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Remembering Joan Didion
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It’s hard — impossible, really — to see where her cultural impact ends. An author, screenwriter and journalist for nearly six decades, her observations on place, politics, grief and more defined an era and continue to shape generations of writers. Here, we’ve rounded up some of her most essential works and moments from her lasting legacy.
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Amazon
03of 11AmazonOn the heels ofSlouching Towards Bethlehem, Didion published her second novel, 1970’sPlay It As It Lays. The blisteringly elegant, sparse and deeply disturbing prose is as sharp and haunting today as it was 40 years ago as it tells the story of a young woman coming undone in a California psychiatric hospital after her husband forces her to get an abortion.A film version starring Tuesday Weld and Anthony Perkins was released in 1972.
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On the heels ofSlouching Towards Bethlehem, Didion published her second novel, 1970’sPlay It As It Lays. The blisteringly elegant, sparse and deeply disturbing prose is as sharp and haunting today as it was 40 years ago as it tells the story of a young woman coming undone in a California psychiatric hospital after her husband forces her to get an abortion.
A film version starring Tuesday Weld and Anthony Perkins was released in 1972.
04of 11GettyDidion built her reputation on her books of essays, but in those essays, she would admit that her work screenwriting alongside husband John Dunne was ultimately what paid the bills. The pair’s most successful screenplay was their rewrite of the 1976 version ofA Star Is Born, starring Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson.
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Getty
Didion built her reputation on her books of essays, but in those essays, she would admit that her work screenwriting alongside husband John Dunne was ultimately what paid the bills. The pair’s most successful screenplay was their rewrite of the 1976 version ofA Star Is Born, starring Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson.
05of 11GettyDunne and Didion’s also collaborated on 1996’sUp Close and Personal, a film starring Robert Redford and Michelle Pfeiffer. (Another of their major screenplays: 1981’sTrue Confessions,starring Robert De Niro and Robert Duvall.)Dunne chronicled the experience of co-writingUp Close and Personalin his bookMonster: Living Off the Big Screen, in which he also explores how the pair found the process of screenwriting to be stifling and frustrating.
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Dunne and Didion’s also collaborated on 1996’sUp Close and Personal, a film starring Robert Redford and Michelle Pfeiffer. (Another of their major screenplays: 1981’sTrue Confessions,starring Robert De Niro and Robert Duvall.)
Dunne chronicled the experience of co-writingUp Close and Personalin his bookMonster: Living Off the Big Screen, in which he also explores how the pair found the process of screenwriting to be stifling and frustrating.
06of 11Amazon2005’sThe Year of Magical Thinkingis one of the most poignant explorations of grief in modern literature. The book, which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Biography/Autobiography, chronicles the year after the sudden death of Didion’s husband and longtime collaborator, John Gregory Dunne. Dunne died on Dec. 30, 2003, of a heart attack, while mid-conversation with Didion. His death came just days after their daughter Quintana Roo, had been put into a coma after an infection turned into septic shock; Quintana underwent several more hospitalizations, and died a few months before the book was published in 2005, at age 39.“Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends,” she writes.
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2005’sThe Year of Magical Thinkingis one of the most poignant explorations of grief in modern literature. The book, which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Biography/Autobiography, chronicles the year after the sudden death of Didion’s husband and longtime collaborator, John Gregory Dunne. Dunne died on Dec. 30, 2003, of a heart attack, while mid-conversation with Didion. His death came just days after their daughter Quintana Roo, had been put into a coma after an infection turned into septic shock; Quintana underwent several more hospitalizations, and died a few months before the book was published in 2005, at age 39.
“Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends,” she writes.
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John Bryson/Getty Images
Here, the late literary icon is pictured with her husband, their daughter and a family dog.
The book was adapted into a theatrical production starring Vanessa Redgrave in 2007.
08of 11Pete Marovich/Getty ImagesIn 2012, President Obama bestowed the National Medal of Arts and Humanities to the writer. Didion was honored for “her mastery of style in writing, exploring the culture around us and exposing the depths of sorrow.”
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Pete Marovich/Getty Images
In 2012, President Obama bestowed the National Medal of Arts and Humanities to the writer. Didion was honored for “her mastery of style in writing, exploring the culture around us and exposing the depths of sorrow.”
09of 11NetflixWe’ve often had the pleasure of reading Joan Didion, but 2017 brought a welcome opportunity to watch and listen to her: the writer’s nephew, actor Griffin Dunne, directedThe Center Will Not Hold, a documentary about her life and career, brimming with archival footage and interviews with the legend herself. The Netflix documentary’s title comes from the terse and tactile first line in the essay “Slouching Towards Bethlehem.”
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Netflix
We’ve often had the pleasure of reading Joan Didion, but 2017 brought a welcome opportunity to watch and listen to her: the writer’s nephew, actor Griffin Dunne, directedThe Center Will Not Hold, a documentary about her life and career, brimming with archival footage and interviews with the legend herself. The Netflix documentary’s title comes from the terse and tactile first line in the essay “Slouching Towards Bethlehem.”
10of 11CelineDidion was the rare writer whose appearance was nearly as iconic as her work, and her inimitable style was tapped for a Céline ad in 2015, when the author was 80. The ads made a major splash online, but Didion was unimpressed: “I don’t have any clue” about the sensation,she toldThe New York Times.
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Celine
Didion was the rare writer whose appearance was nearly as iconic as her work, and her inimitable style was tapped for a Céline ad in 2015, when the author was 80. The ads made a major splash online, but Didion was unimpressed: “I don’t have any clue” about the sensation,she toldThe New York Times.
11of 11AmazonDidion’s most recent collection of essays,Let Me Tell You What I Mean, was published amid the pandemic earlier this year and features 12 pieces, spanning 1968 to 2000. Perhaps most notably, it includes her formative piece “Why I Write,” a title she cheekily notes that she stole from George Orwell. The piece, adapted from a Regents' Lecture given at the University of California at Berkeley, has become a primary text for aspiring and established writers.“Had my credentials been in order I would never have become a writer,” she says. “Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. 1 write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”
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Didion’s most recent collection of essays,Let Me Tell You What I Mean, was published amid the pandemic earlier this year and features 12 pieces, spanning 1968 to 2000. Perhaps most notably, it includes her formative piece “Why I Write,” a title she cheekily notes that she stole from George Orwell. The piece, adapted from a Regents' Lecture given at the University of California at Berkeley, has become a primary text for aspiring and established writers.
“Had my credentials been in order I would never have become a writer,” she says. “Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. 1 write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”
source: people.com
