Report 20.2: Dice Theory
Turns out there is no story. What are the chances? The Madness of Magical Thinking continues.
PART ONE | PART TWO | PART THREE | PART FOUR
[INTERIOR HOTEL ROOM, EARLY MORNING]
When I last saw Michael Hainey, Deputy Editor of AIR MAIL, we were marveling on a West Village street about Joan Didion. Back then, I felt like his new protégé, on the verge of a green light to bring his readers into the monumental Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne archive set to open at the New York Public Library.
But that fateful meeting was more than a week ago. And since then: nothing.
Was it even real? Or just wishful thinking?
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”
I’ve been living in the opening line of a Didion essay.
I was convinced that Joan made my connection to AIR MAIL happen. That fate had decided I would be first to open the archive. And that if you give yourself to it, New York gives back. And New York was giving back, finally.
[BOX 286: FOLDER 1]
I stopped at the door to the room.
I could not give away the rest of his shoes.
I stood there for a moment, then realized why: he would need shoes if he was to return.
If Joan doesn’t sell John’s shoes, he will come back.
If she’s not alone, he won’t.
If I write about a famous writer, people will read it.
If I’m first to the archive, it will get placed in AIR MAIL.
If New York…
Joan coined this abandonment of reason magical thinking. She fell under its spell too, when a string of implausible “if” statements helped her navigate the crash of a narrative that collapsed into nothingness.
A child dies before her mother.
A husband dies before his wife.
The frontier you thought you were from doesn’t exist.
The city you live in is just a myth.
The Coke you’re having for breakfast is just a soft drink.
And now it’s time to go to the library.
[BOX 235: FOLDER 3]
I arrived at at Grand Central about 9:30, couldn't get anyone to carry my bags or tell me where to go or even look at me. Millions of people running right past me. Finally I got so upset that I just stood there in the middle of the place and began unobtrusively crying.
[INTERIOR OFFICE TOWER LOBBY]
I’m at 335 Madison Avenue, just outside Grand Central, where the Biltmore Hotel once stood.
Flush with cash from sales of This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald checked into the Biltmore after marrying Zelda—also a prize of literary success—and was promptly kicked out for disruptive behavior. And Wallace Shawn, one of only five editors in The New Yorker’s history, used to meet J.D. Salinger here beneath the hotel’s iconic clock. Back then, being here meant something.
And everyone in the city knew what “meet me at the clock” meant. It was where romantic interludes began, where colleagues gathered, where a day on the town started. Joan Didion must have passed through here too, maybe during her Mademoiselle guest editorship just ten blocks away, or later, after she made New York her permanent home with a full-time position at Vogue.
The clock is still here. I can see it now, gilded in bronze, shelved in the lobby’s cafe like a relic. Every second it ticks moves us further from a literary history that no longer exists. An empire Didion, despite her neurotic prose and impossibly small presence, carved her name into with such precision it seemed preordained then, and impossible now.
If she were arriving here today, embarking on her literary career, she wouldn’t be writing essays for Vogue. She’d have a YouTube channel.
So why the fuck am I bothering to write anything at all? Especially a 4,000-word monster only a handful of magazines still have the resources to publish.
And even if they did, it’s not likely anyone would care.
Legacy media doesn’t have the power to bring people to a place of common understanding anymore.
The New Yorker might as well be sitting on that shelf with the Biltmore clock.
Magazines these days aren’t looking for a voice.
They’re looking for a lifeline.
Everything’s scattered. Niche. Personality-fed.
You don’t build a career. You create a stream.
I don’t need 4,000 words.
I need 400,000 followers.
Editor’s note: Didion would never spiral like this, btw.
I should just give them what they want.
What the algorithms hunt for.
Something this long, bored line of office workers, staring at their phones, could watch while waiting to order a latte.
“This café with the old-timey clock has the best matcha.”
Library. Boxes. Joan in sunglasses.
“Your date with this fashion icon awaits.”
Books. Desks. Vintage chairs.
“POV: you’ve found the perfect spot to journal.”
Thirty seconds. Done.
Cue the likes.
Instead, I consider vaulting the espresso bar, grabbing the clock, and making a mad dash down 42nd Street. To a place where time isn’t scrolled, it’s cataloged, studied, and held still—under the illusion of forever.
