2021/12/24

Joan Didion - Wikipedia

Joan Didion - Wikipedia

Joan Didion

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Joan Didion
Didion at the 2008 Brooklyn Book Festival
Didion at the 2008 Brooklyn Book Festival
BornDecember 5, 1934
Sacramento, California, U.S.
DiedDecember 23, 2021 (aged 87)
New York City, U.S.
Occupation
  • Novelist
  • memoirist
  • essayist
EducationUniversity of California, Berkeley (BA)
Period1963–2017
Subject
  • Memoir
  • drama
Literary movementNew Journalism[1]
Notable works
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1964; died 2003)​
Children1
Relatives

Joan Didion (/ˈdɪdiən/; December 5, 1934 – December 23, 2021) was an American writer who launched her career in the 1960s after winning an essay contest sponsored by Vogue magazine.[2] Her writing during the 1960s through the late 1970s engaged audiences in the realities of the counterculture of the '60s and the Hollywood lifestyle. Her political writing often concentrated on the subtext of political and social rhetoric. In 1991, she wrote the earliest mainstream media article to suggest the Central Park Five had been wrongfully convicted.[2] 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 Biography/Autobiography for The Year of Magical Thinking. She later adapted the book into a play, which premiered on Broadway in 2007. In 2017, Didion was profiled in the 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,[3][4] to Frank Reese and Eduene (née Jerrett) Didion. Didion recalled writing things down as early as the age of five, though she said that she never saw herself as a writer until after her work had been published. She identified as a "shy, bookish child" who pushed herself to overcome social anxiety through acting and public speaking. She read everything she could get her hands on. She spent her adolescence typing out Ernest Hemingway's works to learn more about how sentence structures work.[4]

Didion's early education was not traditional. She attended kindergarten and first grade, but because her father was in the Army Air Corps during World War II and her family constantly relocated, she did not attend school regularly. 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 like a perpetual outsider.[4]

In 1956, Didion received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of California, Berkeley.[5] During her senior year, she won first place in the "Prix de Paris"[6] essay contest sponsored by Vogue, and was awarded a job as a research assistant at the magazine, having written a story on the San Francisco architect William Wilson Wurster.[7]

Career[edit]

During her seven years at Vogue, Didion worked her way up from promotional copywriter to associate feature editor.[6] In January 1960, Mademoiselle, published Didion's article Berkeley’s Giant: The University of California.[8] While at Vogue, and homesick for California, she wrote her first novel, Run, River, which was published in 1963. Writer and friend John Gregory Dunne helped her edit the book, and the two moved into an apartment together. A year later they married, and Didion returned to California with her new husband. The two 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."[9] In 1968, she published her first work of nonfiction, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, a collection of magazine pieces about her experiences in California.[10][7] The New York Times referred to it as containing "grace, sophistication, nuance, [and] irony".[11]

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 magazine pieces that previously appeared in Life, Esquire, The Saturday Evening Post, The New York Times, and The New York Review of Books.[citation needed]

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 Cuban expatriate community in that city.[citation needed]

In a prescient New York Review of Books piece of 1991, a year after the various trials of the Central Park Five had ended, Didion dissected serious flaws in the prosecution's case, becoming the earliest mainstream writer to view the guilty verdicts as a miscarriage of justice.[12] She suggested the Five were found guilty because of a sociopolitical narrative with racial overtones that clouded the court's judgment.[13][14][15]

In 1992, she published After Henry, a collection of twelve geographical essays and a personal memorial for Henry Robbins, who was Didion's friend and editor from 1966 until his death in 1979. In 1996, she published The Last Thing He Wanted, a romantic thriller. Dunne and Didion worked closely together 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. They also spent eight years adapting the biography of journalist Jessica Savitch into the Robert Redford and Michelle Pfeiffer film Up Close & Personal.[citation needed]

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, Quintana Roo Dunne Michael, on October 4, 2004, and finished the manuscript 88 days later on New Year's Eve.[16] Written at the age of seventy, this was her first nonfiction book that was not a collection of magazine assignments.[9] She went on a book tour following the book's release, doing many readings and promotional interviews, and said that she found the process very therapeutic during her period of mourning.[17]

In 2006, Everyman's Library published We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live, a 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.[citation needed]

In 2007, Didion began working with English playwright and director David Hare on a one-woman stage adaptation of The Year of Magical Thinking. Produced by Scott Rudin, the Broadway play featured Vanessa Redgrave. Although she was hesitant to write for the theater, eventually she found the genre, which was new to her, quite exciting.[17]

Didion wrote early drafts of the screenplay for an HBO biopic directed by Robert Benton on The Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham. It was untitled. Sources say it may trace the paper's reporting on the Watergate scandal which led to President Richard Nixon's resignation.[18]

