Joan Didion’s unpublished journal reveals intimate reflections

The posthumous release of Joan Didion’s journal offers insight into her struggles with anxiety, grief, and legacy.

Writer Joan Didion and novelist John Gregory Dunne sit in the library of their home in Malibu, California, on October 1, 1972. Photo by Henry Clarke/Condé Nast/Getty Images

By Sarah Oktaviany and Rochem Noor

Joan Didion’s literary legacy continues with the upcoming publication of Notes to John, a deeply personal journal she kept in the final years of the 20th century. Starting in December 1999, around her 65th birthday, Didion began documenting her thoughts after therapy sessions. These private reflections, addressed to her late husband John Gregory Dunne, reveal her struggles with anxiety, guilt, depression, and her complex relationship with her daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne.

Discovered after her death in 2021, the journal’s 46 entries were neatly stored in an unlabeled folder among her papers in her Manhattan apartment. Her three literary trustees—agent Lynn Nesbit and editors Shelley Wanger and Sharon DeLano—recognized the significance of these writings. Despite leaving no instructions regarding their publication, Didion had carefully arranged them in chronological order, forming a compelling narrative that feels more intimate and unfiltered than anything she published during her lifetime.

Notes to John to be published in April

On April 22, 2025, Knopf will publish Notes to John as a 208-page book, preserving Didion’s original entries with minimal edits for typos and contextual footnotes. The Didion Dunne Literary Trust has ensured that the journal will also be available to scholars and the public as part of the Didion-Dunne archives, set to open at the New York Public Library on March 26, 2025.

The book marks the first posthumous release of new material by Didion since she stopped publishing in 2011, a decade before her passing. Jordan Pavlin, Knopf’s publisher and editor-in-chief, describes it as “a moving and profound record of a life of ferocious intellectual engagement.”

“It fills in great gaps in our understanding of her thinking,” Pavlin said. “Didion’s art has always derived part of its electricity from what she reveals and what she withholds. Notes to John is unique in its lack of elision.”

Would Didion have approved of the release?

The decision to publish Didion’s private journal raises ethical questions about whether she would have wanted these writings to be made public. While she meticulously organized the papers in a cabinet beside her desk, suggesting an awareness that they might one day be examined, she never indicated an intention to publish them.

Didion was highly selective about the material she released during her lifetime and was critical of posthumous publications of unfinished works. In a 1998 essay, she expressed disapproval of Ernest Hemingway’s unpublished novel being released after his death, writing, “You think something is in shape to be published or you don’t, and Hemingway didn’t.”

Despite this, Didion’s work has always been deeply personal. She wrote candidly about her mental health struggles, even including excerpts from her psychiatric evaluation in The White Album. In her later years, she chronicled profound personal losses in The Year of Magical Thinking, about Dunne’s sudden death in 2003, and Blue Nights, about Quintana’s passing in 2005 at age 39.

A new perspective on Didion’s reflections

According to her trustees, Notes to John revisits many of the themes Didion explored in her published works but with a rawer, more direct tone. Early entries focus on her therapy discussions about adoption, alcoholism, and her sometimes difficult relationship with Quintana. Later entries explore her childhood, her struggles with writing, and her reflections on her literary impact.

The journal is written as though addressed to Dunne, referencing conversations she had with him about her sessions. Didion’s habit of writing to him after his death became a defining feature of The Year of Magical Thinking, where she described how she continued to expect his presence in her daily life.

Didion’s archives and literary legacy

Didion left behind an extensive archive documenting her life and work. The joint Didion-Dunne collection at the New York Public Library comprises 354 boxes filled with photographs, letters, research notes, dinner party menus, datebooks, manuscripts, and family records.

While there are no immediate plans to publish additional works from her archives, Paul Bogaards, a spokesperson for the Didion Dunne Literary Trust, emphasized the unique nature of Notes to John.

“It stands alone as a narrative. There is nothing else like it in her archive.”

As the literary world prepares for the release of Notes to John, the book offers an unparalleled look into Didion’s mind during a critical period of self-reflection. Whether or not she intended for these pages to be read, they provide an invaluable contribution to understanding her life, work, and enduring influence.

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