The Last Love Song (103 page)

“Tax Collector”: Resolution Number GF, City of Sacramento Records Library, June 26, 1942; available at
www.records.cityofsacramento.org/ViewDocaspx?ID=s6tFBnt4w
.

“We had an irrigation problem”: Didion,
Where I Was From,
17.

“a color that existed”: ibid.

“There's a lot of mystery to me about writing and performing”: Kuehl, “Joan Didion, The Art of Fiction, No. 71.”

“The trouble with these
new
people”: Didion,
Where I Was From,
95.

“downright rural region”: William Burg to the author, December 9, 2011.

“well-fed Lincoln-Mercury dealers”: Didion,
Slouching Towards Bethlehem,
171–72.

“wanted to know”: Didion quoted in Jemima Hunt, “The Didion Bible,”
The Guardian,
January 12, 2003; available at
www.theguardian.com/books2003/jan/12/fiction.society
.

“have so much trouble getting through the afternoon”: Joan Didion,
Telling Stories
(Berkeley:, Calif.: Friends of the Bancroft Library, 1978), 35.

“I would have to say the rivers”: Didion quoted in Rob Turner, “Where She Was From,”
Sactown,
December 2011, 83.

“caught, in a military-surplus life raft”: Didion,
The White Album,
60.

“The generation she was close to”: Kel Munger to the author, December 6, 2011.

“She was in a higher social class” and all other quotes in this chapter from Joan Haug-West: Joan Haug-West to the author, January 16, 2012.

“We had a very vibrant, active household”: “A Love for the Law,” Academy of Achievement interview with Anthony Kennedy, June 3, 2005; available at
www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/ken0int-1
.

“process of selection” and all other quotes in this chapter regarding the Mañana Club:
Judy Robinson v. Sacramento City etc. School District 245, California Appellate 2d 278,
September 29, 1966; available at
www.law.justia.com/cases/california/calapp2d/245/278.html
.

“one [could] imagine reading”: Didion,
The White Album,
71.

“a very tedious time in my life”: Connie Brod,
In Depth
interview with Joan Didion, Book TV, C-SPAN 2, 1992.

“I tell myself that we are a long time underground”: Joan Didion,
The Year of Magical Thinking
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 150.

“indiscriminately”: Joan Didion, “I'll Take Romance,”
National Review,
September 24, 1963, 246.

“pain seemed a shameful secret”: Didion,
The White Album,
169–70.

“I was struck by the sheer theatricality of his plays”: Hilton Als, “Joan Didion, The Art of Nonfiction No. 1,”
The Paris Review
48, no. 176 (Spring 2006); available at
www.theparisreview.org/interviews/560/the-art-of-nonfiction-no-1-joan-didion
.

“missed that wild control of language”: ibid.

“[He] made me afraid to put words down”: Kuehl, “Joan Didion, The Art of Fiction No. 71.”

“a great house”: Didion quoted in Turner, “Where She Was From.”

“They had knocked up girls and married them”: Joan Didion,
Political Fictions
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), 19–20.

“In a gentle sleep Sacramento dreamed”: Didion,
Slouching Towards Bethlehem,
157.

“That's a false portrayal of the city”: Rob Turner to the author, December 7, 2011.

“I don't see any loss of character”: Mel Lawson quoted in Lloyd Bruno, “Looking Backward with Lloyd Bruno” in
Suttertown News
(May 24–31, 1984), 12.

“I wouldn't call [it] reporting”: Didion quoted in Turner, “Where She Was From.”

“We were talking about some people that we knew”: Didion quoted in Munger, “Where She Was From.”

“Dear Joan” and subsequent quotes regarding this incident: Joan Didion, “On Being Unchosen by the College of One's Choice” in the “Points West” column,
The Saturday Evening Post,
April 6, 1968, 18–19.

CHAPTER 4

“manifestations of … tension”: Joan Didion,
Where I Was From
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), 213.

“some weeks or months”: ibid., 214.

“responsibility for hospitalization”: Lt. Col. Myra L. McDaniel, “Professional Services and Activities of Occupational Therapists, April 1947 to January 1961,” in
Army Specialist Medical Corps,
gen. ed. Col. Colonel Robert S. Anderson, (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Surgeon General, 1968), 570.

“modern concept of personality development”: Col. Albert J. Glass, “Army Psychiatry Before World War II,” in
Neuropsychiatry in World War II,
vol. 1, gen. ed. Col. Robert S. Anderson, (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Surgeon General, 1966), 8.

“species of melancholy”: ibid., 3.

“mind guys”: Didion,
Where I Was From,
214.

