Joan Didion Has A New Book Coming Out Next Year. Obviously, It Sounds Great

It’s been brought to our attention that Joan Didion ― keeper of notebooks, chronicler of cities, defender of emotional, humanistic prose ― has a book coming out in March 2017.

It’s called South and West: From a Notebook, and, according to the publisher, Penguin Random House, it’s made up of personal musings jotted down while on a road trip across the American South with her husband.

In typical Didionion (yep, we’re coining the adjective) fashion, the entries weld interviews with personal reflections. Even if the essays are unfinished, they’re in keeping with her belief that notebooks ― even if plumb with incomplete thoughts ― are valuable.

In her essay from Slouching Towards Bethlehem, “On Keeping a Notebook,” Didion writes:

I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.

If you’d like to keep on nodding terms with the person Didion used to be, you can read South and West next year on March 7.