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Joan Didion

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Joan Didion
Didion in 1970
Didion in 1970
Born(1934-12-05)December 5, 1934
Sacramento, California, U.S.
DiedDecember 23, 2021(2021-12-23) (aged 87)
New York City, U.S.
Occupation
  • Novelist
  • journalist
  • memoirist
  • essayist
EducationUniversity of California, Berkeley (BA)
Period1956–2021
Subject
  • Memoir
  • drama
Literary movementNew Journalism[1]
Notable works
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1964; died 2003)​
ChildrenQuintana Roo Dunne
Relatives

Joan Didion (/ˈdɪdiən/; December 5, 1934 – December 23, 2021) was an American writer and journalist. She is considered one of the pioneers of New Journalism, along with Gay Talese, Hunter S. Thompson, and Tom Wolfe.[2][3][4]

Didion's career began in the 1950s after she won an essay contest sponsored by Vogue magazine.[5] She would go on to publish essays in The Saturday Evening Post, Life, Esquire, The New York Review of Books, and The New Yorker. Her writing during the 1960s through the late 1970s engaged audiences in the realities of the counterculture of the 1960s, the Hollywood lifestyle, and the history and culture of California. Didion's political writing in the 1980s and 1990s concentrated on the subtext of political rhetoric and the United States's foreign policy in Latin America.[6][7] In 1991, she wrote the earliest mainstream media article to suggest that the Central Park Five had been wrongfully convicted.[5] With her husband John Gregory Dunne, Didion wrote multiple screenplays, including The Panic in Needle Park (1971), A Star Is Born (1976), and Up Close & Personal (1996). In 2005, she won the National Book Award for Nonfiction and was a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for The Year of Magical Thinking, a memoir of the year following the sudden death of her husband. She later adapted the book into a play that premiered on Broadway in 2007. In 2013, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal by president Barack Obama.[8] Didion was profiled in the 2017 Netflix documentary The Center Will Not Hold, directed by her nephew Griffin Dunne.

Early life and education

[edit]

Didion was born on December 5, 1934, in Sacramento, California,[9][10] to Eduene (née Jerrett) and Frank Reese Didion.[9] She had one brother, five years her junior, James Jerrett Didion, who became a real estate executive.[11] Didion recalled writing things down as early as age five,[9] although she said she never saw herself as a writer until after her work had been published. She identified as a "shy, bookish child," an avid reader, who pushed herself to overcome social anxiety through acting and public speaking. During her adolescence, she would type out Ernest Hemingway's works to learn how his sentence structures worked.[10]

Didion's early education was nontraditional. She attended kindergarten and first grade, but, because her father was a finance officer in the Army Air Corps and the family constantly relocated, she did not attend school regularly.[12] In 1943 or early 1944, her family returned to Sacramento, and her father went to Detroit to negotiate defense contracts for World War II. Didion wrote in her 2003 memoir Where I Was From that moving so often made her feel as if she were a perpetual outsider.[10]

Didion received a B.A. in English from University of California, Berkeley, in 1956.[13] During her senior year, she won first place in the "Prix de Paris" essay contest, sponsored by Vogue,[14] and was awarded a job as a research assistant at the magazine. The topic of her winning essay was the San Francisco architect William Wurster.[15][16]

Career

[edit]

Vogue

[edit]

During her seven years at Vogue, from 1956 to 1964, Didion worked her way up from promotional copywriter to associate feature editor.[14][16] Mademoiselle published Didion's article "Berkeley’s Giant: The University of California" in January 1960.[17] While at Vogue, and homesick for California, she wrote her first novel, Run, River (1963), about a Sacramento family as it comes apart.[9] Writer and friend John Gregory Dunne helped her edit the book.[12] John—the younger brother of author, businessman, and television mystery show host Dominick Dunne[12]—was writing for Time magazine at the time. He and Didion married in 1964.

