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Below is the second excerpt from my interview with Joan Didion. She was in a hotel in Washington; I was in Toronto. The entire interview will be posted on The Believer website in a few weeks, while further excerpts will posted here. Previous excerpt. - Sheila Heti BLVR: You have a line in The White Album whereyou say, “I came into adult life equipped with an essentially romantic ethic, believing that salvation lay in extreme and doomed commitments.” JD: Right. BLVR: I wonder if you consider marriage or motherhood, or even writing— JD: I did consider marriage and motherhood extreme and doomed commitments. Not out of any experience of them as such, but it was simply the way I looked at things. BLVR: And having experienced motherhood and marriage, do you still see them as extreme and doomed commitments? JD: No, I don’t. I mean, not—I don’t. I see them as, well, certainly they were for me a kind of salvation. BLVR: Salvation from what? JD: From a loneliness, an aloneness. BLVR: Because the relationship was so intimate, or just the fact of a marriage? JD: Just having another person, answering to another person, was very—it was novel to me, and it turned out to be [sly smile audible] kind of great.

Below is the second excerpt from my interview with Joan Didion. She was in a hotel in Washington; I was in Toronto. The entire interview will be posted on The Believer website in a few weeks, while further excerpts will posted here. Previous excerpt. - Sheila Heti

BLVR: You have a line in The White Album whereyou say, “I came into adult life equipped with an essentially romantic ethic, believing that salvation lay in extreme and doomed commitments.”

JD: Right.

BLVR: I wonder if you consider marriage or motherhood, or even writing—

JD: I did consider marriage and motherhood extreme and doomed commitments. Not out of any experience of them as such, but it was simply the way I looked at things.

BLVR: And having experienced motherhood and marriage, do you still see them as extreme and doomed commitments?

JD: No, I don’t. I mean, not—I don’t. I see them as, well, certainly they were for me a kind of salvation.

BLVR: Salvation from what?

JD: From a loneliness, an aloneness.

BLVR: Because the relationship was so intimate, or just the fact of a marriage?

JD: Just having another person, answering to another person, was very—it was novel to me, and it turned out to be [sly smile audible] kind of great.

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I recently conducted an interview with Joan Didion. We spoke over the phone; she from her hotel in Washington. She was on tour for Blue Nights, a reminisence about the life and death of her daughter, Quintana, and Didion’s thoughts about her own mortality. Over the next few weeks, we will be posting highlights from this interview, then it will all be posted on The Believer website. - Sheila Heti THE BELIEVER: When you were a little girl you wanted to be an actress, not a writer? JOAN DIDION: Right. BLVR: But you said it’s okay, because writing is in some ways a performance. When you’re writing, are you performing a character? JD: You’re not even a character. You’re doing a performance. Somehow writing has always seemed to me to have an element of performance. BLVR: What is the nature of that performance? I mean, an actor performs a character— JD: Sometimes an actor performs a character, but sometimes an actor just performs. With writing, I don’t think it’s performing a character, really, if the character you’re performing is yourself. I don’t see that as playing a role. It’s just appearing in public. BLVR: Appearing in public and sort of saying lines— JD: But not somebody else’s lines. Your lines. Look at me—this is me, is, I think, what you’re saying. BLVR: And do you feel like that me is a pretty stable thing, or unstable? Is it consistent through one’s life as a writer? JD: I think it develops into a fairly stable thing over time. I think it’s not at all stable at first. But then you kind of grow into the role you have made for yourself. BLVR: How would you gauge the distance between the role you have made for yourself— JD: —and the real person? BLVR: Yeah. JD: Well, I don’t know. The real person becomes the role you have made for yourself.

I recently conducted an interview with Joan Didion. We spoke over the phone; she from her hotel in Washington. She was on tour for Blue Nights, a reminisence about the life and death of her daughter, Quintana, and Didion’s thoughts about her own mortality. Over the next few weeks, we will be posting highlights from this interview, then it will all be posted on The Believer website.

- Sheila Heti

THE BELIEVER: When you were a little girl you wanted to be an actress, not a writer?

JOAN DIDION: Right.

BLVR: But you said it’s okay, because writing is in some ways a performance. When you’re writing, are you performing a character?

JD: You’re not even a character. You’re doing a performance. Somehow writing has always seemed to me to have an element of performance.

BLVR: What is the nature of that performance? I mean, an actor performs a character—

JD: Sometimes an actor performs a character, but sometimes an actor just performs. With writing, I don’t think it’s performing a character, really, if the character you’re performing is yourself. I don’t see that as playing a role. It’s just appearing in public.

BLVR: Appearing in public and sort of saying lines—

JD: But not somebody else’s lines. Your lines. Look at me—this is me, is, I think, what you’re saying.

BLVR: And do you feel like that me is a pretty stable thing, or unstable? Is it consistent through one’s life as a writer?

JD: I think it develops into a fairly stable thing over time. I think it’s not at all stable at first. But then you kind of grow into the role you have made for yourself.

BLVR: How would you gauge the distance between the role you have made for yourself—

JD: —and the real person?

BLVR: Yeah.

JD: Well, I don’t know. The real person becomes the role you have made for yourself.

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The Believer on Spotify

Greil Marcus’s “Real Life Rock Top Ten” is best read beside a boom-box with mixtape in hand, but if you’re going strictly vinyl these days we have your back. Every month our digital-mixtape curator and Deputy Editor Karolina Waclawiak creates a Spotify playlist based on Greil’s recommendations and musings. Where else but on our January playlist will you hear Cambodian garage-rock mixed with NWA and Cat Power? 

We also have mixes from our 2011 Music Issue, Art Issue, and a very popular October playlist where you can satisfy your Shangri-Las craving (Kleenex recommended).

Something else? Ah yes. Thirty-One Love Songs to accompany Rick Moody’s 2003 Magnetic Fields lovefest. Read while you listen!