An Essay Worth Sharing - Joan Didion's On Self Respect' Word On The Street

An Essay Worth Sharing: Joan Didions On Self Respect Word on the Street
2/12/11 11:54 PM
Word on the Street

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Personal essays from a young journalist in the Sunshine State.
An Essay Worth Sharing: Joan Didions On Self Respect

by mallaryjeantenore Not long ago I was at Borders, looking through the stores Joan Didion selection. Shes one of my favorite authors, so I naturally gravitate toward her books. As I opened Didions Slouching Toward Bethlehem, I re-read her On Self Respect essay. To read a beautifully-written essay about what self respect means is for me a powerful representation of how writing can help make us feel less alone in the struggles we face. I recently gave my copy of Slouching Toward Bethlehem to a friend, and didnt want to spend $30 on a new hardcover edition of the book, so I plopped down on the floor and started typing the essay on my laptop. Typing out the essay was an interesting way to interact with the piece. It made me more conscious of the nuances of the language, of the style the essay is written in, and of its tone. Ive copied and pasted the essay below. What thoughts/feelings come to mind when you read it? Once, in a dry season, I wrote in large letters across two pages of a notebook that innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself. Although now, some years later, I marvel that a mind on the outs with itself should have nonetheless made painstaking record of its every tremor. I recall with embarrassing clarity the flavor of those particular ashes. It was a mater of misplaced self-respect. I had not been elected to Phi Beta Kappa. This failure could scarcely have been more predictable or less ambiguous (I simply did not have the grades), but I was unnerved by it; I had somehow thought myself a kind of academic Raskolnikov, curiously exempt from the cause-effect relationships which hampered others. Although even the humorless nineteen-year-old that I was must have recognized that the situation lacked real tragic stature, the day that I did to make Phi Beta kappa nonetheless marked the end of something, and innocence may well be the word for it. I lost the conviction that lights would always turn green for me, the pleasant certainty that those rather passive virtues which had won me approval as a child automatically guaranteed me not only Phi Beta Kappa keys but happiness, honor, and the love of a good man; lost a
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certain touching faith in the totem power of good manners, clean hair, and proved competence on the Stanford-Binet scale. To such doubtful amulets had my self-respect been pinned, and I faced myself that day with the nonplussed apprehension of someone who has come across a vampire and has no crucifix at hand. Although to be driven back upon oneself is an uneasy affair at best, rather like trying to cross a border with borrowed credentials, it seems to me now the one condition necessary to the beginnings of real self-respect. Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception. The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that well-lit back alley where one keeps assignations with oneself; no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn lists of good intentions. One shuffles flashily but in vain through ones marked cards the kindness done for the wrong reason, the apparent triumph which involved no real effort, the seemingly heroic act into which one had been shamed. The dismal fact is that self-respect has nothing to do with the approval of others who are, after all, deceived easily enough; has nothing to do with reputation, which, as Rhett Butler told Scarlett OHara, is something people with courage can do without. To do without self-respect, on the other hand, is to be an unwilling audience of one to an interminable documentary that deals ones failings, both real and imagined, with fresh footage spliced in for every screening. Theres the glass you broke in anger, theres the hurt on Xs face; watch now, this next scene, the night Y came back from Houston, see how you muff this one. To live without self-respect is to lie awake some night, beyond the reach of warm milk, the Phenobarbital, and the sleeping hand on the coverlet, counting up the sins of commissions and omission, the trusts betrayed, the promises subtly broken, the gifts irrevocably wasted through sloth or cowardice, or carelessness. However long we postpone it, we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously uncomfortable bed, the one we make ourselves. Whether or not we sleep in it depends, of course, on whether or not we respect ourselves. To protest that some fairly improbably people, some people who could not possibly respect themselves, seem to sleep easily enough is to miss the point entirely, as surely as those people miss it who think that selfrespect has necessarily to do with not having safety pins in ones underwear. There is a common superstition that self-respect is a kind of charm against snakes, something that keeps those who have it locked in some unblighted Eden, out of strange beds, ambivalent conversations, and trouble in general. It does not at all. It has nothing to do with the face of things, but concerns instead a separate peace, a private reconciliation. Although the careless, suicidal Julian English in Appointment in Samara and the careless, incurably dishonest Jordan Baker in The Great Gatsby seem equally improbably candidates for self-respect, Jordan Baker had it, Julian English did not. With