The couple moved to Los Angeles in 1964, intending to stay only temporarily, but California remained their home for the next 20 years. In 1966, they adopted a daughter, whom they named Quintana Roo Dunne.[9][18] The couple wrote many newsstand-magazine assignments. "She and Dunne started doing that work with an eye to covering the bills, and then a little more," Nathan Heller reported in The New Yorker. "Their [Saturday Evening] Post rates allowed them to rent a tumbledown Hollywood mansion, buy a banana-colored Corvette Stingray, raise a child, and dine well."[19]

In Los Angeles, they settled in Los Feliz from 1963 to 1971, and then, after living in Malibu for eight years, she and Dunne moved to Brentwood Park, a quiet, affluent, residential neighborhood.[20][15]

Slouching Towards Bethlehem

[edit]

In 1968, Didion published her first nonfiction book, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, a collection of magazine pieces about her experiences in California.[21][15] Cited as an example of New Journalism, it used novel-like writing to cover the non-fiction realities of hippie counterculture.[22] She wrote from a personal perspective, adding her own feelings and memories to situations, inventing details and quotes to make the stories more vivid, and using metaphors to give the reader a better understanding of the disordered subjects of her essays: politicians, artists, or just people living an American life.[23] The New York Times characterized the "grace, sophistication, nuance, [and] irony" of her writing.[24]

1970s

[edit]

Didion's novel Play It as It Lays, set in Hollywood, was published in 1970, and A Book of Common Prayer appeared in 1977. In 1979, she published The White Album, another collection of her magazine pieces from Life, Esquire, The Saturday Evening Post, The New York Times, and The New York Review of Books.[15] In The White Album's title essay, Didion documented an episode she experienced in the summer of 1968. After undergoing psychiatric evaluation, she was diagnosed as having had an attack of vertigo and nausea.

After periods of partial blindness in 1972, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, but remained in remission throughout her life.[16][25] In her essay entitled "In Bed," Didion explained that she experienced chronic migraines.[26]

Dunne and Didion worked closely for most of their careers. Much of their writing is therefore intertwined. They co-wrote a number of screenplays, including a 1972 film adaptation of her novel Play It as It Lays that starred Anthony Perkins and Tuesday Weld and the screenplay for the 1976 film of A Star is Born.[27] They also spent several years adapting the biography of journalist Jessica Savitch into the 1996 Robert Redford and Michelle Pfeiffer film, Up Close & Personal.[12][27]

1980s and 1990s

[edit]

Didion's book-length essay Salvador (1983) was written after a two-week trip to El Salvador with her husband. The next year, she published the novel Democracy, the story of a long, but unrequited love affair between a wealthy heiress and an older man, a CIA officer, against the background of the Cold War and the Vietnam War. Her 1987 nonfiction book Miami looked at the different communities in that city.[12] In 1988, the couple moved from California to New York City.[16]

In a prescient New York Review of Books piece of 1991, a year after the various trials of the Central Park Five, Didion dissected serious flaws in the prosecution's case, making her the earliest mainstream writer to view the guilty verdicts as miscarriages of justice.[28] She suggested the defendants were found guilty because of a sociopolitical narrative with racial overtones that clouded the judgment of the court.[29][30][31]

In 1992, Didion published After Henry, a collection of twelve geographical essays and a personal memorial for Henry Robbins, who was Didion's friend and editor until his death in 1979.[32] She published The Last Thing He Wanted, a romantic thriller, in 1996.[33]

The Year of Magical Thinking

[edit]

In 2003, Didion's daughter Quintana Roo Dunne developed pneumonia that progressed to septic shock and she was comatose in an intensive-care unit when Didion's husband suddenly died of a heart attack on December 30.[12] Didion delayed his funeral arrangements for approximately three months until Quintana was well enough to attend.[12]

