maxsaute

"In psychology and cognitive science, magical thinking is non-scientific causal reasoning (e.g. superstition) According to Frazer, magical thinking depends on two laws: the law of similarity (an effect resembles its cause), and the law of contagion (things which were once in physical contact maintain a connection even after physical contact has been broken)." Joan Didion's descriptions of her life in the years preceding and the years following her husband’s sudden and unexpected death do not fall short of tragic. Her accounts of the medical procedures done in the eleven minutes after his heart attack, and her year of grieving rely on both raw narratives, scattered contemplations, and detailed medical terminology. Her reflections on time, her initial inability to grasp the reality of John's and her own mortality, and the claims that humans oppose change and unconsciously reject death further enrich the novel. "We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we are. As we are no longer. As we will one day not be at all." - Joan Didion, "The Year of Magical Thinking"

2023-02-08 07:47