that genius for accommodation more often seen in women than men, Jordan took her own measure, made her own peace, avoided threats to that peace: I hate careless people, she told Nick Carraway. It takes two to make an accident. Like Jordan Baker, people with self-respect have the courage of their mistakes. They know the price of things. If they choose to commit adultery, they do not then go running, in an access of bad conscience, to receive absolution from the wronged parties; nor do they complain unduly of the unfairness, the undeserved embarrassment, of being named co-respondent. In brief, people with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of mortal nerve; they display what was once called character, a quality which, although approved in the abstract, sometimes loses ground to other, more instantly negotiable virtues. The measure of its slipping prestige is that one tends to think of it only in connection with homely children and United States senators who have been defeated, preferably in the primary, for reelection. Nonetheless, character the willingness to accept responsibility for ones own life is the source from which self-respect springs. Self-respect is something that our grandparents, whether or not they had it, knew all about. They had
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instilled in them, young, a certain discipline, the sense that one lives by doing things one does not particularly want to do, by putting fears and doubts to one side, by weighing immediate comforts against the possibility of larger, even intangible, comforts. It seemed to the nineteenth century admirable, but not remarkable, that Chinese Gordon put on a clean white suit and held Khartoum against the Mahdi; it did not seem unjust that the way to free land in California involved death and difficulty and dirt. In a diary kept during the winter of 1846, an emigrating twelve-yaer-old named Narcissa Cornwall noted coolly: Father was busy reading and did not notice that the house was being filled with strange Indians until Mother spoke out about it. Even lacking any clue as to what Mother said, one can scarcely fail to be impressed by the entire incident: the father reading, the Indians filing in, the mother choosing the words that would not alarm, the child duly recording the event and noting further that those particular Indians were not, fortunately for us, hostile. Indians were simply part of the donnee. In one guise or another, Indians always are. Again, it is a question of recognizing that anything worth having has its price. People who respect themselves are willing to accept the risk that the Indians will be hostile, that the venture will go bankrupt, that the liaison may not turn out to be one in which every day is a holiday because youre married to me. They are willing to invest something of themselves; they may not play at all, but when they do play, they know the odds. That kind of self-respect is a discipline, a habit of mind that can never be faked but can be developed, trained, coaxed forth. It was once suggested to me that, as an antidote to crying, I put my had in a paper bag. As it happens, there is a sound physiological reason, something to do with oxygen, for doing exactly that, but the psychological effect alone is incalculable: it is difficult in the extreme to continue fancying oneself Cathy in Wuthering Heights with ones head in a Food Fair bag. There is a similar case for all the small disciplines, unimportant in themselves; imagine maintaining any kind of swoon, commiserative or carnal, in a cold shower. But those small disciplines are valuable only insofar as they represent larger ones. To say that Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton is not to say that Napoleon might have been saved by a crash program in cricket; to give formal dinners in the rain forest would be pointless did not the candlelight flickering on the liana call forth deeper, stronger disciplines, values instilled long before. It is a kind of ritual, helping us to remember who and what we are. In order to remember it, one must have known it. To have that sense of ones intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference. If we do not respect ourselves, we are the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weaknesses. On the other, we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out since our self-image is untenable their false notion of us. We flatter ourselves by thinking this compulsion to please others an attractive trait: a gist for imaginative empathy, evidence of our willingness to give. Of course I will play Francesca to your Paolo, Helen Keller to anyones Annie Sullivan; no expectation is too misplaced, no role too ludicrous. At the mercy of those we cannot but hold in contempt, we play roles doomed to failure before they are begun, each defeat generating fresh despair at the urgency of divining and meting the next demand made upon us. It is the phenomenon sometimes called alienation from self. In its advanced stages, we no longer answer the telephone, because someone might want something; that we could say no without drowning in selfreproach is an idea alien to this game. Every encounter demands too much, tears the nerves, drains the will, and the specter of something as small as an unanswered letter arouses such disproportionate guilt that
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answering it becomes out of the question. To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves there lies the great, the singular power of selfrespect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.
