On December 23rd 2021, Joan Didion passed away at the age of 87, a literary giant and a shining light for many aspiring writers.
Raised in Sacramento, California, a self labelled outsider Didion began her life as “shy, bookish child” who grew to be one of the most prolific voices of a generation. Didion rose to fame in the 1960s: through her writing, style and character. Her writing was sharp, dry and uniquely new: essays and reports that pierced the subject from the subjective. This style, the “New Journalism” writer, more indicative of a long form essay style, repurposed for subjective analysis in reporting, is what gained Didion her notoriety.
From Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968) to the White Album (1979), she gained a following, writing essays to document the extremes of the developing counterculture throughout the 1960s, a scathing but authentic viewpoint from which she has become known.
Didion continued to use the truth of her surroundings and the path of her life to fill the pages, intertwining reality with imagination, sometimes just meeting reality with severe, painful recollection.
Didion had career defining moments, from trailing the Grateful Dead to criticising political figures: she opened eyes to the dark reality of the disenfranchised youth of a fracturing nation. She shared her experiences from rarely documented moments, backstage, court rooms: moments that fans of The Doors or The Beatles could only thank her for. Who wouldn’t want to know what Linda Kasabian was thinking before she went on trial for involvement in the ‘Manson family’ murders?
She wrote alongside husband John Gregory Dunne, who filled the pages of The Saturday Evening Post, The New York Times and Vogue to only mention a few. They wrote and shared columns to pay the bills, co-writing scripts for films such as A Star is Born (1976) or pieces based on their own work, Play It as It Lays (1972) or Dunne’s True Confessions (1981).
Didion continued to use the truth of her surroundings and the path of her life to fill the pages, intertwining reality with imagination, sometimes just meeting reality with severe, painful recollection. This came to head after the death of her adopted daughter Quintana Roo Dunne who passed away in 2004: only too harshly preceded by the death of husband John from a sudden heart attack in 2003. This inspired two of her most difficult but profound reads in A Year of Magical Thinking (2005) and Blue Nights (2011).
Throughout her career, Didion forged a path as an immensely talented writer as well as a force of thinking. Her opinion gained the opportunity to write across news, politics and war. Her essay Salvador (1983) and novel Democracy (1984), set against the background of the Cold War and Vietnam War, introduced her as a deeply critical thinker questioning the very fabric of democracy within the USA.
As Didion progressed in life, darkness and critical analysis became a common theme of her writing both in fiction and reporting. Most notably, Didion was one of the first to stand in defence of the Central Park Five: she published an essay detailing the failings and prejudice of the prosecution within the case with a view that the guilty verdicts sentenced were indeed a miscarriage of justice.
From her written word, both fictional and not, modelling for Gap in 1989 or Celine in 2015 and her voice prevalent in the press, it is difficult to say if there was a part of American culture untouched by her influence. It is rumoured that her home in Malibu was visited by all manner of creatives, from Spielberg to Scorsese, even the invisible touch of her influence on the culture of the day is unquantifiable.
She was a teacher. Opening the minds of her readers, bringing complex ideologies and difficult moments to the fore in essays as fluid as water. Her sharp syntax spoke directly to you, lifting the ideas off the paper and into the world around you: it would be a challenge to read her works and not find personal epiphanies in her truths.
it is difficult to say if there was a part of American culture untouched by her influence
When reporting, Didion isn’t detailing a list of people or objects, she instead brings the moment to you through evocative memory, her self admitted power in the use of the sentence, outlines the mood, the tension, the understanding of emotion. A New Yorker reporter defined her writing as the “perpetual straddle between empathy and detachment.” She wrote the stories as an observer, but in the end the stories were made more interesting because it was her. Although we all perceive the world around us, Didion’s ability to distinguish the veneer of society and the fascination of everyday detail is what birthed a legacy.
The Essential Reading:
- Slouching Toward Bethlehem (1968)
A collection of non-fiction essays published from 1966 to 1967, detailing her experiences and travels across California throughout the 1960s. She describes her own experiences leaving New York, heading to California: here she finds both shocking and sentimental realisations of what her home has become.
- White Album (1979)
Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and buying dresses for Charles Manson’s girls, the White Album is an immersive experience through the turbulence of the 1960s. A series of disconnected happenings, Black Panther Party meetings to a recording session with The Doors, you step into the unseen world of Didion’s experience in the age of self-discovery.
- Play It as it Lays (1970)
A fictional novel, with a semi-autobiographical character. The story follows Maria, a Hollywood actress as her life spirals out of her control. The narrative comments on the 1960s American culture, on the reality of self and character, within the society of freedom and a lost generation.
- The Year of Magical Thinking (2005)
A non-fictional account of the aftermath and mourning, following the passing of Didion’s husband John Gregory Dunne (2003). Didion explores grief in her usual style of dry, unemotional detachment through observation of her own behavioural changes.
- Blue Nights (2011)
A memoir recounting the passing of Didion’s daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne. The story reflects on the separation of mother and daughter, parenthood and the effects of ageing. A nihilistic approach toward death and the confusion of grief, in a life she now leads alone.
Words by Christabel Murray
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