In 2011, Knopf published Blue Nights, a memoir about aging.[citation needed] The book focuses on Didion's daughter, who died just before The Year of Magical Thinking was published. It addresses their relationship with "stunning frankness."[19] More generally, the book deals with the anxieties Didion experienced about adopting and raising a child, and about the aging process.[20]

In 2021, Didion published Let Me Tell You What I Mean, a collection of 12 essays she wrote between 1968 and 2000.[21]

A photo of Didion shot by Juergen Teller was used as part of the Spring/Summer 2015 campaign of the luxury French brand Céline.[22]

Writing style[edit]

New Journalism[edit]

New Journalism seeks to communicate facts through narrative storytelling and literary techniques. This style is also described as creative nonfiction, intimate journalism, or literary nonfiction. It is a popular moment in the long history of literary journalism in America. Tom Wolfe, who along with E.W. Johnson edited the anthology The New Journalism (1973) and wrote a manifesto for the style that popularized the term, said "it is possible to write journalism that would ... read like a novel".[23] New Journalist writers tend to transcend "just the facts" and focus on dialogue, and the scenarios the author may have experienced. It gives the author more creative freedom, helping to represent the truth and reality through the author's eyes. Exhibiting subjectivity is a major theme in New Journalism, where the author's voice is critical to the opinions the reader forms.[24]

Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem exemplifies much of what New Journalism represents as it explores the cultural values and experiences of American life in the 1960s. She included her personal feelings and memories in this first-person narrative and described the chaos of individuals and the way in which they perceived the world. Rejecting conventional journalism, she created a subjective approach to essays and a style that was her own.[citation needed]


뉴저널리즘은 내러티브 스토리텔링과 문학적 기법을 통해 사실을 전달하고자 합니다. 이 스타일은 창의적인 논픽션, 친밀한 저널리즘 또는 문학적 논픽션이라고도 합니다. 미국 문학 저널리즘의 긴 역사에서 인기 있는 순간입니다. EW Johnson과 함께 The New Journalism(1973) 선집을 편집하고 이 용어를 대중화한 스타일에 대한 선언문을 작성한 Tom Wolfe는 "... 소설처럼 읽히는 저널리즘을 쓰는 것이 가능합니다"라고 말했습니다.[23 ] 신인 기자 작가는 "사실만"을 초월하여 대화와 작가가 경험했을 수 있는 시나리오에 중점을 두는 경향이 있습니다. 작가의 눈을 통해 진실과 현실을 표현하는 데 도움을 주어 작가에게 더 많은 창작의 자유를 줍니다. 주관성을 나타내는 것은 뉴저널리즘의 주요 주제이며, 여기서 저자의 목소리는 독자가 형성하는 의견에 중요합니다.[24] Didion의 Slouching Towards Towards Bethlehem은 1960년대 미국 생활의 문화적 가치와 경험을 탐구하면서 New Journalism이 나타내는 많은 것을 예시합니다. 그녀는 이 1인칭 내러티브에 자신의 개인적인 감정과 기억을 포함하고 개인의 혼돈과 그들이 세상을 인식하는 방식을 설명했습니다. 그녀는 기존의 저널리즘을 거부하고 에세이에 대한 주관적인 접근 방식과 자신의 스타일을 만들었습니다.



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),[25] 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."[25]

Didion was heavily influenced by Ernest Hemingway, whose writing taught her the importance of how sentences work in a text. Her other influences included Henry James, who wrote "perfect, indirect, complicated sentences", and George Eliot.[26]

Didion was also an observer of journalists,[24] 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 the research.[26]

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",[26] saying that without the distance, she could not make proper edits. She would then end the day by cutting out and editing prose, and reviewing the work the following day. She would sleep in the same room as her book, 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."[26]

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".[27] In 2011, New York magazine reported that the criticism "still gets her (Didion's) hackles up, decades later".[28]

Awards and honors[edit]

In 1981, Didion was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.[29]

In 1996, she was awarded the Edward MacDowell Medal.[30]

In 2002, she received the St. Louis Literary Award from the Saint Louis University Library Associates.[31][32]

Didion was widely honored for The Year of Magical Thinking, which received the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2005 and the Prix Medicis Essais in 2007.[33] 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".[17]

In 2006, she received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement presented by Awards Council member Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.[34][35] That same year, she was elected to the American Philosophical Society.[36]

In 2007, Didion received the National Book Foundation's annual Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. From the citation: "An incisive observer of American politics and culture for more than forty-five years, her distinctive blend of spare, elegant prose and fierce intelligence has earned her books a place in the canon of American literature as well as the admiration of generations of writers and journalists."[37] That year, Didion also won the Evelyn F. Burkey Award from the Writers Guild of America.[38]

