A literary version of the Surgeon General's warning

Joan Didion's authorial voice is distinctive: compelling, direct, succinct . . . and not very likable.  Having now read The Year of Magical Thinking, A Book of Common Prayer and assorted book reviews in The New York Review of Books, I am confident that anything she's written is worth reading, thought-provoking and intelligent . . . but I'll never consider her a "favorite."

Her authorial voice is, I believe, at the root my withholding of affection.  She has the equivalent of "smoker's voice" for authors.  The content, style and command of language can all impress, but the sound is too thin and raspy to resonate.   

Damage not to her (metaphoric) lungs, but to her (actual) viscera may be the culprit underlying the lack of vibrancy to her authorial voice.  Didion reads like a "brain in a box": her writing is so top-heavy cerebral that "cold" and "distant" seem as inadequate descriptors as they would be of Pluto.

Ultimately, readers need a balance of cerebral and emotional in writing before an author's words-on-the-page manifest as the voice of a human with whom we can sympathize.  That transformation doesn't happen for me with Didion.  At the close of a piece by her, I always think, "Interesting," but any further interest I'll have in composition will be only the curiosity as to why I can't honestly say that I like the author.

(Image courtesy of Berkeley University Visualization CS294-10 Fall 08 wiki)