In Didion’s essay, she goes on and on describing nonsensical passages in
her notebook as if they’re important, but then says that they aren’t. It feels
as if Didion is wasting my time and for the entire beginning and middle, I was
waiting for her to get to the point. The paragraph that begins with “how it
felt to me” is an example. She includes so many memories that it’s hard to keep
up with all of them, especially when she seems to be downplaying their
significance. However, towards the end of piece I began to realize why I was so
uninterested; Didion cleverly made her point: the journal entries have nothing
to do with us.
The most impactful part of her essay
to me would have to be the paragraph that includes the quote, “Keepers of private notebooks are a different
breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious
malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of
loss.” This quote relates to me because I actually keep a note book and she
pretty much sums up the way I feel about life sometimes.
The rhetorical questions in Didion’s
passage serve to underscore her thought process. It allows the experience to
feel more realistic and relatable to the reader because it is very similar to
how people actually think. It also relates to her statement about how her
journal entries only pertain to her. The readers can guess a response to her
questions, but only she can truly know the answer.
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