dmmadmin asked: Hey I was wondering if you have read Didion's Blue Nights? I am a little hesitant to buy it. This is going to sound slightly dumb but I am afraid it will make me ultra depressed and I'll end up like Elizabeth Wurtzel: complaining about everything, listening to Bruce Springsteen, and trying to become a lawyer. Any thoughts on it would help! -M

You should listen to Bruce Springsteen, though, because he is The Boss!

I have not yet read— or even bought, actually— Blue Nights, despite the fact that N & I are going to see Didion speak at the NYPL in a couple of weeks. (Tickets went on sale at midnight; we stayed up for it and emailed each other our 12:01 confirmations like the gleeful dorks we are.) This is partially because I have many other things that need to be read even more urgently but partially because I am… actually not dying to read it. I did not love The Year of Magical Thinking and I am not really in the market for something serious about mortality and in general find that her later writing is not my favorite stuff. N & I have been trying to get through as much as possible in advance of this talk, which meant that after years of vaguely meaning to read Where I Was From I finished it several weeks ago. It was so familiarly Didion and really very interesting but also just not as compelling, maybe, or urgent as her earlier work. I feel like the whole internet has already expounded on her recent stuff and Blue Nights in particular way more thoughtfully than I am capable of right now but the bottom line, really, is that I don’t think anyone is obligated to read anything, ever, because if you don’t want to read it you probably won’t enjoy it, and then you have wasted your time and money and prejudiced yourself against something you might have enjoyed if you’d read it when you were ready for it. My advice, honestly? Read John Jeremiah Sullivan’s Pulphead instead.