The White Album, Joan Didion.
Jackie Pleus
In her opening paragraph she describes effortlessly the intricacies of where the water she will drink that night or the next day are and what they might be doing at that time, whether it be climbing a mountain or aerating down the Owens steps. She makes clear the focus of her fascination with the movement and control of this entire process, “An obsessive interest not in the politics of water but in the waterworks themselves, in the movement of water through aqueducts and siphons and pumps and forebays and afterbays and weirs and drains, in plumbing on the grand scale.” Pg 59. Didion outwardly connects water to power and the need for control. She yearns to be in charge of pressing the buttons and sending the messages to release an order of water, by playing this certain hand of god, she seems to find purpose in her life. I think this fascination also speaks to her emotional state of confusion and overwhelming fear. In the world of dreams water generally represents the subconscious and current emotional states. Instead of waterways that are naturally occurring such as oceans and lakes she dreams about man made conduits assigning specific roles and meaning to the water.
“I recall being deliriously happy.” Pg. 60. Didion’s chapter of Holy Water is one of her most personal essays in The White Album. It gives us a peak between the lines of the story she tells herself and shares with us throughout the book. The intense satisfaction that she finds in thinking about the awesome power of California’s waterways seems to give her life meaning through the conduits of control and movement. Her essays describe a myriad of scenes, diving into each of them in search of some sort of universal meaning, or logical reasoning for the actions of the characters. Didion explores their values and processes of thought with her investigative journalism, identifying meanings that pertain only to certain lifestyles and situations. These when taken out of context often lose relevance and significance, as seen in her chapter, Notes Toward a Dreampolitik. Didion’s self-proclaimed obsession on the waterways of California seems as deep and vast as the ocean itself.
She uses water to talk about many of the major themes throughout the book including her notes on the intricacies of the class system. “The symbolic content of swimming pools has always been interesting: a pool is misapprehended as a trapping of affluence, real or pretended, and of a kind of hedonistic attention to the body. Actually a pool is, for many of us in the West, a symbol not of affluence but of order, of control over the uncontrollable.” Pg 64. As with many other ideas she discusses Didion first introduces what isn’t, by painting a picture that is perceived true by certain people, allowing the reader a plausible alternative to a more overarching truth which she brings up next. Her conclusion of swimming pools pertaining to control resonates with me, by furthering the idea of containment of a force, which by all means should never stilled. This also shows her need for control in an alternative way, “Water is important to people who do not have it, and the same is true of control.” Pg. 65. Most people are soothed by the idea of control that is emulated by their swimming pools, but Didion doesn’t dream about stagnant concrete puddles, she dreams about controlling the entire water system of California. She dreams of movement. Holy Water speaks abstractly about her physiological condition of looking for a narrative and her need to find meaning in life. The fact that she is so taken by the idea of having power over millions of people’s water supply shows us just how chaotic and helpless she actually feels inside.
“The apparent ease of California life is an illusion, and those who believe the illusion real live here in only the most temporary way.” Pg. 64. Didion’s interest in the entirety of California’s waterways over a swimming pool also speaks to being a true Californian. Knowing the true harshness of this incorrectly blanketed state of complacent paradise seems to console her. It gives her meaning in a world of such blatant unconsciousness.
Seminar Quesitons:
What does water represent to Didion in the chapter Holy Water?
How does the emotional tone of this character compare to the rest of the book?
What meanings does Didion find in the control used by the California water systems?
How does Didion differ from the basic second generation Californian?