• Dr. S. ADINARAYANAN

Joan Didion, a contemporary American author who demands consideration both as a non-fiction author and as a fiction author, is regarded a novelist, an essayist, and a New Journalist. An empirical approach to Didion’s works shows a progressive change in her perception of the connection of literature to life. The present research explores the impact of existentialist doctrines - both technically and thematically - throughout four major novels of Didion, and it is the critical study to suggest existentialism as granting a logical method by which to perceive the whole canon - focusing particularly on the existential experiences of the female protagonists in the novels. The study analyses Run River (1963) and A Book of Common Prayer (1977) which graphically reveal the existential experience of an individual entangled in Bad Faith. The writings of Didion present a comprehensive detail about the Existentialist struggle in America. America could have been regarded as an “Existential” nation from the angle that it acquired several features that would have led Sartre or Camus to experience several classic symptoms connected with the ideology. Alienation, angst, nausea, ennui and a swarm of similarly dreary physical and mental conditions could have easily been found within the nation. In conjunction with the increasing refinement of her fiction, there remains a core value consistent with the existential perspective Didion explores in each novel. Both in terms of form and content, technique and theme, the novels of Didion fit easily under the rubric of existentialism.

Existentialistic Perspective in the Select Novels of Joan Didion

"Existentialistic Perspective in the Select Novels of Joan Didion", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.6, Issue 2, page no.156-175, February-2019, Available :http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIRAA06037.pdf

"Existentialistic Perspective in the Select Novels of Joan Didion", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org | UGC and issn Approved), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.6, Issue 2, page no. pp156-175, February-2019, Available at : http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIRAA06037.pdf