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UNBELIEVABLE: Quintana | History Defined

Should Joan Didion’s therapy notes to her husband about their daughter have been published?

Joan Didion died, aged 87, in 2021. When a new volume of her diaries was announced, anticipation was high: her personal nonfiction is the foundation of her formidable literary legacy. But as details emerged, readers began to question the ethics of its publication.

The Conversation

Notes to John by Joan Didion: Dispatches from the therapist’s chair are a guilty pleasure

Joan Didion, who died in 2021, never intended Notes to John to be published. They are, as the title intimates, notes to her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and they are about meetings with her psychiatrist, Dr Roger MacKinnon, over the course of a little more than a year, beginning in…

Evening Standard

My friend Joan Didion wouldn’t have wanted her therapy notes to be published

Letter: Responding to an editorial about the publication of Notes to John, Clare Reihill writes that the late American writer never left anything to chance

The Guardian - UK

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Notes to John by Joan Didion review – an invasion of privacy

There’s a crude fascination in seeing the contents of a literary celebrity’s therapy sessions, but no one comes out of it well

The Guardian - UK

The Guardian view on posthumously publishing Joan Didion: goodbye to all that

Editorial: Would the legendary American writer have welcomed the publication of her therapy notes? It seems unlikely

The Guardian - UK

Literary gold … or betrayal of trust? Joan Didion journal opens ethical minefield

Soon we can all read the late author’s private notes about her therapy. But should we?

The Guardian - UK

Joan Didion’s ‘astonishingly intimate’ diary to be published

The author recorded her thoughts on alcoholism, depression and her complex relationship with her daughter Quintana in the book, Notes to John

The Guardian - UK

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The Friday Afternoon Club by Griffin Dunne review – a Hollywood insider with an outsider’s eye

The actor’s star-studded memoir-cum-account of his sister’s murder could have been a clunky read, but his self-awareness, honesty and humour make the nephew of Joan Didion and son of Dominick Dunne an engaging narrator

The Guardian - UK

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Cycling News

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