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Published: November 17, 2008 Filed Under: Uncategorized Tags: Books : Joan Didion
37 Responses to An Essay Worth Sharing: Joan Didions On Self Respect
1.
Kristina says: November 26, 2008 at 4:33 am Wow, what a great essay! And what you had to say about typing the the essay out was so interesting thats actually one of the things my MFA professor recommends doing on a daily basis, to help learn the rhythms of good writers pieces, to help them author them and in turn learn how to author ourselves So, any time anyone has writers block, he tells us to start typing our favorite authors pieces Reply
2.
Combatting Loneliness and Its Myths Word on the Street says: December 10, 2008 at 5:36 am [...] idea that loneliness is all about the lack of other people. Sometimes, its about a lack of selfrespect. When talking about guys, one of my friends used to say: Before you can truly love someone [...] Reply
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Richard Gilbert says: November 4, 2009 at 7:31 pm Thank you for writing about this essay, which Thomas Larson in The Memoir and the Memoirist says is the greatest American essay. Great as Didion is, my vote in that category goes to James Baldwins Notes of a Native Son. Reply
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Nik says: December 11, 2009 at 5:24 pm Thank you for typing this out! I appreciate it! Reply
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Rochelle says: January 9, 2010 at 7:29 am I struggle with self-respect and saw myself in this essays last 2 paragraphs my skin crawled Reply mallaryjeantenore says: January 9, 2010 at 7:36 am I know what you mean, Rochelle. Saying that last line is powerful might be an understatement Reply
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Rosey says: January 9, 2010 at 10:07 am Thanks a lot for typing this out I chose this for an AP English project, but Im struggling to find information on it online. Do you happen to know when it was written ? Reply mallaryjeantenore says: January 10, 2010 at 2:49 am Rosey, Vogue Magazine first published On Self-Respect in 1961. Hope that helps! ~Mallary Reply
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Lambert Lorette says: October 29, 2011 at 6:23 am Vogue Magazine, 1961, On Self-Respect (dont know the month) Reply 7. Stephanie says: March 17, 2010 at 4:31 am I first read The White Album, and since then I have come across various essays online (this one, And Why I Write. Didion has such a poignant perspective on so many things. I am so grateful for her! Thanks for putting this up, I think it is about time I purchase or borrow Slouching Toward Bethlehem. Reply 8. RJP77 says: March 19, 2010 at 5:39 am Hello, I came across this looking for Didions Why I write Does anyone know where I can find a copy online? The last paragraph echoes a profound truth. We humans play an awful game or trick of forgetfulness on ourselves. Intuitively self-respect is something we all know, but simply choose to ignore it. In order not to be responsible for ones self! Rachel~ Reply Lambert Lorette says: October 29, 2011 at 6:53 am Here is a simple path; it has worked for me over the decades: take a stand, just whatever you want, it doesnt matter except that, once taken, you just dont ever budge from it. For instance, mine is: Im just an ordinary person, God comes first always, and I will do the best that I can in every instance. (And also, I will not go to extremes, or force myself. I will not follow impulses or react.- etc.) Then, say what you mean, and mean what you say. In other words, if you say Ill do the best I can, then you must always do the best you can. If you falter, then you can remind yourself, I
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said I would, so thats what Im going to do, and then go ahead and do it. The great thing about deciding to do the best that you can in all cases, and actually doing it, is that even if you make a mistake (well, when you make a mistake) you will have done it while really doing the best that you could at the time. Even with really terrible mistakes that cause great agony, you still have the buffer, something, because you were, actually, doing the best that you could at the time, and you know it. Almost all of the time it works out well, and you gradually develop self-respect from doing it, its usually easy to sleep well at night. Once you get into the habit of doing the best that you can on a moment to moment basis, it becomes second nature After all, if you dont do the best that you can, how can you really have self-respect?