The Center Will Not Hold
“The Center Will Not Hold” is a 2017 documentary on Joan Didion, a widely-acclaimed essayist primarily known for her works on counterculture in the 60s and 70s in her characteristically fluid prose. Seeing how it was available on Netflix and that I possess an undeniable propensity towards ignoring anything pressing in my life, I had no other choice but to dedicate 98 minutes to watch it. Indubitably, it was worth the time. “The Center Will Not Hold” (named for one of W.B. Yeats poems, “The Second Coming” that is also featured in Didion’s first anthology, Slouching Towards Bethlehem) possesses merit not just for its depth of character but also for the universal qualities that render any documentary notable.
In “The Most Revealing Moment in the New Joan Didion Documentary,” Rebecca Mead, staff writer at the New Yorker, argues that the “The Center Will Not Hold” was worth watching for a particular scene in which Didion’s ability to maintain a professional detachment from the world as she knew it was emphasized. While it’s mutually agreed upon that the 2017 documentary directed by Didion’s nephew, Griffin Dunne, possesses a multitude of qualities that render it noteworthy, I would argue that a reflection of the central qualities that make Didion the writer she is–and by extension, what makes Joan Didion Joan Didion–is what really defines “The Center Will Not Hold.”
In an interview featured in “The Center Will Not Hold,” someone describes Didion as one writing the history of time with the nuance of fiction, a description of Didion’s writing that I found to resonate the most. Admittedly, I am relatively new to Didion’s work, but it is without a doubt that her work is defined by a sense of in-between, an impossible-to-place line between fact and fiction she deftly walks. Take her essays on John Wayne (“John Wayne: A Love Song”), on the horrifying realities of hippie culture in the 60s (“Slouching Towards Bethlehem”), and on the fading beauty of New York from her eyes (“Goodbye to All That”), all of which are but a drop in Didion’s formidable repertoire.
Didion pins disconnected parts of her novel on her wall. She revels in irony. She is said to possess a horror of disorder and a predilection for the extreme. When asked about the ending of “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” in which she witnesses a five-year-old on acid, she pauses before saying, “It was gold. You live for moments like that… good or bad.” She writes with the sense that she is writing for no one other than herself (though that isn’t entirely true), weaving together stories that are illuminating purely because they are so personal that one is made to feel like an intruder.
At the beginning of the documentary, Didion is asked if the presence of snakes in her later work was an unconscious image from growing up. “They were always on my mind,” she muses, “you had to avoid them.” Nearing the end of the documentary, when on the subject of her later books that dealt with the death of her husband and daughter in 2003 and 2005 respectively, Didion falters before describing writing as a way of exploring fears. She draws a parallel between snakes and fears; keeping a snake in your line of sight, she divulges, is how you protect yourself from its attack. “Novels,” she had asserted earlier, “are about things you are afraid you can’t deal with.”
Ultimately, Mead’s article is profound in her meta-examination of “The Center Will Not Hold” as both a reflection of Dunn’s journalism and as a testament to Didion’s works. “The Center Will Not Hold,” on the other hand, is worth watching not just for its subject alone, but also for its acuity and the visceral emotion it contains and evokes. As a plus, it’s also available on Netflix.