Time and Memory in the Twilight Zone: Cognitive Literary Perspectives on Joan Didion’s Blue Nights

Abstract

AbstractThis interdisciplinary discussion of Joan Didion’s Blue Nights explores how techniques such as novel metaphor, multisensory imagery, and cinematic-style montages encourage a panoramic mode of readerly recollection, together with a heightened awareness of the slippery interplay between autobiographical memory and time, and the significance of cognitive scaffolding in human recall.Keywords: Didionmemorytimecognition AcknowledgmentsI would like to thank my two anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback on an earlier version of this essay. I am also very grateful to Lara Keys, Regina Fabry, and Adrian Howie for many engaging discussions, theoretical insights, practical assistance, and personal encouragement.Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.Notes1 Didion, Blue Nights, 4.2 Didion’s multidimensional configuration of time, “a topic of central importance in contemporary societies,” thereby embraces both ancient and current perspectives. As Fleig notes, since at least “the eighteenth century … the humanities have associated time with concepts of progress and linearity which imply a development from premodern, cyclical notions of time to the sense of acceleration that is the hallmark of modernity.” Fleig, “Time and Space,” 411–412.3 In Joan Didion and the Ethics of Memory, philosopher Matthew McLennan studies Didion’s construal of “the normative importance and limits of memory” and positions her as “a modern moralist or ethical teacher” in a contemporary era where the notion of “public memory … is at best contested, and at worst is decaying or coming apart.” McLennan, Joan Didion, 1–3.4 For varied perspectives on how Didion’s vast oeuvre highlights interrelations among aesthetics, politics, and autobiographical writing, see the collection of critical essays in “Forum. Style as Character.”5 Vandenberg, Joan Didion, 106.6 Didion, Blue Nights, 4.7 Walker and Harbus, “Networks of Conceptual Blends,” 399; emphasis added.8 Matto, “Cognitive Approaches,” 138.9 Schaser, “Memory,” 346; emphasis added.10 Turner, “Cognitive Study,” 9.11 Caracciolo, “Cognitive Literary Studies,” 204; Nikolajeva, Reading for Learning, 4.12 Richardson, “Cognitive Literary Criticism,” 544.13 Ibid., 544–545.14 My use of the term panoramic memory throughout the essay denotes wide-ranging recollections of one’s lived experience that can “be taken in at a glance.” Draaisma, Why Life, 255. This broad-angled style of experiential remembering is akin to—but less narrowly defined—the stricter definition of panoramic memory that encompasses “the experience of total recall” in “near death situations.” Hoeckner, Film, Music, Memory, 123.15 Sutton, “Truth in Memory,” 157.16 Oatley and Djikic, “Writing as Thinking,” 11–12; Hogan, Cognitive Science, 160–162.17 Couser, Memoir, 14.18 See, for example, Smith and Watson, Reading Autobiography, 207; McCooey, Artful Histories, 4; Eakin, Living Autobiographically, 79.19 Gudmundsdottir, “Future’s Memory,” 367.20 Gensburger, “Memory and Space,” 69.21 Sutton, “Personal Memory,” 210.22 Sutton, “Truth in Memory,” 157.23 Friedman, “Time in Autobiographical Memory,” 591.24 Schacter, Searching for Memory, 28.25 The Greeks, for example, configured memory as a wax tablet. Centuries later, Freud suggested that personal recollections could be compared with “objects placed in rooms of a house.” Ibid., 40.26 Ibid.27 Fernyhough, Pieces of Light, 32. The role of imagination in our memory systems is a much-debated area of cognitive research. As Schacter explains, the “ability to recollect source information lies at the heart of our ability to distinguish memories from fantasies and other products of our imagination.” Schachter, Searching for Memory, 116.28 Addis, “Are Episodic Memories Special?” 