On October 4, 2004, Didion began writing The Year of Magical Thinking, a narrative of her response to the death of her husband and the severe illness of their daughter. She finished the manuscript 88 days later on New Year's Eve.[34] Written at the age of 70, this was her first nonfiction book that was not a collection of magazine assignments.[19] She said that she found the subsequent book-tour process very therapeutic during her period of mourning.[35] Documenting the grief she experienced after the sudden death of her husband, the book was called a "masterpiece of two genres: memoir and investigative journalism" and won several awards.[35]

Visiting Los Angeles after her father's funeral, Quintana fell at the airport, hit her head on the pavement and required brain surgery for hematoma.[34] After progressing toward recovery in 2004, Quintana died of acute pancreatitis on August 26, 2005, aged 39, during Didion's New York promotion for The Year of Magical Thinking.[35] Didion wrote about Quintana's death in the 2011 book Blue Nights.[9]

2000s

[edit]
Didion at the Brooklyn Book Festival in 2008

Didion was living in an apartment on East 71st Street in Manhattan in 2005.[34] Everyman's Library published We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live, a 2006 compendium of much of Didion's writing, including the full content of her first seven published nonfiction books (Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The White Album, Salvador, Miami, After Henry, Political Fictions, and Where I Was From), with an introduction by her contemporary, the critic John Leonard.[36]

Didion began working with English playwright and director David Hare on a one-woman stage adaptation of The Year of Magical Thinking in 2007. Produced by Scott Rudin, the Broadway play featured Vanessa Redgrave. Although Didion was hesitant to write for the theater, she eventually found the genre, which was new to her, exciting.[35]

Didion wrote early drafts of the screenplay for an untitled HBO biopic directed by Robert Benton on Katharine Graham. Sources say it may trace the paper's reporting on the Watergate scandal.[37]

Later works

[edit]

In 2011, Knopf published Blue Nights, a memoir about aging that also focused on Didion's relationship with her late daughter.[38] More generally, the book deals with the anxieties Didion experienced about adopting and raising a child, as well as the aging process.[39]

A photograph of Didion shot by Juergen Teller was used as part of the 2015 spring-summer campaign of the luxury French fashion brand Céline, while previously the clothing company Gap had featured her in a 1989 campaign.[16][40] Didion's nephew Griffin Dunne directed a 2017 Netflix documentary about her, Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold.[41] In it, Didion discusses her writing and personal life, including the deaths of her husband and daughter, adding context to her books The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights.[42]

In 2021, Didion published Let Me Tell You What I Mean, a collection of 12 essays she wrote between 1968 and 2000.[43]

Death

[edit]

Didion died from complications of Parkinson's disease at her home in Manhattan on December 23, 2021, at the age of 87.[9]

Writing style and themes

[edit]

Didion viewed the structure of the sentence as essential to her work. In the New York Times article "Why I Write" (1976),[44] Didion remarked, "To shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that sentence, as definitely and inflexibly as the position of a camera alters the meaning of the object photographed... The arrangement of the words matters, and the arrangement you want can be found in the picture in your mind... The picture tells you how to arrange the words and the arrangement of the words tells you, or tells me, what's going on in the picture."[44]

Didion was heavily influenced by Ernest Hemingway, whose writing taught her the importance of how sentences work in a text. Her other influences included George Eliot and Henry James, who wrote "perfect, indirect, complicated sentences".[45]

Didion was also an observer of journalists,[46] believing the difference between the process of fiction and nonfiction is the element of discovery that takes place in nonfiction, which happens not during the writing, but during the research.[45]

Rituals were a part of Didion's creative process. At the end of the day, she would take a break from writing to remove herself from the "pages",[45] saying that without the distance, she could not make proper edits. She would end her day by cutting out and editing prose, not reviewing the work until the following day. She would sleep in the same room as her work, saying: "That's one reason I go home to Sacramento to finish things. Somehow the book doesn't leave you when you're right next to it."[45]

In a notorious 1980 essay, "Joan Didion: Only Disconnect," Barbara Grizzuti Harrison called Didion a "neurasthenic Cher" whose style was "a bag of tricks" and whose "subject is always herself".[47] In 2011, New York magazine reported that the Harrison criticism "still gets her (Didion's) hackles up, decades later".[48]