* *There are (a very few) things that are more important than self-respect of course, but then, thats another topic. Cheers, L Reply 9. John Small Berries says: April 3, 2010 at 7:43 pm Surely I cannot be interpreting the essay correctly. A person with self-respect, she seems to be saying, feels no guilt whatsoever (if you choose to betray your spouse, do so unapologetically!) and permits no doubt to intrude on absolute certainty of his or her actions. Is self-respect, then, nothing more than pure arrogance and self-centeredness, a refusal to let any tinge of conscience guide ones actions away from paths one would find repulsive and unworthy of respect in others? It seems to me an overcompensation: lying awake at night cataloguing ones failings leads to no selfrespect; therefore, to have self-respect, one must never regret ones actions, no matter how despicable. Remembering how we have hurt or failed others only cripples us, so give no thought to anyone but ourselves. But that cannot be right, for it means that only a sociopath someone without a shred of conscience or empathy for how the consequences of his actions affect others can truly have selfrespect. So, as I said, I must have misinterpreted it. For if that is the true measure of self-respect, then to possess it is to become a monster. Reply Cheeseballs says: May 13, 2011 at 7:13 am I think shes trying to say: If you betray your spouse and lie about it to othersit doesnt matter if they believe you or not, its about how you feel yourself. Can you really cheat on your wife
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and not feel guilty? shes assuming that her audience actually has a conscience or some sort of moral code they follow. If you can trulyTRULY justify your actions, then go ahead and do it. Reply Michael Willoughby says: November 20, 2011 at 1:39 pm Well, I think its quite interesting, isnt it? Because she is suggesting quite a different code of ethics based more closely about the way people actually behave. People do betray their spouses. People do hurt each other. Does mulling over these things prevent it happening again? Not necessarily, although that might be nice. What is one to do about that? Well, be honest about the hurt ones actions can cause as well as the benefit they bring to you. Take life on the chin rather than trying to avoid pain. Thats what I take from it, although, yes, its complicated and Im not sure I get it either. Reply 10. Julian says: April 3, 2010 at 9:36 pm Yeah our grandparents were so great. Oh, for the glory days before 1960, when everyone was an existential hero, when the individual was the focus of religion, when conformity for conformitys sake was spat upon, and when trying to weasel out from under your own actions was practically unheard of, and most certainly frowned on, particularly among politicians. Why, I can still remember Wilsons great speech during his election campaign, where he admitted to leaving his wife for a year to boff a flapper in Cuba and dared the nation to hold it against him. Im all for extolling people taking responsibility for their actions, but do you really need to resort to the ahistorical, false appeal to the past to do it? Our grandparents generation beat hobos to death for fun, for pitys sake, and respected character so much that they crucified and burned alive black men brave enough to defend their families from the clan. People have always been terrible; virtue doesnt need lies to be championed. Reply Matias says: June 24, 2010 at 5:29 pm Do you have any further info about Wilsons great speech during his election campaign. I have Googled this phrase but nothing showed up. Reply
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Cheeseballs says: May 13, 2011 at 7:18 am Yes, but they still have self respect. They thought what they were doing was right, which is why they can respect themselves. Reply 11. Self Respect Dont Try So Hard says: April 4, 2010 at 7:19 am [...] April 4, 2010 Self Respect Posted by arshi under Uncategorized Leave a Comment http://mallaryjeantenore.wordpress.com/2008/11/17/an-essay-worth-sharing-joan-didions-on-selfrespec... [...] Reply 12. john small berries says: July 30, 2010 at 2:32 pm Yes, you have misinterpreted it. Reply 13. Bura says: August 30, 2010 at 2:20 am I like this type of essay. One should gain self-respect by failure. Reply 14. fred says: November 15, 2010 at 12:52 am thank you sooo much for typing this out. I too lended my copy of bethlehem to a friend and felt my self kind of lost unable to reference back to this essay. eventually Ill get the copy back or buy a new one, but you have no idea how much I appreciate this. thanks. Reply 15. alie says: November 25, 2010 at 6:45 pm The purpose of this essay is not to discourage us from feeling guilt or regret. It means to encourage
