The White Album
by Joan Didion
1.
WE TELL OURSELVES STORIES in order to live. The
princess is caged in the consulate. The man with the
candy will lead the children into the sea. The naked
woman on the ledge outside the window on the six-
teenth floor is a victim of accidie, or the naked woman
is an exhibitionist, and it would be "interesting" to
know which. We tell ourselves that it makes some dif-
ference whether the naked woman is about to commit
a mortal sin or is about to register a political protest or
is about to be, the Aristophanic view, snatched back to
the human condition by the fireman in priest's clothing
just visible in the window behind her, the one smiling
at the telephoto lens. We look for the sermon in the
suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of
five. We interpret what we see, select the most work-
able Of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially
if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line
upon disparate images, by the • 'ideas" with which we
have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria
which is our actual experience.
Or at least we do for a while. I am talking here
about a time when I began to doubt the premises of all
the stories I had ever told myself, a common condition
but one I found troubling
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