In 2009, Didion was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree by Harvard University.[39] Yale University conferred another honorary Doctor of Letters upon her in 2011.[citation needed] On July 3, 2013, the White House announced her as one of the recipients of the National Medal of Arts, presented by President Barack Obama.[40]

Personal life[edit]

While in New York and working at Vogue, Didion met John Gregory Dunne, her future husband, who was writing for Time magazine. He was the younger brother of the author, businessman, and television mystery show host Dominick Dunne. The couple married in 1964 and moved to Los Angeles, intending to stay only temporarily, but California ultimately became their home for the next 20 years. Their daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne, was born on March 3, 1966, in New York City and was adopted later that year.[41]

In the title essay of The White Album, Didion documents a nervous breakdown she experienced in the summer of 1968. After undergoing psychiatric evaluation, she was diagnosed as having had an attack of vertigo and nausea. She was also diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.[42]

In her essay "In Bed", Didion explained that she suffered from chronic migraines.[43]

In 1979, Didion was living in Brentwood Park, California, a quiet, residential neighborhood of Los Angeles. Before her move to Brentwood she lived in the Hollywood/Los Feliz area, on Franklin Avenue, from 1963 to 1971,[44] one block north of Hollywood Boulevard.[45]

Two tragedies struck Didion in the space of less than two years. On December 30, 2003, while their daughter Quintana Roo Dunne lay comatose in the ICU with septic shock resulting from pneumonia, her husband suffered a fatal heart attack at the dinner table. Didion delayed his funeral arrangements for approximately three months until Quintana was well enough to attend. Visiting Los Angeles after her father's funeral, Quintana fell at the airport, hit her head on the pavement and suffered a massive hematoma, requiring six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center.[16] After progressing toward recovery in 2004, Quintana died of acute pancreatitis on August 26, 2005, during Didion's New York promotion for The Year of Magical Thinking. She was 39.[17] Didion later wrote about Quintana's death in the 2011 book Blue Nights.

In 2005, Didion was living in an apartment on East 71st Street in New York City.[16] Her nephew Griffin Dunne directed a documentary about her, Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold; it was released by Netflix on October 27, 2017.[46] In it, with the assistance of her nephew and friends who have seen her career progress, she further discussed her writing and personal life. The deaths of her husband and her daughter in 2005 are also further explored, adding context to her books The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights.[47]

Didion died from complications of Parkinson's disease at her home in Manhattan on December 23, 2021, at the age of 87.[3]

Works[edit]

Fiction

Nonfiction

Screenplays

Plays

References[edit]