Critic Hilton Als suggested that Didion is reread often "because of the honesty of the voice."[49]

Personal life

[edit]

For several years in her 20s, Didion was in a relationship with Noel E. Parmentel Jr., a political pundit and figure on the New York literary and cultural scene.[50] According to Didion's husband, John Gregory Dunne, he actually met her through Parmentel, and Didion and Dunne remained friends for six years before embarking on a romantic relationship. As he later recalled, when they shared a celebratory lunch after Dunne finished reading the galleys for her first novel, Run, River, "while [h]er [significant] other was out of town, it happened."[51] Didion and Dunne subsequently married in January 1964 and remained together until his death from a heart attack in 2003. Breaking a long-held silence on Didion, whose work he had championed and for which he found publishers, Parmentel was interviewed for a 1996 article in New York magazine.[52] He had been angered in the 1970s by what he felt was a thinly veiled portrait of him in Didion's novel A Book of Common Prayer.[53]

In 1966, while living in Los Angeles, she and John adopted a daughter, whom they named Quintana Roo Dunne.[9][18]

A Republican in her early years, Didion later drifted toward the Democratic Party, "without ever quite endorsing [its] core beliefs."[54]

As late as 2011, she smoked precisely five cigarettes per day.[55]

Awards and honors

[edit]

The Joan Didion: What She Means Exhibition

[edit]

The Hammer Museum at University of California, Los Angeles, organized the exhibition Joan Didion: What She Means. Curated by The New Yorker contributor and writer Hilton Als, the group show was on view from 2022 and is scheduled to travel to the Pérez Art Museum Miami in 2023. Joan Didion: What She Means pays homage to the writer and thinker through the lens of nearly 50 modern and contemporary international artists such as Félix González-Torres to Betye Saar, Vija Celmins, Maren Hassinger, Silke Otto-Knapp, John Koch, Ed Ruscha, Pat Steir, among others.[72][73]

Published works

[edit]
See also: Joan Didion bibliography

Fiction

[edit]

Nonfiction

[edit]

