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We tell ourselves stories in order to live.

Joan Didion, The White Album

LiteratureMind

The story behind the card

Joan Didion (1934–2021), the American essayist and novelist, opens her essay 'The White Album' with this sentence, and the essay gave its title to her 1979 collection. It covers Los Angeles in the late 1960s, from the Manson murders to the Doors and the Black Panthers, and describes a time when she could no longer make events fit any story. She even includes her own psychiatric report from the summer of 1968. The line is often quoted as comfort; in the essay it is closer to a warning that the stories we live by may not hold.

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Joan Didion, Beyaz Albüm

Amerikalı deneme yazarı ve romancı Joan Didion (1934–2021), “The White Album” (“Beyaz Albüm”) denemesini bu cümleyle açar; deneme, 1979'da çıkan kitabına da adını verir. Deneme 1960'ların sonundaki Los Angeles'ı, Manson cinayetlerinden The Doors'a ve Kara Panterler'e kadar anlatır ve Didion'ın olayları artık hiçbir hikâyeye oturtamadığı bir dönemi konu alır. Didion, 1968 yazında hakkında yazılmış psikiyatri raporunu bile metne koyar. Cümle çoğu zaman bir teselli gibi alıntılanır; denemede ise, hayatımıza yön veren hikâyelerin her zaman ayakta kalmayabileceğine dair bir uyarıya daha yakındır.

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