a voice beyond the grave: joan didion & posthumous publishing

brief thoughts on posthumous publishing & 'notes to john'

When it was announced in 1998 that Ernest Hemingway’s last-written novel True At First Light would be published, Joan Didion was vehemently opposed. In an essay for The New Yorker titled Last Words (which also appears in Didion’s 2021 collection Let Me Tell You What I Mean), Didion criticised the posthumous publishing of Hemingway’s work, arguing that the books published after his death were part of a ‘systematic creation of a marketable product’. For Didion, the decision whether to publish something that the author didn’t themselves publish in their lifetime was a clear-cut, black and white issue: ‘You think something is in shape to be published or you don’t, and Hemingway didn’t.’

Fast forward 27 years later to when it was announced that the first posthumous work of Joan Didion’s would be published, and much of the reaction online expressed similar sentiments. Described as ‘unprecedentedly intimate’ and ‘courageous’ by its publisher, Notes To John is a journal in which Didion details her sessions with a psychiatrist she began seeing in 1999, seemingly written to keep her husband, John Gregory Dunne, up to date.

After Didion’s death, the journal was found in a filing cabinet she kept beside her desk. Though fans were excited about a new Didion work to read, the fact that it was something as personal as a journal left a bad taste in some people’s mouths.

Posthumous publishing has always been a point of contention across many different industries - from music to literature to art. It is a very complicated and sensitive subject, often stirring up a lot of controversy around the ethics of publication and consumption. In 2024, Gabriel García Márquez's Until August was released posthumously, a decision that was heavily criticised due to the fact that García Márquez had asked his sons to destroy it before his death.

These disputes over the right to publish can also extend to when the author is still alive but in declining health, which just muddies the waters even more. Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman was released in 2015, despite the fact that at this time Lee was 89, unwell, and over the years had made numerous statements that she would not be releasing another novel. It was believed that Lee did not have full control over this decision, leading to a lot of controversy and accusations of elder abuse. (Later this year, a short story/essay collection of Harper Lee’s, The Land of Sweet Forever, will be published posthumously, a release which has also been criticised).

Critics of posthumous publishing often argue that it’s a greedy capitalist endeavour, only done for the sake of producing more revenue for the deceased’s estate and its beneficiaries, or the publishers. Never mind the larger, and much more complex, issue around consent. But others argue that posthumous publishing is imperative for the preservation of culture and art. After all, if not for posthumous publishing, then the majority of Franz Kafka, Emily Dickinson, and Sylvia Plath’s work would never have seen the light of day.

With this new Joan Didion book, maybe we would’ve felt more comfortable if it was a novel or another collection of essays. But the fact that it’s transcripts from her therapy sessions feels intrinsically voyeuristic, as if we are being led into the room and sat on the couch beside her. When it was first announced, I was admittedly in two minds about whether I would even read it, but then a gifted copy turned up on my doorstep and I knew I wouldn’t be able to resist.

The book is made up of Didion’s very detailed notes and conversations from her therapy sessions, largely focusing on her daughter Quintana’s alcoholism and the familial strain it was causing, but also discussions around motherhood, adoption, depression, anxiety, childhood, and Didion’s work life. It’s an incredibly intimate and raw account, which supplies context to much of Didion’s work. It especially functions well as a companion piece to Didion’s memoirs The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights, which detail her husband John’s death and Quintana’s death respectively. But it unarguably does feel very intrusive, and even though as a reader you are aware it’s not you who snuck into her house and started rifling through her desk drawers, it starts to feel rather close.

One of Didion’s greatest merits in her writing was her ability to be incredibly precise. You can’t help but feel that if she wrote something with the intention of publishing it, then she would’ve published it. But perhaps it is this precision that gives me some pause over her posthumous work. Didion was so intentional with her writing and with her image, always fully in control of her work. It isn’t hard to believe that deep down, she likely knew everything she had written would some day be published. As Tracy Daugh­erty, who wrote a biography of Didion, notes, Didion was too much of ‘a careful curator of her image’ to assume that personal papers like her journal would never be made public. As Daugh­erty states, Didion was ‘not naive about either publishing or human nature … Leaving behind something as rich as this journal promises to be could not be accidental.’

But should authors have to explicitly state their desire for something not to be published? Can we not just be satisfied with what they chose to publish in their lifetimes - the versions of themselves they consciously crafted and presented to the world? In an era marked by overconsumption, where content is endlessly demanded and creators are often treated as perpetual sources of output, this desire for more, even from the dead, raises uncomfortable questions.

But on the other hand, should the gatekeeping of art and artistic value rest solely in the hands of artists themselves, particularly when they are often much too close to it? Some of the world’s most famous works were published posthumously - not because their creators wanted them to be shared, but because others saw value in the work. This complicates the question of who gets to decide what lives on and what dies with its creator. Posthumous publishing forces us to ask: where is the line between honouring an artist’s intent and preserving cultural legacy? And who has the moral responsibility to draw that line, if anyone?

It’s a complicated question, and one that no one seems to have the answer to. I definitely don’t. I’m sure I’ll be left milling over these arguments when the next big posthumous publishing event occurs and the debate is ignited again.