Joan Didion is an American author best known for her novels and her literary journalism. Her novels and essays explore the disintegration of American morals and cultural chaos, where the overriding theme is individual and social fragmentation. A sense of anxiety or dread permeates much of her work.
Childhood and education
Joan Didion was born in
Sacramento, CaliforniaSacramento is the capital city of the U.S. state of California and the county seat of Sacramento County. It is located at the confluence of the Sacramento River and the American River in the northern portion of California's expansive Central Valley. With a population of 466,488 at the 2010 census,...
, to parents Frank Reese and Eduene (née Jerrett) Didion. Didion recalls writing things down as early as age five, though she claims that she never saw herself as a writer until after being published. She read everything she could get her hands on after learning how to read and even needed written permission from her mother to borrow adult books, biographies especially, from the library at a young age. With this, she identified herself as being a "shy, bookish child", who pushed herself to overcome these personal obstacles through acting and public speaking.
As a child, Didion attended kindergarten and first grade. Because her father was in the
Army Air CorpsThe United States Army Air Corps was a forerunner of the United States Air Force. Renamed from the Air Service on 2 July 1926, it was part of the United States Army and the predecessor of the United States Army Air Forces , established in 1941...
during World War II, her family was constantly relocated and she did not attend school on a regular basis. Then, at the age of nine or ten,
[Which one?] in 1943 or early 1944, her family settled back in Sacramento, and her father went to Detroit to settle defense contracts for World War I and II. Didion wrote, in her 2003 memoir
Where I Was FromWhere I Was From is a 2003 book of essays by Joan Didion. It considers aspects of the history of California, as well as her own and her family's history in that state.-Didion on Where I Was From:...
, that moving as often as her family did made her feel like a perpetual outsider.
In 1956, Didion graduated from the
University of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
with a
Bachelor of ArtsA Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
in English. During her senior year, she won first place in an essay contest sponsored by
VogueVogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine that is published monthly in 18 national and one regional edition by Condé Nast.-History:In 1892 Arthur Turnure founded Vogue as a weekly publication in the United States. When he died in 1909, Condé Montrose Nast picked up the magazine and slowly began...
, with the prize of a job at the magazine.
Professional life
For two years at
Vogue, Didion worked her way up from promotional copywriter to associate feature editor. While there, she wrote her first novel,
Run, RiverRun, River is the debut novel of Joan Didion, first published in 1963.-Summary:The novel is both a portrait of a marriage and a commentary on the history of California...
, which was published in 1963. She returned to California with her new husband, writer
John Gregory DunneJohn Gregory Dunne was an American novelist, screenwriter and literary critic.-Life:He was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and was a younger brother of author Dominick Dunne. He suffered from a severe stutter and took up writing to express himself. Eventually he learned to speak normally by...
, and in 1968, published
Slouching Towards BethlehemSlouching Towards Bethlehem is a 1968 collection of essays by Joan Didion and mainly describes her experiences in California during the 1960s. It takes its title from the poem "The Second Coming," by W. B. Yeats...
, her first work of non-fiction, a collection of magazine pieces about her experiences in California.
In 1979, she published
The White AlbumThe White Album is a 1979 book of essays by Joan Didion. The entire contents of this book are reprinted in Didion's We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction .-I...
, another collection of magazine pieces from
LifeLife generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....
,
EsquireEsquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...
,
The Saturday Evening PostThe Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1969, and quarterly and then bimonthly from 1971.-History:...
,
The New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, and
The New York Review of BooksThe New York Review of Books is a fortnightly magazine with articles on literature, culture and current affairs. Published in New York City, it takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity...
.
Play It As It LaysPlay It as It Lays is a 1970 novel by the American writer Joan Didion. Time magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. The book was made into a 1972 movie starring Tuesday Weld as Maria and Anthony Perkins as B.Z...
