg?v=1767742355","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-year-of-magical-thinking-isbn-9780307386410","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}