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Joan Didion and the Opposite of Magical Thinking | The New Yorker

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You didn’t have to agree with her, but you had to submit to her sentences.

Save this story Save this story It is a peculiarity of Joan Didion’s work that her most ironic formulations are now read as sincere, and her sincerest provocations taken with a large pinch of salt. Perhaps when your subject is human delusion you end up drawing that quality out of others, even as you seek to define and illuminate it. How else to explain the odd ways we invert her meanings? We tell ourselves stories in order to live . A sentence meant as an indictment has transformed into personal credo. The same goes for “magical thinking.” Magical thinking is a disorder of thought. It sees cau

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