Screenplays and plays

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ Menand, Louis (August 17, 2015). "The Radicalization of Joan Didion". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Archived from the original on November 7, 2017. Retrieved October 31, 2017. "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" is a classic of what was later named the New Journalism.
  2. ^ Heller, Nathan (December 23, 2021). "What Joan Didion Saw". The New Yorker. Retrieved May 23, 2023.
  3. ^ "Joan Didion, peerless prose stylist, dies at 87". AP News. December 23, 2021. Retrieved May 23, 2023.
  4. ^ Kirkpatrick, Emily (December 23, 2021). "Joan Didion, Literary Titan, Dies at 87". Vanity Fair. Retrieved May 23, 2023.
  5. ^ a b "From The Archive: Joan Didion On Hollywood, Her Personal Style & The Central Park 5". British Vogue. February 19, 2020. Archived from the original on February 19, 2021. Retrieved February 19, 2021.
  6. ^ Bacharach, Jacob. "Joan Didion Cast Off the Fictions of American Politics". The New Republic. Retrieved September 13, 2023.
  7. ^ Ramos, Santiago (February 18, 2022). "Vanities Come to Dust". Commonweal. Retrieved September 13, 2023.
  8. ^ a b Daunt, Tina (July 3, 2013). "George Lucas, Joan Didion to Receive White House Honors". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on July 7, 2013. Retrieved July 4, 2013.
  9. ^ a b c d e f g h Grimes, William (December 23, 2021). "Joan Didion, 'New Journalist' Who Explored Culture and Chaos, Dies at 87". The New York Times. Archived from the original on December 29, 2021. Retrieved December 23, 2021.
  10. ^ a b c "Joan Didion Biography and Interview". achievement.org. American Academy of Achievement. Archived from the original on January 2, 2019. Retrieved April 3, 2019.
  11. ^ "James Didion Obituary (1939 - 2020) Monterey Herald". Legacy.com. Retrieved January 17, 2022.
  12. ^ a b c d e f g Horwell, Veronica (December 23, 2021). "Joan Didion obituary". The Guardian. Archived from the original on December 24, 2021. Retrieved December 24, 2021.
  13. ^ Als, Hilton (Spring 2006). "Joan Didion, The Art of Nonfiction No. 1". The Paris Review. Archived from the original on December 13, 2019. Retrieved September 14, 2017.
  14. ^ a b "Joan Didion – California Museum". californiamuseum.org. May 8, 2014. Archived from the original on December 21, 2019. Retrieved June 16, 2017.
  15. ^ a b c d Kakutani, Michiko (June 10, 1979). "Joan Didion: Staking Out California". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on April 4, 2020. Retrieved June 16, 2017.
  16. ^ a b c d e Codinha, Alessandra (December 23, 2021). "Joan Didion Has Died At 87". Vogue. Archived from the original on December 24, 2021. Retrieved December 30, 2021.
  17. ^ "CHRONICLE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA" (PDF). Fall 1998. Archived (PDF) from the original on December 24, 2021. Retrieved December 24, 2021.
  18. ^ a b Menand, Louis (August 24, 2015). "Out of Bethlehem: The radicalization of Joan Didion". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on August 17, 2015. Retrieved August 17, 2015.
  19. ^ a b Heller, Nathan (January 25, 2021). "What We Get Wrong About Joan Didion". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on February 2, 2021. Retrieved February 2, 2021.
  20. ^ "Remembering a Malibu long gone". Malibu Times. Archived from the original on September 1, 2021. Retrieved March 16, 2020.
  21. ^ "Joan Didion (1934-)" in Jean C. Stine and Daniel G. Marowski (eds.) Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 32. Detroit: Gale Research, 1985, pp. 142-150. Accessed April 10, 2009.
  22. ^ Staub, Michael E. (1997). "Black Panthers, New Journalism, and the Rewriting of the Sixties". Representations (57): 52–72. doi:10.2307/2928663. ISSN 0734-6018. JSTOR 2928663.
  23. ^ Muggli, Mark Z. (1987). "The Poetics of Joan Didion's Journalism". American Literature. 59 (3): 402–421. doi:10.2307/2927124. ISSN 0002-9831. JSTOR 2927124. Archived from the original on March 18, 2020. Retrieved December 30, 2021.
  24. ^ Wakefield, Dan (June 21, 1968). "Places, People and Personalities". The New York Times. Archived from the original on January 12, 2018. Retrieved January 11, 2017.