64.29 Schacter, Searching for Memory, 91.30 Ibid.31 Didion, Blue Nights, 3–4.32 Nelson, Tough Enough, 149.33 Nelson, “Introduction,” 9.34 Ibid.35 Kusek, “Blue,” 173.36 Ibid.37 Especially when emanating from highly literary sources, incisive psychological observations are usually taken for granted. Yet, from a cognitive viewpoint, these feats of enlightenment are remarkable, given that the “conscious is a theatre with a single seat.” Draaisma, Why Life, 254. As Armstrong observes, “our inability to fully fathom someone else’s passing moment is evidence of the solipsism we can never fully overcome because we cannot know what it is like to inhabit another embodied consciousness with its own perspective on the world.” Armstrong, Stories and the Brain, 90.38 Harkins-Cross, “Writing the Self,” 88.39 Larson, “Music, Memory, and Prose,” 5.40 Schine, “Elegy to the Void,” para. 31.41 Ibid., para. 22.42 Draaisma, Metaphors of Memory, 9.43 Semino and Steen, “Metaphor in Literature,” 235.44 Draaisma, Metaphors of Memory, 11.45 Ibid., 12.46 Ibid., 13.47 Semino and Steen, “Metaphor in Literature,” 243.48 Draaisma, Metaphors of Memory, 13.49 Vandenberg, “Joan Didion’s Memoirs,” 55.50 Nelson, Tough Enough, 171.51 Sanford and Emmott, Mind, Brain and Narrative, 176, 177.52 Exploring how Didion’s style of New Journalism often favors autobiographical rather than fictional content and methods, Nudelman’s essay, “Reporting Nuclear Dread,” highlights both personal and intertextual connections between this reference to Cerenkov radiation and Didion’s much earlier essay, “Pacific Distances,” with regard to nuclear weaponry, dread, destruction, and Quintana’s childhood distress, prompted by images of Buchenwald.53 Caracciolo and Kukkonen, With Bodies, 172, 10. For a detailed interdisciplinary study of narrative embodiments and the embodied responses they invite, see Caracciolo and Kukkonen’s With Bodies.54 Draaisma, Metaphors of Memory, 13.55 Ibid.56 Vandenberg, “Joan Didion’s Memoirs,” 42.57 Draaisma, Why Life, 225, 256.58 Ibid., 256.59 Ibid., 257.60 Fernyhough, Pieces of Light, 73.61 Damasio, Feeling of What Happens, 171.62 Ibid.63 Ibid., 11.64 Ibid.; emphasis added.65 For a cognitive literary analysis of interplays between memory and imagination in literary contexts, see Richardson, “Memory and Imagination.”66 Didion, Blue Nights, 5.67 Vandenberg, Joan Didion, 125.68 Ibid., 130.69 Ibid., 106.70 Ibid.71 Ibid., 104.72 Foster, “Memory,” 303.73 Didion, Blue Nights, 5–7.74 Ibid., 8.75 Fernyhough, Pieces of Light, 32; Didion, Blue Nights, 8.76 Didion, Blue Nights, 17.77 Ibid., 8, 17.78 Ibid., 105, 137.79 Flanagan, “Autumn of Joan Didion,” 104.80 Didion, Blue Nights, 18.81 Harkins-Cross, “Writing the Self,” 88.82 Didion, Blue Nights, 18, 23.83 Ibid., 24.84 Ibid., 53–54.85 Ibid., 41.86 Ibid., 46.87 Ibid., 184.88 Ibid., 134.89 Ibid., 135–136.90 Fernyhough, Pieces of Light, 132.91 Didion, Blue Nights, 149.92 Sutton, “Personal Memory,” 214.93 Sutton, “Truth in Memory,” 146.94 Didion, Blue Nights, 32.95 Ibid., 31.96 Ibid., 32, 33.97 Ibid., 35.98 Ibid.99 Ibid., 35–36.100 Ibid., 64.101 Fernyhough, Pieces of Light, 55.102 Ibid., 54.103 Didion, Blue Nights, 41, 68, 89.104 Hoeckner, Film, Music, Memory, 124.105 Ibid., 153.106 Fernyhough, Pieces of Light, 54.107 Starr’s “Multisensory Imagery” provides a detailed cognitive literary analysis of the interplay between sensory images and literary interpretation.108 Feigel and Saunders, “Writing between the Lives,” 242.109 Sutton, “Truth in Memory,” 158.Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by a Macquarie University postdoctoral fellowship (COVID Recovery Fellowship Scheme). Notes on contributorsMerril HowieMerril Howie is an Honorary Postdoctoral Fellow at Macquarie University in the Department of Media, Communications, Creative Arts, Language, and Literature. Drawing the sciences into dialogue with literary studies, her analyses of autobiographical texts tease out significant interrelationships among narrative techniques and the cognitive processes they prompt in the reader. She was awarded a twelve-month Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in 2022 for her project “Cognitive Literary Considerations of Memory in Life Writing: Imagination, Time, Space, and Scaffolds.” Her interdisciplinary analyses aim to demonstrate how skillfully written autobiographical texts can significantly influence readers’ memory systems, reshaping perceptions and interpretations of particular recollections, and thereby impacting personal and collective identities. Her work has been published in Antipodes and Life Writing, and she is currently working on a monograph on the textual and readerly interchange of memory and emotion in literary memoirs.