  1. ^ Menand, Louis (August 17, 2015). "The Radicalization of Joan Didion". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved October 31, 2017. "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" is a classic of what was later named the New Journalism.
  2. ^ Jump up to:a b "From The Archive: Joan Didion On Hollywood, Her Personal Style & The Central Park 5". British Vogue. February 19, 2020. Retrieved February 19, 2021.
  3. ^ Jump up to:a b Grimes, William (December 23, 2021). "Joan Didion, 'New Journalist' Who Explored Culture and Chaos, Dies at 87". The New York Times. Retrieved December 23, 2021.
  4. ^ Jump up to:a b c "Joan Didion Biography and Interview". achievement.org. American Academy of Achievement.
  5. ^ Als, Hilton (Spring 2006). "Joan Didion, The Art of Nonfiction No. 1". The Paris Review. Retrieved September 14, 2017.
  6. ^ Jump up to:a b "Joan Didion – California Museum". californiamuseum.org. Retrieved June 16, 2017.
  7. ^ Jump up to:a b Kakutani, Michiko (June 10, 1979). "Joan Didion: Staking Out California". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved June 16, 2017.
  8. ^ "CHRONICLE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA" (PDF). Fall 1998. Retrieved December 24, 2021.
  9. ^ Jump up to:a b Heller, Nathan (January 25, 2021). "What We Get Wrong About Joan Didion". The New Yorker.
  10. ^ "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.
  11. ^ Wakefield, Dan (June 21, 1968). "Places, People and Personalities". The New York Times. Retrieved January 11, 2017.
  12. ^ Didion, Joan (January 17, 1991). "New York: Sentimental Journeys". New York Review of Books.
  13. ^ Cristina Costantini (December 21, 2012). "Film Gives Voice to Men Falsely Convicted in Central Park Jogger Case". ABC News.
  14. ^ Gene Seymour (April 17, 2013). "'Koch', 'The Central Park Five' and the End of Doubt". The Nation.
  15. ^ Cathy Young (June 24, 2019). "The Problem With "When They See Us"". The Bulwark.
  16. ^ Jump up to:a b c Jonathan Van Meter. "When Everything Changes". New York Magazine.
  17. ^ Jump up to:a b c d "Seeing Things Straight: Gibson Fay-Leblanc interviews Joan Didion Archived 2006-06-01 at the Wayback Machine". Guernica, April 15, 2006.
  18. ^ Fleming, Michael (November 14, 2008). "HBO sets Katharine Graham biopic". Variety. Retrieved December 23, 2021.
  19. ^ "Blue Nights by Joan Didion". Doubleday. Retrieved November 30, 2016.
  20. ^ John Banville (November 3, 2011). "Joan Didion Mourns Her Daughter". The New York Times.
  21. ^ "Joan Didion's 'Let Me Tell You What I Mean' Offers Plenty Of 'Journalistic Gold'". NPR.org. Retrieved February 1, 2021.
  22. ^ Stebner, Beth (January 7, 2015). "Joan Didion stars in Céline Spring/Summer 2015 campaign". NY Daily News.
  23. ^ A Masterpiece of Literary Journalism: Joan Didion's Slouching towards Bethlehem – Feb. 2006, Volume 3, No. 2 (Serial No. 26), Sino-US English Teaching, ISSN 1539-8072, USA
  24. ^ Jump up to:a b Sandra Braman. "Joan Didion".
  25. ^ Jump up to:a b Joan Didion (December 5, 1976). "Why I Write". The New York Times. p. 270.
  26. ^ Jump up to:a b c d "The Art of Fiction No. 71: Joan Didion". The Paris Review, No. 74 (Fall-Winter 1978).
  27. ^ Harrison, Barbara Grizzutti (1980) "Joan Didion: Only Disconnect" in Off Center: Essays. New York: The Dial Press. The essay can be read online at "Joan Didion: Disconnect." (Retrieved Oct 16, 2014).
  28. ^ Kachka, Boris (October 16, 2011) "'I Was No Longer Afraid to Die. I Was Now Afraid Not to Die.'" New York Magazine. Retrieved October 16, 2014.
  29. ^ "American Academy of Arts and Letters Members". American Academy of Arts and Letters.
  30. ^ "MacDowell Medal winners 1960–2011". The Telegraph. April 13, 2011.[dead link]
  31. ^ "Saint Louis Literary Award". Saint Louis University. Archived from the original on August 23, 2016. Retrieved July 25, 2016.
  32. ^ Saint Louis University Library Associates. "Saint Louis University Library Associates Announce Winner of 2002 Literary Award". Retrieved July 25, 2016.
  33. ^ "National Book Awards – 2005". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-12.
    (With acceptance speech by Didion.)
  34. ^ "Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement". achievement.org. American Academy of Achievement.
  35. ^ "Joan Didion Biography Photo". 2006. 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.
  36. ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved May 24, 2021.
  37. ^ "Distinguished Contribution to American Letters". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-12.
    (With citation, introduction by Michael Cunningham, acceptance speech by Didion, and biographical blurb.)
  38. ^ The New York Times: "A Medal for Joan Didion", September 11, 2007.
  39. ^ "Ten honorary degrees awarded at Commencement". Harvard Gazette. June 4, 2009.
  40. ^ Daunt, Tina (July 3, 2013). "George Lucas, Joan Didion to Receive White House Honors". The Hollywood Reporter.
  41. ^ Louis Menand (August 24, 2015). "Out of Bethlehem: The radicalization of Joan Didion". The New Yorker.
  42. ^ Anthea Gerrie (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.
  43. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on November 9, 2020. Retrieved November 6, 2021.
  44. ^ "Remembering a Malibu long gone". Malibu Times.
  45. ^ Michiko Kakutani (June 10, 1979). "Joan Didion: Staking Out California". The New York Times.
  46. ^ "Review: A 'Joan Didion' Portrait, From an Intimate Source". The New York Times. October 24, 2017.
  47. ^ Wilkinson, Alissa (October 25, 2017). "Joan Didion is more interesting than the new Netflix documentary about her". Vox.
  48. ^ "The Panic in Needle Park (1971) - IMDb" – via www.imdb.com.
  49. ^ "Play It As It Lays (1972) - IMDb" – via www.imdb.com.
  50. ^ "A Star Is Born". December 17, 1976 – via IMDb.
  51. ^ "True Confessions (1981) - IMDb" – via www.imdb.com.
  52. ^ "Up Close & Personal (1996) - IMDb" – via www.imdb.com.
  53. ^ Sarah Bennett (August 11, 2012). "Joan Didion and Todd Field Are Co-writing a Screenplay". New York Magazine. Archived from the original on December 22, 2016. Retrieved December 16, 2016.

Further reading

External links[edit]

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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