A review

I haven’t had an original thought since 2017. But this isn’t going to stop me from sharing why I think you should read “After Henry,” a 1992 collection of previously published essays I accidentally fell into at the most perfect moment. I won’t go so far as to say it’s unknown, Joan Didion’s collection was a national bestseller when it came out, but, today, it’s not a book many seem to have in rotation. (Big mistake alert!). 

First, as you know, Joan Didion is one of the most prominent figures of the 1960s–70s New Journalism movement blah blah blah, and is most widely known for “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” (1968) and that National Book Award–winning memoir “The Year of Magical Thinking” (2005). Great.  

“After Henry” (whose title piece is about her late editor, Henry) is divided into three geographical sections: Washington, California, and New York. Each part is then further divided into essays which take on the politics and personalities of the place in which they’re set. Ultimately, Joan Didion tells us this in “After Henry”: We’ve been telling ourselves stories in order to live for as long as this country has existed. We’re really good at telling ourselves these stories, and believing them whether or not they have any basis in reality. Creating and believing these stories has material consequences, to be sure. Our stories can and do ruin lives, can and do build cities from the ground up. 

In the New York section, Didion dissects the Central Park Five case not in terms of innocence or guilt, but in regards to how those teenage boys’ guilt was constructed and sold to the public in an essay titled “Sentimental Journeys.”  Here, Didion investigates how the embrace of a certain narrative across the majority of the nation’s news outlets created a moral universe in which the accused—Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise—could only be guilty. A moral universe in which Trisha Meili’s victimhood was portrayed as the darkening of whiteness in a city proud to align itself with such a promising young woman. 

The blockheads who believed in the guilt of those boys fell for a Disney-level black vs white; a literal Sleeping Beauty’s good vs evil rendition, and (years later) we rightly eviscerated them for it. But guess what? The blockheads will continue to fall for that rudimentary crap again, and again, and again, and again. Anywhere, everywhere, all the time. They’ll actually never stop falling for it. And to think that, at some point, this country wised-up, is a delusion Joan tells us we must break the habit of having.  

Reading “After Henry” in this current climate (let’s call it…) is most certainly the best thing you can do for yourself to REMIND yourself of the beast that is the narrative and how we shape it, how we tame it, how we use and abuse it back and forth, back and forth. How it’s gone too far. How we’ve dragged it through the mud. 

But back to le text. “Times Mirror Square” (just like “Sentimental Journeys”) illuminates how we manipulate realities with the stories we choose to tell. In “Times Mirror Square,” Didion unpacks the rise of the Los Angeles Times as an institution, a family business turned media empire, built on controlling the city’s story about itself, and in doing so, creating what we know today as Los Angeles. The essay is part corporate history, part civic autopsy, and part meta-commentary on how institutions (who hold the story-telling stick) create reality. 

The founder of the LA Times and his sons and his sons’ sons all played parts in the little production of oh, ya know, bringing to existence the city of Los Angeles one revenge column at a time. It actually floored me to read how they brought WATER to the valley to pad their own pockets by story-telling the HECK outta the notion that it was for the greater good. And that was just one thing they did “for” LA by using the newspaper. “Times Mirror Square” reminds me of the power of those who wield the story-stick. Whomever wields the story-stick can transform any old lie, any hang-up into truth, all it takes is enough money and a primed audience. 

Now, Joan’s gone, folks, so she can’t agree or disagree here, but I think what we can learn from “After Henry” is that, while we are currently treating Trump’s narrative-building, his story-weaving as so incendiary, we have to acknowledge that, in many ways, the stories we are telling ourselves on the quote unquote left are just as, if not MORE damaging to justice getting done than anything he can or cannot make people believe. 

The left throws stones, but our glass houses are made of muted-pink infographics that rid us of our responsibility of actually, materially, doing anything in service of what we say we believe. We’ve sold ourselves this narrative that it’s so exhausting to care, meanwhile, what are we actually doing that shows how much we care? Didion shows us how stories shape reality, and reading her reminds us that living inside the story isn’t the same as acting on its consequences. Let’s get into it…

I hopped in my car the other day and caught an NPR segment mid-sentence, and the host was talking about a Democratic perception problem on crime. They were blah blah blah-ing how the tyrant himself mandated increased police presence in D.C. to “rid the city of violent criminals,” and incredulously noted the fact that the city’s crime rate is at a 30-year low. Y’all. Get REAL. Are we taking that stool sample at his word? In another piece of reporting in a left-leaning publication, Charles Fain Lehman* um actually-ed the fact that, in comparison to Chicago, Detroit, and other major American cities, D.C.’s crime rate is actually concerningly high. Case in point^ I’m starting to see ~dare I say~ the light shining in people like Jonathan Cowan, who blamed Democrats for leaving a void for Trump to exploit in their bungling, their whining, their high Richter scale-level mishandling of narrative. 

I’m not here to say “After Henry” is particularly revolutionary, it’s just that the horror plot that is this country which Joan calmly reminded me of makes me angry because it makes me realize: we’re doing this to ourselves. We continue doing this to ourselves! I’m tired of the panic I hear in radio voices and read in fancy turns of phrase. Think critically! Stop this hamster wheel! As my dad likes to say as an upper-cut to the libs he low-key despises, “it’s always been this bad” and, you know what, the man’s got a point this time.

That rotting tangerine in his little egg office is telling the most basic fairytale, and, yes, people far and wide are falling for it. They always have, and they always will. Meanwhile, dems are so flustered it’s embarrassing. Truth be told, I personally think some of y’all like being mad. Forreal, riddle me this: some of y’all have been mad for years. HOW? You haven’t done anything. Some of y’all have adopted the narrative that your favorite black writers** espoused out of real toil, real strife, out of being so out of fs to give for real reasons borne of real effort. You skipped all of the hard parts and claimed the attitude of someone who has given it their all. I have not seen any of you give it your all, so stop telling the story like you have. 

Revisiting “After Henry” feels less like literary nostalgia and more like civic necessity at a time when, in an albeit earnest effort to clap back at the false narratives the right is spouting, we’ve perhaps accidentally fallen for the performative outrage of our own tales. Guys. Most of us are not revolutionaries. Most of y’all have been to one protest, maybe two. The majority of your re-action is virtual, digging further into that void that only serves to let more lies slip through the cracks. Read “After Henry” to remind yourself that storytelling is a superpower, and maybe we should leave that superpower to those who know what to do with all the pieces of a plot. To those who have lived the plot. Maybe, just maybe, we should, for the love of god, stop whining. The world will keep spinning for you and me. Get a grip. Get sweaty.

_{*who, to be clear, his AllSides rating is “leaning right,” but of course, as a staff writer of a liberal publication, this feature piece, for the purpose of this here point I’ve yet to make, is of the democrat variety.}

^{**James Baldwin; June Jordan; Audre Lorde; Amiri Baraka; Gil Scott-Heron; Toni Cade Bambara; Ntozake Shange.}