Apuntes para John

In November 1999, Joan Didion began seeing a psychiatrist because, as she wrote to a friend, her family had been going through "a few difficult years." For months, she recorded her sessions in meticulous detail in a journal intended for her husband, John Gregory Dunne. The initial sessions focused on alcoholism, adoption, depression, anxiety, guilt, and the harrowing complexities of her relationship with her daughter, Quintana. These topics evolved to encompass her work—which she found difficult to sustain for long periods—as well as discussions about her own childhood (misunderstandings and a lack of communication with her parents, alongside the young Joan’s early tendency to anticipate catastrophe) and the question of legacy, or, as she put it, "what has counted." Didion’s journal is crafted with the precision, lucidity, and elegance that characterize her writing. Yet, a Joan Didion we had never seen before also emerges here: *Notes for John* is the extraordinarily intimate record of a painful and courageous journey in the life of one of the greatest writers of our time.