Should Joan Didion’s therapy notes to her husband about their daughter have been published?

Joan Didion died, aged 87, in 2021. When a new volume of her diaries was announced, anticipation was high: her personal nonfiction is the foundation of her formidable literary legacy. But as details emerged, readers began to question the ethics of its publication.

Billed as offering “astonishingly intimate” insights, Notes to John recounts conversations with Didion’s psychiatrist between December 1999 and January 2003. It draws on a series of letters addressed to Didion’s husband, fellow writer and frequent collaborator, John Gregory Dunne.

And it is not only Didion and Dunne’s lives that are revealed in the book’s pages, but also their only child’s. Indeed, Didion had begun her therapy sessions at the urging of her then-30-something daughter, Quintana, who was experiencing an acute mental health crisis and struggling with alcohol addiction.

As the short, unattributed introduction notes, the book draws from “a collection of about 150 unnumbered pages […] found in a small portable file” near the author’s desk after her death. (Other contents included “a list of guests at Christmas parties” and “computer passwords”.)

This material went on to form part of the Didion/Dunne archive at the New York Public Library, with “no restrictions” on access. But it has been reported that Didion did not leave specific instructions for how it should be handled. The...

Read more