Joan Didion, 1977, responding to her audience after her first public reading -The Poetry Center

Full-program video with downloadable audio option at Poetry Center Digital Archive: diva.sfsu.edu/collections/poe...
"...Nonfiction forces me into reportorial situations where very often I’m exposed to things that turn up later in fiction.” Joan Didion responds to a question from the audience, after reading from A Book of Common Prayer, for The Poetry Center at San Francisco State University. Asked about the presence of joy in her work, she objects to the portrayal of her work as depressing, and concludes by stating: “This book seems to me to be full of joy. It’s just not happy, but it does have joy.”
This first-ever public reading by Didion takes place February 23, 1977, in the César Chavez Student Center at SF State. The full-program video includes Didion reading all of part One, eleven chapters, of her new novel, then entertaining questions on her writing from the audience for an additional 20 minutes.
#poetrycenterarchivegoeslive #joandidion

[@adh-dream]

She seemed pissed off when she just walked off the stage like that... 😐

[@ZenGrammy]

I think she looks about to cry, as though she just woke up to the thought that perhaps joy and happiness really is missing from her life. She also looks and sounds stoned on tranquilizers.

[@Don.Challenger]

For a moment there she thought the laughter - then the clapping - was taking her thoughts on joy as an emotion being separate from other emotions as a joke when it was meaningful, but I think that the question time (of her reading) was up (were there other readers yet to go, or was it just 9 o'clock, so to say, and time to leave and the signal went out). As to medicants: the man introducing her said it was her first audience reading, I'd need to see her elsewise to judge her typical performance persona, and really wasn't everyone on tranquilizers back then?