[EXTERIOR LIBRARY]
But I’m empty-handed when the neoclassical, temple-like façade of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building—aka the library’s main branch—comes into view on Fifth Avenue. This is Joan and John’s home now. And their adopted daughter Quintana’s too. The Dunnes’ 3,600-square-foot apartment on 71st Street was sold in April 2024. Whatever was kept was brought here, meticulously processed for public access, and stored across several hundred boxes.
[BOX 235: FOLDER 5]
My library card was stolen and it will take me 3 weeks to get another. The employees of the New York City Library seem to think that their primary function is to keep the books safe, out of the hands of the people.
[INTERIOR LIBRARY]
My belongings are searched at the entrance and, at the coat check, I’m handed a clear plastic pouch and told to put my laptop, phone, and charger in it. Pencil and paper are the only writing materials allowed and they have to go in the bag too. It’s like visiting someone in prison.
I make my way through a hall lined with artifacts celebrating The New Yorker’s 100th anniversary. Three fact checkers from 1948 eye me from their desks like an error in need of correction as I pass by holding my unseemly bag. Joan, of course, was always welcome at The New Yorker. By 1988 she had her own column and appeared in the magazine 61 times.
“Is this your first time here?” a young woman asks as soon as I enter the Brooke Russell Astor Reading Room for Rare Books and Manuscripts.
“Yes,” I say. “Yes it is.” I give my name with as much confidence as I can manage. She checks the screen behind her desk. Even the air feels archived.
I look up. We’re surrounded by glass cases that stretch to the ceiling, framed with burnished metal, holding thousands of ancient-looking books. It feels like the dividing line between preservation and impermanence.
“Is it that obvious?” I say, attempting to take the edge off all this tension.
She smiles, barely, and directs me to a seat for further processing. I’m early. The room has only just opened, but somehow there’s already someone here.
A woman occupying one of the research desks, wearing a dark suit with her hair tied back in a long ponytail is fastidiously typing with a gray box open beside her. Surely it’s one of Joan’s.
I’m not first.
And worse, this other person is a writer, and not just any writer. It’s Lesley M.M. Blume. Published. Polished. And regularly featured in none other than AIR MAIL.
[BOX 266: FOLDER 8]
She remembered sitting in the library in Demopolis, Alabama, every afternoon for most of a week. She had read back newspapers in the Demopolis library. She had followed the progress in the newspapers of a Greene County murder trial which had taken place some months before.
[ID PLEASE]
I want to leave, but before I can, I’m sent to another desk. There isn’t a hint of warmth from the woman seated at it. While she scans my driver’s license and library card, all I can think about are the incessant emails I sent here, name-dropping “my editor, Michael Hainey, at AIR MAIL” like it was a line of credit.
Next, I’m led to a solemn man in a cardigan and wire-framed glasses stationed behind a waist-high wall. Oh god. To reach him, I have to walk past Lesley. She doesn’t even look up. She’s probably on a deadline.
“Here’s the list of boxes you requested,” the solemn man says, turning his screen toward me. “Let me know which you’d like to start with because it may already be in use by others in the room.”
You mean Lesley? I almost blurt out. This is not what I expected. This wasn’t part of the plan. Lesley has my boxes. She has my story. She has my life. And she has Joan — she practically is Joan!
“Which box would you like?” He asks again.
“Let’s start at the top,” I say, pulling myself together. “Box 235, please.”
It’s available. The solemn man sets the dull grey box down in front of me, and when he does, the intensity of this whole experience — something I was expecting but somehow hadn’t felt yet — washes over me.
No wonder everyone’s so serious. Someone’s things are in there.
“Remove only one folder at a time,” the solemn man says. “Keep it flat on the table. Move materials from right to left. Don’t lift anything out of the folder. Don’t stand on the chairs.”
Don’t stand on the chairs?
I sign for the box and walk like a pallbearer carrying an urn to a desk as far from Lesley’s as possible. Carefully, exactly as instructed, I remove the first folder, place it on the desk, take a breath. Open it.
And there she is. Joan Didion.
Eighteen years old.
Very much alive.
END PART TWO
Dice Theory belongs to a series of reports on Joan Didion called The Madness of Magical Thinking. Read Part Three.