  25. ^ Gerrie, Anthea (September 21, 2007). "Interview: A stage version of Joan Didion's painfully honest account of her husband's death comes to London". The Independent. London. Archived from the original on September 25, 2015. Retrieved September 1, 2017.
  26. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on November 9, 2020. Retrieved November 6, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  27. ^ a b c Nawotka, Ed (December 23, 2021). "Joan Didion, Revered Journalist and Novelist, Dies at 87". Publishersweekly.com. Archived from the original on December 24, 2021. Retrieved December 28, 2021.
  28. ^ Didion, Joan (January 17, 1991). "New York: Sentimental Journeys". New York Review of Books. Archived from the original on November 13, 2021. Retrieved July 30, 2019.
  29. ^ Costantini, Cristina (December 21, 2012). "Film Gives Voice to Men Falsely Convicted in Central Park Jogger Case". ABC News. Archived from the original on November 10, 2021. Retrieved July 30, 2019.
  30. ^ Seymour, Gene (April 17, 2013). "'Koch', 'The Central Park Five' and the End of Doubt". The Nation. Archived from the original on July 30, 2019. Retrieved July 30, 2019.
  31. ^ Young, Cathy (June 24, 2019). "The Problem With "When They See Us"". The Bulwark. Archived from the original on July 2, 2019. Retrieved July 30, 2019.
  32. ^ "After Henry". Publishersweekly.com. May 4, 1992. Archived from the original on February 6, 2017. Retrieved December 30, 2021.
  33. ^ Seetoodeh, Ramin (September 27, 2017). "Dee Rees to Direct Movie Adaptation of Joan Didion Novel The Last Thing He Wanted". Variety. Archived from the original on January 30, 2021. Retrieved December 30, 2021.
  34. ^ a b c Van Meter, Jonathan (September 29, 2005). "When Everything Changes". New York Magazine.
  35. ^ a b c d "Seeing Things Straight: Gibson Fay-Leblanc interviews Joan Didion". Guernica. April 15, 2006. Archived from the original on June 1, 2006.
  36. ^ "We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live". Penguin Random House. Archived from the original on November 28, 2021. Retrieved December 29, 2021.
  37. ^ Fleming, Michael (November 14, 2008). "HBO sets Katharine Graham biopic". Variety. Archived from the original on December 23, 2021. Retrieved December 23, 2021.
  38. ^ O'Rourke, Meghan (November 23, 2011). "Joan Didion's Blue Nights isn't about grieving for her daughter. It's about a mother's regrets". Slate. Archived from the original on September 7, 2018. Retrieved December 24, 2021.
  39. ^ Banville, John (November 3, 2011). "Joan Didion Mourns Her Daughter". The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 23, 2017. Retrieved February 9, 2017.
  40. ^ Stebner, Beth (January 7, 2015). "Joan Didion stars in Céline Spring/Summer 2015 campaign". NY Daily News. Archived from the original on July 22, 2015. Retrieved January 13, 2015.
  41. ^ Kenny, Glenn (October 24, 2017). "Review: A 'Joan Didion' Portrait, From an Intimate Source". The New York Times. Archived from the original on November 2, 2017. Retrieved November 2, 2017.
  42. ^ Wilkinson, Alissa (October 25, 2017). "Joan Didion is more interesting than the new Netflix documentary about her". Vox. Archived from the original on July 10, 2018. Retrieved July 10, 2018.
  43. ^ McAlpin, Heller (January 27, 2021). "Joan Didion's 'Let Me Tell You What I Mean' Offers Plenty Of 'Journalistic Gold'". NPR.org. Archived from the original on February 1, 2021. Retrieved February 1, 2021.
  44. ^ a b Didion, Joan (December 5, 1976). "Why I Write". The New York Times. p. 270.
  45. ^ a b c d "The Art of Fiction No. 71: Joan Didion". The Paris Review. No. 74. Interviewed by Linda Kuehl. Fall–Winter 1978.
  46. ^ Braman, Sandra. "Joan Didion".
  47. ^ Harrison, Barbara Grizzutti (1980) "Joan Didion: Only Disconnect" in Off Center: Essays. New York: The Dial Press. Harrison's essay may be read online at "Joan Didion: Disconnect".Archived October 27, 2014, at the Wayback Machine (Retrieved October 16, 2014).
  48. ^ Kachka, Boris (October 14, 2011). "I Was No Longer Afraid to Die. I Was Now Afraid Not to Die". New York Magazine. Retrieved November 8, 2022.
  49. ^ Fragoso, Sam (June 6, 2023). "Hilton Als on Why Joan Didion and James Baldwin Stand Side-by-Side on His Bookshelf". Literary Hub. Retrieved June 6, 2023.
  50. ^ Flanagan, Caitlin (May 16, 2022). "Chasing Joan Didion". The Atlantic.
  51. ^ Dunne, John Gregory (June 1990). "Joan Didion". Esquire.