, set in Hollywood, was published in 1970 and
A Book of Common PrayerA Book of Common Prayer is a 1977 novel by Joan Didion.-Themes:The novel is a story of both personal and political tragedy in the imaginary Central American country of "Boca Grande." In 1983 Didion published Salvador, a book of essays on corruption and violence in El Salvador; the fiction and...
was published in 1977. Her 1983 essay,
SalvadorSalvador is a 1983 book-length essay by Joan Didion on American involvement in El Salvador....
, was written after a two-week long trip to
El SalvadorEl Salvador or simply Salvador is the smallest and the most densely populated country in Central America. The country's capital city and largest city is San Salvador; Santa Ana and San Miguel are also important cultural and commercial centers in the country and in all of Central America...
with her husband. She also wrote
DemocracyDemocracy, Joan Didion's fourth novel, was published in 1984. Set in Hawaii and Southeast Asia at the end of the Vietnam War, the book tells the story of Inez Victor, wife of U.S...
in 1984 which deals with her concern for the loss of society's traditional values. Her 1987 nonfiction book,
MiamiMiami is a 1987 book of social and political analysis by Joan Didion.Didion begins, "Havana vanities come to dust in Miami." The book is an extended report on the generation of Cubans who landed in exile in Miami following the overthrow of President Batista January 1, 1959 and the way in which that...
, looked at the Cuban expatriate community in Miami. In 1992, she published
After HenryAfter Henry is a 1992 book of essays by Joan Didion.The entire contents of this book are reprinted in We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction .-"After Henry":...
, a collection of twelve geographical essays. In 1996, she published
The Last Thing He WantedThe Last Thing He Wanted is a novel by Joan Didion. It was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1996.The story centers around Elena McMahon, a reporter for the Washington Post who quits her job covering the 1984 Presidential primaries to care for her father after her mother's death. In an unusual turn...
, a romantic thriller.
Dunne and Didion worked closely together for most of their careers, and indeed much of their writing is intertwined. With Dunne, Didion co-wrote a number of screenplays, including an adaptation of her novel
Play It As It Lays. She and Dunne also spent eight years adapting the biography of journalist
Jessica SavitchJessica Beth Savitch was an American television broadcaster and news reporter, host of PBS' Frontline and New York weekend anchor of NBC Nightly News during the short-lived Roger Mudd/Tom Brokaw era....
into the film
Up Close & Personal.
Didion began writing
The Year of Magical ThinkingThe Year of Magical Thinking , by Joan Didion , is an account of the year following the death of the author's husband John Gregory Dunne . Published by Knopf in October 2005, the book was immediately acclaimed as a classic in the genre of mourning literature...
, a narrative of her response to the death of her husband and severe illness of their daughter, Quintana, on October 4, 2004, and finished 88 days later on New Year's Eve. She went on a book tour following the release of this memoir, doing many readings and interviews to promote it. She has said that she found the process very "therapeutic" during her period of mourning.
In 2006, Everyman's Library published
We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to LiveWe Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction is a 2006 collection of nonfiction by Joan Didion. It includes the full content of her first seven volumes of nonfiction: Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The White Album, Salvador, Miami, After Henry, Political Fictions, and Where I Was...
, 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 noted critic
John LeonardJohn Leonard may refer to:* John Leonard , American literary, television, film, and cultural critic* John Leonard , Australian poet* John Leonard , Gaelic footballer...
.
In 2007, she began working on a one-woman adaptation of
The Year of Magical Thinking. Produced by
Scott RudinScott Rudin is an American film producer and a theatrical producer.-Early life and work:Scott Rudin was born in New York City, NY, on July 14, 1958, and raised in the town of Baldwin on Long Island. At the age of sixteen, he started working as an assistant to theatre producer Kermit Bloomgarden...
, this Broadway play featured
Vanessa RedgraveVanessa Redgrave, CBE is an English actress of stage, screen and television, as well as a political activist.She rose to prominence in 1961 playing Rosalind in As You Like It with the Royal Shakespeare Company and has since made more than 35 appearances on London's West End and Broadway, winning...
. Although at first she was hesitant about the idea of writing a play, she has since found this new genre to be quite exciting.
