Publish my diary after I die and I'd die again – of shame -

With the news that writer and journalist Joan Didion’s deeply private therapy notes are being released, Helen Coffey dives into the ethics of putting out artists’ work posthumously

- Helen Coffey

One of the scariest things I’ve ever done is read my diary out loud to a room full of strangers. Perhaps that says more about the kind of soft-handed life I’ve led than it does about the source material, but regardless – I’ve rarely known terror like it.

A friend of mine had organised a charity fundraising event, selling tickets to hear people ritually humiliate themselves by reading out excerpts from the journals of their youth. I gamely agreed to participate as a performer before I cracked open the musings of my teenage years and early twenties for the first time in a decade. By the time I’d actually looked at them, it was too late to change my mind. I couldn’t renege now – it was for charity – but oh, how I wanted to.

I don’t embarrass easily, but there’s something about seeing it in black and white – or purple and cream, during that stint I had splashed out on a coloured fountain pen cartridge and embossed Paperblanks notebook – that plunges you right back into all the searing insecurities and heartaches of a thankfully bygone era. All that secret yearning and humiliation and pain and angst – so much angst! – poured out in ink and held fast by paper, done so in the firm belief that no one, not in this lifetime or the next, would ever read them. Little did 18-year-old me imagine that her older self would betray that confidence, exposing her most vulnerable parts and poking fun of them in a London pub for cheap laughs.

But at least I had some choice in the matter. I signed up to read aloud voluntarily, I was the one in control of what made the cut. Picking my extracts with care, I opted for funnier passages while redacting the more troubling or shameful elements. Joan Didion, the celebrated American writer and journalist, was given no such choice – a fact that doesn’t sit particularly comfortably.