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responsibility for our own actions. If you dont like what happened when your wife found out you where cheating, yes, you can feel guilt, but not self-pitty. You knew the risks when you did the deed. If you have any respect for yourself you will realize this. You will realize that you are in no way a victim. However, if you have any self-respect, you shouldnt feel guilty about saying no. If somebody wants something from you (and it is not worth it to you to give), dont feel guilty for saying no. To summarize, dont play the victim and dont complain about the outcomes of your own decisions. Know the risks that come with your choices and live with them. You made your bed, now sleep in it. Reply 16. How I learned to stop worrying and go to work Salutation says: December 20, 2010 at 5:31 am [...] year ago, I read Joan Didions essay, On Self-Respect, and since then nothing has been quite as useful in dispelling doubts of self-pity. Several of the [...] Reply 17. Allana says: February 2, 2011 at 9:03 am Im just discovering Joan Didion and her writings are great. Im looking forward to read more of her, and this essay speaks true to me. Thanks for posting. Reply 18. Lady Paralysis. | The Pursuit of Scrappiness says: March 15, 2011 at 3:14 am [...] this is all moot. The crux of the matter is that I shouldnt care. I have read and reread this amazing Joan Didion essay on self-respect (from Pex; thanks, Pex!), the thesis being, basically, [...] Reply 19. The Pursuit of Scrappiness says: March 31, 2011 at 3:47 am [...] on approval. That would predictably lead to the sorts of crises of self that bring us right back to that Joan Didion piece. Clearly what I need to do is read it and read it and read it and then read it [...] Reply 20. Caf Europa: life after communism by Slavenka Drakuli thoughtfiles says: April 15, 2011 at 2:04 am [...] The contents of her essays are also beautifully crafted each with its own point of focus, its own short story or reflection that contributes to the greater discourse of the book on the whole. Theres no doubt that each reader will find his or her own connection with a few essays in particular. For me, I found myself most touched by My Frustration with Germany, A Croat among Jews, and My
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Fathers Guilt. I think these essays really show the difficulty, on both levels of the state and the individual, of dealing with the greater guilt and responsibility of a nation/people. I cannot agree more with the importance of remembering our own actions in history good and bad as both nations and individuals. Drakulis conclusion that both the nation and the self need to participate in the recognition of history reminds me of Joan Didions essay On Self-Respect. [...] Reply 21. Whitney M. says: June 15, 2011 at 8:31 pm I too was compelled by this essay yet I confess confusion on her analogy about innocence. What she speaks of is clearly ignorance. If you researched the defintions of both, innocence has a connation of childlike accidents while with ignorance its stupidity straight out. Morals develop over time. People choose to ignore them or not. The arrogance that they are impenetrable to the bullet of consequence is astouding. For that the are not innocence but oh so very ignorant. Reply 22. An Open Letter to Gwyneth Paltrow | Common Sense Celeb says: July 13, 2011 at 11:10 pm [...] I dont care what its about bacon can be symbolic of grief, morality, self-respect, Joan Baez, the diamond lane on the 405. All I care about is that Joan Didion writes an essay [...] Reply 23. Mar says: August 17, 2011 at 2:58 pm Ive kept this essay near me for the past 22 years. I think its great that you typed it out for us all to read. I was wondering if you wouldnt mind correcting the errors in it so that it matches the true text (some grammatical, some substantive). I ask this because it is the first version to come up in a google search of Joan Didion On Self Respect Reply 24. Cindy Eksuzian says: August 20, 2011 at 12:44 pm This indeed is an excellent and colorful essay that denotes our deep struggles of worth and what it takes to overcome them. I came upon this as I googled self-respect for a post I recently wrote. Thank you so much for sharing this. Reply
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25.
Meghan Butler (@MeghanButler) says: August 30, 2011 at 7:29 pm love. im actually rereading slouching towards bethlehem at the moment. havent gotten to this piece yet I usually save it until last because its one of my favorites. thanks for sharing! xxMeg http://www.megsmumbo.com Reply
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Linda says: September 10, 2011 at 4:53 pm I recommend purchasing We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-0307264874-0 Then, you can refer to Joans insight on a myriad of topics whenever you are so inclined. Reply mallaryjeantenore says: October 8, 2011 at 4:35 am Ill look into it. Thanks, Linda! Reply
27.
Adrian Mikula says: September 13, 2011 at 7:38 am worth reading Reply
28.
Rohel Rabago says: September 23, 2011 at 1:01 pm very great essay Reply
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Word on the Street

Personal essays from a young journalist in the Sunshine State.

An Essay Worth Sharing: Joan Didions On Self Respect

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