Didion wrote early drafts of the screen play for an HBO biopic directed by
Robert BentonRobert Douglas Benton is an American screenwriter and film director.Benton was born in Waxahachie, Texas, the son of Dorothy and Ellery Douglass Benton, a telephone company employee. He attended the University of Texas and Columbia University. Benton has won numerous awards for both writing and...
on the famous newspaper dame
Katharine GrahamKatharine Meyer Graham was an American publisher. She led her family's newspaper, The Washington Post, for more than two decades, overseeing its most famous period, the Watergate coverage that eventually led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon...
. It currently remains untitled. Sources say it may trace Graham's paper,
The Washington PostThe Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
, in its dogged reportage on the Watergate scandal which led to President Richard Nixon's resignation. However, Didion is no longer working on that project.
In 2011, Knopf published
Blue Nights, a memoir about aging. The book focuses on Didion's daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne, who died just before her previous memoir,
The Year of Magical ThinkingThe Year of Magical Thinking , by Joan Didion , is an account of the year following the death of the author's husband John Gregory Dunne . Published by Knopf in October 2005, the book was immediately acclaimed as a classic in the genre of mourning literature...
, was published. It addresses their relationship with “stunning frankness.” More generally, the book will speak to the anxieties Didion experienced about having and raising a child, and also about the aging process.
Personal life
While in New York and working at
Vogue, Didion met her future husband of almost forty years,
John Gregory DunneJohn Gregory Dunne was an American novelist, screenwriter and literary critic.-Life:He was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and was a younger brother of author Dominick Dunne. He suffered from a severe stutter and took up writing to express himself. Eventually he learned to speak normally by...
, who at the time was writing for
Time MagazineTime is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
. The couple married in 1964 and moved to Los Angeles, California, soon after, with intentions of staying only temporarily. California ultimately became their home for the next twenty years.
In the title essay of
The White Album, Didion documents a nervous breakdown she experienced in the summer of 1968. After undergoing a psychiatric evaluation, she is diagnosed as having had an attack of
vertigoVertigo is a type of dizziness, where there is a feeling of motion when one is stationary. The symptoms are due to a dysfunction of the vestibular system in the inner ear...
and nausea.
Two terrible tragedies struck Didion in just over two years' time. On December 30, 2003, while their daughter Quintana Roo Dunne lay comatose in the ICU with septic shock resulting from pneumonia, Dunne suffered a fatal heart attack while at the dinner table. Didion put off Dunne's funeral arrangements for approximately a month until Quintana was well enough to attend the service. Returning to Los Angeles after her father's funeral, Quintana was struck by a massive hematoma. She required six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center. Quintana died of acute pancreatitis on August 26, 2005, during Didion's New York promotion for
The Year of Magical Thinking. She was thirty-nine.
Physically, Didion is most commonly described as being a thin, frail woman. Even at the younger age of 44, Didion was said to weigh just 95 pounds at 5 feet 2 inches in height. She claims to have an Okie accent, which she attributes to attending Sacramento high schools.
In 1979, Didion was living in
Brentwood Park, CaliforniaBrentwood is a district in western Los Angeles, California, United States. The district is located at the base of the Santa Monica Mountains, bounded by the San Diego Freeway on the east, Wilshire Boulevard on the south, the Santa Monica city limits on the southwest, the border of Topanga State...
, a quiet, residential suburb of
Los AngelesLos Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
. Before her move to Brentwood she lived in the Hollywood/Los Feliz area on Franklin Ave, one block north of Hollywood Blvd. As of 2005, Didion has resided in an apartment on East 71st Street in New York City.
New Journalism
New JournalismNew Journalism was a style of 1960s and 1970s news writing and journalism which used literary techniques deemed unconventional at the time. The term was codified with its current meaning by Tom Wolfe in a 1973 collection of journalism articles he published as The New Journalism, which included...
seeks to communicate facts through narrative storytelling and literary techniques. This style is also described as creative nonfiction, intimate journalism, or literary nonfiction. Tom Wolfe, author of
The New Journalism (1974), popularized this style and pointed to the fact that "it is possible to write journalism that would ... read like a novel." New Journalist writers tend to turn away from “just the facts” and focus more upon the dialogue of the situation and the scenarios that the author may have experienced. The style gives the author more creative freedom and blends elements of fiction, opinion, and fact. This can help to represent the truth and reality through the author's eyes. Exhibiting subjectivity is a major theme in New Journalism. Here, the author’s voice is critical to a reader forming opinions and thoughts concerning the work.
