A memoir of aging, memory, and parenthood written in the aftermath of the death of Didion's daughter Quintana Roo, moving between Quintana's adoption, childhood, and wedding and Didion's own reckoning with mortality and failure as a mother.
Books mentioned in Blue Nights (16)
Funeral Blues by W. H. Auden: “Quotes the full sixteen-line poem ("Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone..."); reads it after John's death, later shows it to Quintana, who called it "wrong."”
Many Happy Returns by W. H. Auden: “These are the lines from W. H. Auden that Tony quoted that afternoon as 'the best advice for the day'... 'So I wish you first a Sense of theatre—'”
Endymion by John Keats: “Quintana's journal: "In the poem, 'Endymion,' there is a line that seems to tell my present fear of life: Pass into nothingness."”
Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie: “Quintana who had called Nicholas and Alexandra 'Nicky and Sunny' and seen their story as 'a big hit.'”
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby: “"Beneath Baby Animals and Their Mothers is Jean-Dominique Bauby's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, an account... of what it had felt like to have a cerebrovascular accident." Discussed at length.”
Domination of Black by Wallace Stevens: “I read the poems by Wallace Stevens and T. S. Eliot, 'Domination of Black' and 'New Hampshire'... 'Domination of Black' had peacocks in it. I think of 'Domination of Black' every time I see the peacocks.”
New Hampshire by T. S. Eliot: “Named alongside "Domination of Black" as a bedtime poem for Quintana; "'New Hampshire' had apple trees in it."”
California Winter by Karl Shapiro: “"a copy of Karl Shapiro's 'California Winter,' torn from The New Yorker" — kept as a memento of Quintana's childhood.”
A Certain Weariness by Pablo Neruda: “a copy of Pablo Neruda's 'A Certain Weariness,' typed by me on one of the several dozen Royal manuals my father had bought”
In the Fullness of Time: 32 Women on Life After 50 by Emily W. Upham and Linda Gravenson: “"So wrote the playwright Ntozake Shange, in In the Fullness of Time: 32 Women on Life After 50, about the maladies that struck her..." — quotes her essay at length.”
Tristes Tropiques by Claude Lévi-Strauss: “...trying to locate a line I believed to be from Claude Lévi-Strauss's Tristes Tropiques but was never able to find: 'The tropics are not exotic, they are merely out of date.'”
How It Feels to Be Adopted by Jill Krementz: “Quintana herself would agree to be one of the children interviewed for a book by the photographer Jill Krementz called How It Feels to Be Adopted.”
The Long-Distance Runner: An Autobiography by Tony Richardson: “...as Tony noted in his memoir The Long-Distance Runner, 'completely unfazed when told that there'd be an extra twenty for lunch.'”
Borderline Personality Disorder: A Clinical Guide by John G. Gunderson: “"So notes a 2001 New England Journal of Medicine review of John G. Gunderson's Borderline Personality Disorder: A Clinical Guide." — quoted at length.”
Baby Animals and Their Mothers by Hanns Reich and Eugen Skasa-Weiss: “"One is called Baby Animals and Their Mothers... black-and-white photographs of baby animals and their mothers" — a keepsake from Quintana, examined repeatedly.”
Books that mention Blue Nights (1)
On James Baldwin by Colm Tóibín: “listed alongside Salvador and The Year of Magical Thinking as Didion works discussed”