PositiveLos Angeles Review of BooksNotes to John is a diary of a peculiar kind ... \'rawer\' in the sense of raw materials—something yet to be clarified—but it is erroneous to think of it as realer, closer, more immediate ... The Didion-Dunne family’s intractable troubles will move and disconcert readers ... Although the diary mostly reads as rough and sketchy, its unsculpted pages sometimes glint with Didion’s dark wit, her analytic force, and her famously compelling style ... What is at last most revelatory about Notes to John is, perhaps, not the various details about Didion’s family or her psychic state but the fact that she was capable of writing sentences such as \'I said I had said that I supposed that was what I meant, yes,\' ... As interesting as Notes to John is, I would prefer to believe that the \'true\' Didion is most visible not in a slim diary found in a drawer but in the life she led, and the literature at which she labored
John McPhee
RaveLos Angeles Review of BooksOf detritus Tabula Rasa makes diamonds. Its 50 chapters are McPhee books in miniature, with all the wit, panache, and exactitude we find in his long-form work.