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. Didion includes her personal feelings and memories in this first person narrative, describing the chaos of individuals and the way in which they perceive the world. Here Didion rejects conventional journalism, and instead prefers to create a subjective approach to essays, a style that is her own.
Writing style and themes
Didion views the structure of the sentence as essential to what she is conveying in her work. In the New York Times article,
Why I Write (1976) Didion remarks, "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."
Didion is heavily influenced by
Ernest HemingwayErnest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
, whose writing taught Didion the importance of the way sentences worked within a text. Other influences include writer
Henry JamesHenry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....
, who wrote "perfect, indirect, complicated sentences" and
George EliotMary Anne Evans , better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, journalist and translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era...
.
Because of her belief that it is the media that tells us how to live, Joan Didion has become an observer of journalists themselves. She believes that the difference between the process of fiction and nonfiction is the element of discovery that takes place in nonfiction. This happens not during the writing, but rather during the research.
There are rituals that are a part of Didion's creative thought process. At the end of the day, Didion must take a break from writing to remove herself from the "pages." She feels closeness to her work; without a necessary break, she cannot make proper adjustments. Didion spends a great deal of time cutting out and editing her prose before concluding her evening. The next day, Didion begins by looking over her work from the previous evening, making further adjustments as she sees fit. As this process culminates, Didion feels that it is necessary to sleep in the same room as her book. In Didion's own words, "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."
Awards and recognitions
Didion has received a great deal of recognition for one of her more recent books,
The Year of Magical Thinking, which was awarded the
National Book AwardThe National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...
in 2005. Documenting the grief she experienced following the sudden death of her husband, the book has been said to be a "masterpiece of two genres: memoir and investigative journalism."
In 2007, Didion received the
National Book FoundationThe National Book Foundation, founded in 1989, is an American nonprofit literary organization established "to raise the cultural appreciation of great writing in America." It achieves this through sponsoring the National Book Award, as well as the medal for Distinguished Contribution to American...
's annual Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters for "her distinctive blend of spare, elegant prose and fierce intelligence." This same year, Didion also won the Evelyn F. Burkey Award from the
Writers Guild of AmericaThe Writers Guild of America is a generic term referring to the joint efforts of two different US labor unions:* The Writers Guild of America, East , representing TV and film writers East of the Mississippi....
.
In 2009, Didion was awarded an honorary
Doctor of LettersDoctor of Letters is a university academic degree, often a higher doctorate which is frequently awarded as an honorary degree in recognition of outstanding scholarship or other merits.-Commonwealth:...
degree by
Harvard UniversityHarvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
.
Yale UniversityYale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
conferred another honorary Doctor of Letters degree on the writer in 2011.
Fiction
- Run, River
Run, River is the debut novel of Joan Didion, first published in 1963.-Summary:The novel is both a portrait of a marriage and a commentary on the history of California...
(1963)
- Play It as It Lays
Play It as It Lays is a 1970 novel by the American writer Joan Didion. Time magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. The book was made into a 1972 movie starring Tuesday Weld as Maria and Anthony Perkins as B.Z...
(1970)
- A Book of Common Prayer
A Book of Common Prayer is a 1977 novel by Joan Didion.-Themes:The novel is a story of both personal and political tragedy in the imaginary Central American country of "Boca Grande." In 1983 Didion published Salvador, a book of essays on corruption and violence in El Salvador; the fiction and...
(1977)
- Democracy
Democracy, Joan Didion's fourth novel, was published in 1984. Set in Hawaii and Southeast Asia at the end of the Vietnam War, the book tells the story of Inez Victor, wife of U.S...