  52. ^ Hall, Linda (September 2, 1996). "The Writer Who Came In From the Cold". New York: 28, 31–32.
  53. ^ Powers, Thomas (November 3, 2022). "Fire or Earthquake: Joan Didion's Gaze". London Review of Books.
  54. ^ "Joan Didion obituary". The Times. December 25, 2021. Retrieved November 18, 2022.
  55. ^ "Joan Didion on love, loss and writing". The Globe and Mail. November 14, 2011.
  56. ^ "American Academy of Arts and Letters Members". American Academy of Arts and Letters. Archived from the original on August 11, 2019. Retrieved March 25, 2020.
  57. ^ "MacDowell Medal winners 1960–2011". The Telegraph. April 13, 2011. Archived from the original on January 10, 2022.[dead link]
  58. ^ "Saint Louis Literary Award". Saint Louis University. Archived from the original on August 23, 2016. Retrieved July 25, 2016.
  59. ^ Saint Louis University Library Associates. "Saint Louis University Library Associates Announce Winner of 2002 Literary Award". Archived from the original on September 20, 2016. Retrieved July 25, 2016.
  60. ^ Lueck, Thomas J. (February 20, 2002). "Polk Awards to BBC, The Times, The Daily News and The Wall Street Journal". The New York Times.
  61. ^ "The Year of Magical Thinking". National Book Foundation. Retrieved November 8, 2022.
  62. ^ "Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement". achievement.org. American Academy of Achievement. Archived from the original on December 15, 2016. Retrieved December 29, 2020.
  63. ^ "Joan Didion Biography Photo". 2006. Archived from the original on January 2, 2019. Retrieved December 29, 2020. American Academy of Achievement Awards Council member Justice Anthony M. Kennedy presents the Golden Plate Award to author Joan Didion at the 2006 International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles, California.
  64. ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Archived from the original on May 24, 2021. Retrieved May 24, 2021.
  65. ^ "Primée par le Médicis essai, Joan Didion dit son amour pour la France". Le Monde (in French). November 15, 2007.
  66. ^ "Joan Didion". National Book Foundation. Retrieved November 8, 2022.
    (With citation, introduction by Michael Cunningham, acceptance speech by Didion, and biographical blurb.)
  67. ^ Van Gelder, Lawrence (September 11, 2007). "Arts, Briefly: A Medal for Joan Didion". The New York Times. Archived from the original on November 26, 2022. Retrieved September 5, 2023.
  68. ^ McNary, Dave (January 17, 2007). "Writers honor Didion". Variety. Archived from the original on September 5, 2023. Retrieved September 5, 2023.
  69. ^ "Ten honorary degrees awarded at Commencement". Harvard Gazette. June 4, 2009. Archived from the original on July 23, 2011. Retrieved September 23, 2009.
  70. ^ "Honorary degrees". The Boston Globe. May 24, 2011. p. B16. Archived from the original on December 25, 2021. Retrieved December 25, 2021.
  71. ^ "President Obama to Award 2012 National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal". obamawhitehouse.archives.gov. July 3, 2013.
  72. ^ "Joan Didion: What She Means | Hammer Museum". hammer.ucla.edu. October 15, 2022. Retrieved July 12, 2023.
  73. ^ "Joan Didion: What She Means • Pérez Art Museum Miami". Pérez Art Museum Miami. Retrieved July 12, 2023.
  74. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p "List of late author Joan Didion's published books". ABC News/AP. December 23, 2021. Archived from the original on December 24, 2021. Retrieved December 23, 2021.
  75. ^ "Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion review – a masterclass in minimalism". the Guardian. February 22, 2021. Archived from the original on December 27, 2021. Retrieved December 26, 2021.

Further reading

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[edit]
Wikiquote has quotations related to Joan Didion.
External media
Audio
audio icon 2005 audio interview of Joan Didion by Susan Stamberg of National Public Radio – RealAudio
audio icon Didion and Vanessa Redgrave on NPR's Morning Edition
audio icon Didion on NPR's Fresh Air discusses The Year of Magical Thinking
audio icon Podcast #46: Joan Didion on Writing and Revising, NYPL, Tracy O'Neill, January 29, 2015
Video
video icon In Depth interview with Didion, May 7, 2000
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