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November 18, 2022November 18, 2022

The Joan Didion estate sale

Sophie Haigney, writing for ‘The Paris Review’ (17th Nov 2022) about the artefacts being auctioned in the US at the Joan Didion estate sale….

Then there were the three lots of blank notebooks, tied with twine. They went for $9,000, $11,000, and $11,000 each. They were empty, some still wrapped in plastic, yet they were totally talismanic. I wondered: Would you write in these notebooks, having paid that price? Perhaps that’s the whole appeal—to write in a blank space that Didion might once have intended to use herself. Maybe the buyer had a hidden wish that somehow her intent might infiltrate their own work—that in owning these notebooks they might crack some secret code to making sentences like hers. There are sillier superstitions. But more likely, I think, you would have paid too much for these notebooks to ever touch them, and they would sit in a drawer or on a desk, unused and empty, just as they sat on hers.

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Categories

  • 3CR
  • A Chides Alphabet
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  • Adès, David
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  • Arnott, Robbie
  • Ashley, Melissa
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  • Australia Institute
  • awards
  • Azimitabr, Mostafa ‘Moz’
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  • Bandesh, Farhad
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  • Barton, Alison J.
  • Bell, Johanna
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  • book launch
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  • Ell, Theodore
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  • Eureka Street
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  • faith
  • festivals
  • fiction
  • Filreis, Al
  • FitzSimons, Peter
  • Five Islands Poetry Prize
  • Five Islands Press
  • Flanagan, Martin
  • Flanagan, Richard
  • Flett, Alison
  • Fowlis, Julie
  • Gallego, Ruben
  • Garcia-Navarro, Lulu
  • Giard-Chase, Ann
  • Gillespie, Alyssa
  • Gorton, John
  • Gotye
  • Greenhill, Susie
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  • Hay, Pete
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  • Herbert, Elanna
  • Hetherington, Graeme
  • Hey Rosetta!
  • Higgins, Kevin
  • Hindrum, Cameron
  • Hobart
  • Hobart Bookshop
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  • Marr, David
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  • Mercer, Gina
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  • Nielsen-Creeley, Kim
  • NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert
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  • short stories
  • Simic, Charles
  • Skilbeck-Porter, Ella
  • Skovron, Alex
  • Slade, Tim
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  • Sometimes, Alicia
  • song
  • Spaulding, Ralph
  • Spineless Wonders
  • Spoken Word, 3CR
  • Stenberg, Britta
  • Strummer, Joe
  • Swain, Helen
  • Tasmanian Literary Awards
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  • Tasmanian Poetry Festival
  • The Richell Prize
  • thinking aloud
  • Thorne, Tim
  • Those Folk & The Inadequates
  • Tinmouth, Valerie
  • Tiny Desk Concert
  • Tokarczuk, Olga
  • Tredennick, Mark
  • Ukraine
  • Uluru Statement from the Heart
  • Uncategorized
  • US politics
  • Vale
  • Van Rijswijk, Philomena
  • Vaughan, Eleanor
  • Victorian Premier's Prize for Literature
  • Victorian Premier's Prize for Poetry
  • Webby, David
  • WestWords
  • Whish-Wilson, David
  • Whish-Wilson, Peter
  • White, Rachel
  • Whitebeach, Terry
  • Wicks, Les
  • wildness (online poetry journal)
  • Williams, Jane
  • Williams, Lucy
  • Winfield, Liz
  • Winton, Tim
  • Witek, Jules
  • Wood, Charlotte
  • Woodside
  • Woomble, Roddy
  • Woorilla Poetry Prize
  • Writers' Week, Adelaide Festival
  • Yee, Grace
  • Young, Damon
  • Young, Mark
  • Yukon Blonde
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