(1984)
- The Last Thing He Wanted
The Last Thing He Wanted is a novel by Joan Didion. It was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1996.The story centers around Elena McMahon, a reporter for the Washington Post who quits her job covering the 1984 Presidential primaries to care for her father after her mother's death. In an unusual turn...
(1996)
Nonfiction
- Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Slouching Towards Bethlehem is a 1968 collection of essays by Joan Didion and mainly describes her experiences in California during the 1960s. It takes its title from the poem "The Second Coming," by W. B. Yeats...
(1968)
- The White Album
The White Album is a 1979 book of essays by Joan Didion. The entire contents of this book are reprinted in Didion's We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction .-I...
(1979)
- Salvador
Salvador is a 1983 book-length essay by Joan Didion on American involvement in El Salvador....
(1983)
- Miami
Miami is a 1987 book of social and political analysis by Joan Didion.Didion begins, "Havana vanities come to dust in Miami." The book is an extended report on the generation of Cubans who landed in exile in Miami following the overthrow of President Batista January 1, 1959 and the way in which that...
(1987)
- After Henry
After Henry is a 1992 book of essays by Joan Didion.The entire contents of this book are reprinted in We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction .-"After Henry":...
(1992)
- Political Fictions
Political Fictions is a 2001 book of essays by Joan Didion on the American political process.-Essays:Written for The New York Review of Books between October 1988 and October 2000, the collection includes three essays previously published as the "Washington" section of After Henry.-Content:Didion...
(2001)
- Where I Was From
Where I Was From is a 2003 book of essays by Joan Didion. It considers aspects of the history of California, as well as her own and her family's history in that state.-Didion on Where I Was From:...
(2003)
- Fixed Ideas: America Since 9.11 (2003; preface by Frank Rich
Frank Rich is an American essayist and op-ed columnist who wrote for The New York Times from 1980, when he was appointed its chief theatre critic, until 2011...
)
- Vintage Didion (2004)
- The Year of Magical Thinking
The Year of Magical Thinking , by Joan Didion , is an account of the year following the death of the author's husband John Gregory Dunne . Published by Knopf in October 2005, the book was immediately acclaimed as a classic in the genre of mourning literature...
(2005)
- We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live
We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction is a 2006 collection of nonfiction by Joan Didion. It includes the full content of her first seven volumes of nonfiction: Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The White Album, Salvador, Miami, After Henry, Political Fictions, and Where I Was...
: Collected Nonfiction (2006; includes her first seven volumes of nonfiction)
- The Year of Magical Thinking (2006)
- Blue Nights (2011) ISBN 978-0307267672
Letter From Paradise, 21 19' N., 157 52' W.
Screenplays
- The Panic in Needle Park
The Panic in Needle Park is a 1971 American film directed by Jerry Schatzberg and starring Al Pacino in his second film appearance. The screenplay was written by Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, adapted from the book by James Mills....
(1971)
- Play It as It Lays
Play It as It Lays is a 1970 novel by the American writer Joan Didion. Time magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. The book was made into a 1972 movie starring Tuesday Weld as Maria and Anthony Perkins as B.Z...
(1972) (based on her novel)
- A Star Is Born
A Star Is Born is a 1976 American rock music musical film telling the story of a young woman, played by Barbra Streisand who enters show business, and meets and falls in love with an established male star, played by Kris Kristofferson, only to find her career ascending while his goes into decline...
(1976)
- True Confessions
True Confessions is a 1981 film directed by Ulu Grosbard, loosely based on the Black Dahlia murder case of 1947. The film stars Robert De Niro and Robert Duvall, was produced by Chartoff-Winkler Productions and is adapted from the novel of the same name by John Gregory Dunne.-Plot summary:In the...
(1981)
- Up Close & Personal
Up Close & Personal is an American romantic drama film directed by Jon Avnet, and starring Robert Redford as a news director and Michelle Pfeiffer as his protegée, with Stockard Channing, Joe Mantegna and Kate Nelligan in supporting roles....
(1996)
External links