Joan Didion, peerless prose stylist, dies at 87

By COLLEEN LONG

Joan Didion, the revered writer and essayist whose precise societal and idiosyncratic commentary successful specified classics arsenic “The White Album” and “The Year of Magical Thinking” made her a uniquely clear-eyed professional of turbulent times, has died. She was 87.

Didion’s steadfast Penguin Random House announced the author’s decease connected Thursday. She died from complications from Parkinson’s disease, the institution said.

“Didion was 1 of the country’s astir trenchant writers and astute observers. Her best-selling works of fiction, commentary, and memoir person received galore honors and are considered modern classics,” Penguin Random House said successful a statement.

Along with Tom Wolfe, Nora Ephron and Gay Talese, Didion reigned successful the pantheon of “New Journalists” who emerged successful the 1960s and wedded literate benignant to nonfiction reporting. Tiny and frail adjacent arsenic a young woman, with large, bittersweet eyes often hidden down prima glasses and a soft, deliberate benignant of speaking, she was a novelist, playwright and essayist who erstwhile observed that “I americium truthful physically small, truthful temperamentally unobtrusive, and truthful neurotically inarticulate that radical thin to hide that my beingness runs antagonistic to their champion interests.”

Or, arsenic she much famously enactment it: “Writers are ever selling idiosyncratic out.”

Didion received a National Humanities Medal successful 2012, erstwhile she was praised for devoting “her beingness to noticing things different radical strive not to see.” For decades, she had engaged successful the chill and ruthless dissection of authorities and culture, from hippies to statesmanlike campaigns to the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, and for her distrust of authoritative stories.

“Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” “The White Album” and different books became indispensable collections of literate journalism, with notable writings including her takedown of Hollywood authorities successful “Good Citizens” and a prophetic dissent against the statement that successful 1989 5 young Black and Latino men had raped a achromatic jogger successful Central Park (the men’s convictions were aboriginal overturned and they were freed from prison).

Didion was arsenic unsparing astir her ain struggles. She was diagnosed successful her 30s with aggregate sclerosis and astir the aforesaid clip suffered a breakdown and checked into a psychiatric session successful Santa Monica, California that diagnosed her worldview arsenic “fundamentally pessimistic, fatalistic and depressive.” In her 70s, she reported connected idiosyncratic calamity successful the heartbreaking 2005 work, “The Year of Magical Thinking,” a communicative formed retired of the chaos of grief that followed the decease of her hubby and penning partner, John Gregory Dunne. It won a National Book Award, and she adapted it arsenic a one-woman Broadway play that starred Vanessa Redgrave.

Dunne had collapsed successful 2003 astatine their array and died of a bosom onslaught adjacent arsenic their daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne Michael, was gravely sick successful a hospital. The memoir was a best-seller and a near-instant standard, the benignant of enactment radical would instinctively scope for aft losing a loved one. Didion said she thought of the enactment arsenic a testament of a circumstantial time; tragically, “Magical Thinking” became dated soon aft it was published. Quintana died during the summertime of 2005 astatine property 39 of acute pancreatitis. Didion wrote of her daughter’s decease successful the 2011 work “Blue Nights.”

“We person benignant of evolved into a nine wherever grieving is wholly hidden. It doesn’t instrumentality spot successful our family. It takes spot not astatine all,” she told The Associated Press successful 2005. Didion spent her aboriginal years successful New York, but she was astir powerfully identified with her autochthonal authorities of California, “a hologram that dematerializes arsenic I thrust done it.” It was the mounting for her champion known novel, the despairing “Play It As It Lays,” and for galore of her essays.

“California belongs to Joan Didion,” wrote The New York Times professional Michiko Kakutani. “Not the California wherever everyone wears aviator sunglasses, owns a Jacuzzi and buys his apparel connected Rodeo Drive. But California successful the consciousness of the West. The aged West wherever Manifest Destiny was an astir palpable conception that was someway tied to the onshore and the clime and one’s ain family.”

Didion’s subjects besides included earthquakes, movie stars and Cuban exiles, but communal themes emerged: the request to enforce bid wherever bid doesn’t exist, the spread betwixt accepted contented and existent life, the mode radical deceive themselves — and others — into believing the satellite tin beryllium explained successful a straight, communicative line. Much of her nonfiction was collected successful the 2006 publication “We Tell Ourselves Stories successful Order to Live,” named aft the opening condemnation of her celebrated rubric effort from “The White Album,” a testament to 1 woman’s hunt for the information down the truth.

“We look for the sermon successful the suicide, for the societal oregon motivation acquisition successful the execution of five,” she wrote. “We unrecorded entirely, particularly if we are writers, by the imposition of a communicative enactment upon disparate images, by the ‘ideas’ with which we person learned to frost the shifting phantasmagoria which is our existent experience.”

She was a lifelong explorer, penning astir a travel to warfare torn El Salvador successful the nonfiction “Salvador,” and completing “A Book of Common Prayer” aft a disastrous travel to a movie festival successful Colombia successful the aboriginal 1970s. “South and West: From a Notebook,” observations made portion driving astir the American South, came retired successful 2017, the aforesaid twelvemonth nephew Griffin Dunne’s documentary “Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold” was released. In 2019, the Library of America began compiling her enactment successful bound volumes.

Didion prided herself connected being an outsider, much comfy with state presumption attendants than with celebrities. But she and her husband, whose member was the author-journalist Dominick Dunne, were good placed successful precocious society. In California, they socialized with Warren Beatty and Steven Spielberg among others and a young Harrison Ford worked arsenic a carpenter connected their house. They aboriginal lived successful a spacious flat connected Manhattan’s Upper East Side, knew each the close radical and had a palmy broadside vocation arsenic screenwriters, collaborating connected “The Panic successful Needle Park,” a remake of “A Star Is Born” and adaptations of “Play It As It Lays” and his “True Confessions.”

Born successful 1934 successful Sacramento, California and descended from pioneers who had traveled with the notorious Donner Party, Didion was fascinated by books from an aboriginal age. She was encouraged to constitute by her mother, arsenic a mode of filling time, and was particularly impressed by the prose of Ernest Hemingway, whose terse rhythms anticipated her own. She was some shy and ambitious, inclined to solitude, but besides determined to explicit herself done penning and nationalist speaking. She graduated from the University of California astatine Berkeley successful 1956 and moved to New York for a occupation astatine Vogue aft winning a penning contention sponsored by the magazine.

Conservative successful her aboriginal years, voting for Republican Barry Goldwater successful 1964 and contributing essays to William F. Buckley’s National Review, Didion became much wide aboriginal on, attacking the relation of religion successful authorities and the establishment’s “increasingly histrionic insistence” that President Clinton beryllium removed from bureau for his matter with Monica Lewinsky. She was particularly scathing astir the prime of governmental reporting, mocking the “inside baseball” journalism of statesmanlike campaigns and dismissing Bob Woodward’s best-selling books arsenic vapid and voyeuristic, “political pornography.”

Didion joined Dunne, whom she had met astatine a meal party, successful 1964. Two years later, they adopted a babe girl, Quintana Roo. Author couples are notoriously combustible, whether the drunken brawl of Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett oregon the infidelity and suicidal demons of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. But contempt their ain conflicts, Didion says she and Dunne grew and endured.

“Whatever troubles we had were not derived from being writers,” she told the AP. “What was bully for 1 was bully for the other.”

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Associated Press National Writer Hillel Italie contributed to this report.