Earl McGrath: Excerpt from a poem written by Earl McGrath. Reprinted by permission of the author.
New Directions Publishing Corp.: Excerpt from “Calmly We Walk Through This April’s Day” by Delmore Schwartz from Selected Poems: Summer Knowledge. Copyright © 1959 by Delmore Schwartz. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
The New York Times Agency: Excerpt from “Death Comes Knocking” by Bob Herbert from The New York Times (November 12, 2004). Copyright © 2004 by The New York Times Co. Reprinted by permission of The New York Times Agency.
Oxford University Press: Excerpt from “Spring and Fall,” “Heaven-Haven,” “No Worst,” and “I Wake and Feel” by Gerard Manley Hopkins from The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, 4th ed., edited by W. H. Gardner and N. H. MacKenzie (1970). Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Province of the Society of Jesus.
Random House, Inc.: Excerpt from “Funeral Blues,” copyright 1940 and renewed 1968 by W. H. Auden from Collected Poems by W. H. Auden. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc.
Viking Penguin: Excerpt from “Self-Pity” by D. H. Lawrence from The Complete Poems of D. H. Lawrence by D. H. Lawrence, edited by V. de Sola Pinto & F. W. Roberts. Copyright © 1964, 1971 by Angelo Ravagli and C. M. Weekley, Executors of the Estate of Frieda Lawrence Ravagli. Reprinted by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
JOAN DIDION
THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING
Joan Didion was born in California and lives in New York City. She is the author of five novels and seven previous books of nonfiction.
ALSO BY JOAN DIDION
Where I Was From
Political Fictions
The Last Thing He Wanted
After Henry
Miami
Democracy
Salvador
The White Album
A Book of Common Prayer
Play It as It Lays
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Run River
Acclaim for Joan Didion’s
THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING
“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.”
—Los Angeles Times
“The Year of Magical Thinking…[is] told in some of the plainest, yet most eloquent prose you’ll ever encounter. Everyone who has ever lost anyone, or will ever lose anyone, would do well to read it.”
—The Seattle Times
“[The Year of Magical Thinking] is a work of surpassing clarity and honesty.”
—The Washington Post Book World
“This book is about getting a grip and getting on; it’s also a tribute to an extraordinary marriage.”
—The New Yorker
“Unforgettable…. Both personal and universal. She has given the reader an eloquent starting point in which to navigate through the wilderness of grief.”
“Stark and engrossing.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“It’s a work that touches on surprisingly uncharted territory….[The Year of Magical Thinking] is a work of much majesty.”
—The Christian Science Monitor
“An exacting self-examination…also a heartbreaking…love letter, engrossing in its candor…. Didion illuminates the bond between husband and wife.”
—The Boston Globe
FIRST VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION, FEBRUARY 2007
Copyright © 2006 by Joan Didion
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2006.
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Didion, Joan.
The year of magical thinking / Joan Didion.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Didion, Joan. 2. Novelists, American—20th century—Family relationships.
3. Dunne, John Gregory, 1932–2003—Death and burial. 4. Novelists,
American—20th century—Biography. 5. Journalists—United States—
Biography. 6. Mothers and daughters—United States. 7. Widows—United
States—Biography. 8. Didion, Joan—Marriage. 9. Didion, Joan—Family.
10. Loss (Psychology). 11. Grief. I. Title.
PS3554.133Z63 2005
813'.54—dc22
[B] 2005045132
Author photograph © Brigitte Lacombe
www.vintagebooks.com
eISBN: 978-0-307-27972-9
v3.0