The Year of Magical Thinking (15 page)

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material.

Columbia University Press:
Excerpt from “Re-Grief Therapy” by Dr. Volkan from
Bereavement: Its Psychosocial Aspects,
edited by Schoenberg, Gerber, Wiener, Kutscher, Peretz, and Carr. Copyright © 1975 by Columbia University Press. Reprinted by permission of Columbia University Press.

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Four Quartets
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Eugene Kennedy:
Excerpt from a letter written by Eugene Kennedy to Joan Didion. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Liveright Publishing Company:
Excerpt from “Buffalo Bill’s.” Copyright 1923, 1951, © 1991 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust. Copyright © 1976 by George James Firmage, from
Complete Poems: 1904–1962
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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
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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,
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Random House, Inc.:
Excerpt from “Funeral Blues,” copyright 1940 and renewed 1968 by W. H. Auden from
Collected Poems
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Viking Penguin:
Excerpt from “Self-Pity” by D. H. Lawrence from
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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.”

—
Chicago Sun-Times

“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

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