“scientific manner” and “most satisfactory results”: Glass, “Army Psychiatry Before World War II,” 11.

ADL, “Reality Testing Situations,” and “Total Push Program”: McDaniel, “Professional Services and Activities of Occupational Therapists, April 1947 to January 1961,” 573, 577, 582.

“woman doctor”: Didion,
Where I Was From,
214.

“given pretty much a free hand”: R. U. Sirius, “Hallucinogenic Weapons: The Other Chemical Warfare,” interview with Dr. James S. Ketchum, January 10, 2007; available at
www.10zenmonkeys.com/2007/01/10/hallucinogenic-weapons-the-other-chemical-warfare/
.

“permission” and “test doses”: Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments Report (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1995): Chapter 1, “The Department of Defense: Consent Is Formalized”; available at
www.hss.doe.gov/healthsafety/ohre/roadmap.achre.chap1_3.html
.

“Army and the CIA had conducted LSD experiments”: ibid.

“In Bed”: Joan Didion,
The White Album
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979), 170.

“
frisson
of one another”: Joan Didion,
After Henry
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 97–98.

“MK-ULTRA Subproject 140”: Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, “Memorandum for Discussion Purposes Only,” February 8, 1995 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1995); available at
www.gwu.edu/~nsarchive/radiation/dir/mstrat/intret.txt
.

“climate, habits, and modes of life”: quoted in Didion,
Where I Was From,
196.

“[M]y aversion to outdoor games” and other details regarding Didion's golfer: Joan Didion, “Take No for an Answer,”
Vogue,
October 1961, 133.

“All I want to do is preach” and all other quotes concerning Billy James Hargis: Adam Bernstein, “Evangelist Billy James Hargis Dies: Spread Anti-Communist Message,”
Washington Post,
November 30, 2004.

“on almost every level”: Hilton Als, “Joan Didion, The Art of Nonfiction No. 1,”
The Paris Review
48, no. 176 (Spring 2006); available at
www.theparisreview.org/interviews/560/the-art-of-nonfiction-no-1-joan-didion
.

wanted to “heave”: Joan Didion letter to Peggy La Violette, August 9, 1955, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

“social tradition,” “Hard drinkers,” and “A woman who wrote novels”: Didion quoted in Linda Kuehl, “Joan Didion, The Art of Fiction No. 71,”
The Paris Review
20, no. 74 (Fall-Winter 1978); available at
www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3439/the-art-of-fiction-no-71-joan-didion
.

“big, anonymous place”: Didion quoted in Susanna Rustin, “Legends of the Fall,”
The Guardian,
May 20, 2005; available at
www.theguardian.com/books/2005/May21/usnationalbookawards.society
.

“waking up”: Didion quoted in Rebecca Meyer, “Berkeley Alumna Discusses Politics After ‘Fiction,'”
Daily Californian,
October 19, 2001; available at
randomhouse.com/knopf/authors/didion/desktopnew.html
.

“legitimate resident in any world of ideas”: Joan Didion, “Why I Write,” originally published in
New York Times Book Review,
December 5, 1976; reprinted in
Joan Didion: Essays and Conversations,
ed. Ellen G. Friedman (Princeton, N.J.: Ontario Review Press, 1984), 6.

“The Muse … / In distant lands”: Bishop George Berkeley, “Verses on the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America,” in
Berkeley! A Literary Tribute,
ed. Danielle La France (Berkeley, Calif.: Heyday Books, 1997), 3.

“the city of unfinished attics”: Ishmael Reed,
The Last Days of Louisiana Red,
cited in ibid., 174.

“earthquake weather”: Joan Didion,
Run
River
(New York: Ivan Obolensky, 1963), 119.

“fifteen dentists on fifteen palominos”: ibid., 217.

“The landscape has a fantastic, strong, and depressing effect”: Joan Didion in conversation with Michael Bernstein, the Revelle Forum at the Neurosciences Institute, University of California at San Diego, October 15, 2002.

“humorless nineteen-year-old”: Joan Didion,
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
(New York: Modern Library, 2000), 127.

“It was as if she'd stumbled alone”: Didion,
Run River,
94.

“Let us steadfastly love one another”: Tri-Delt motto cited at
www.trideltaorg/aboutus/tr:_delta_fact_sheet
.

“I looked at the athletic-looking young people”: Simone de Beauvoir,
America Day-by-Day,
trans. Carol Cosman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 142–43.

“I came out of what was called the ‘Silent Generation'”: Didion quoted in Rustin, “Legends of the Fall.”

“The mood of Berkeley in those years”: Didion,
The White Album,
207.

“provide parking for the faculty”: Kevin Starr,
Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance, 1950–1963
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 233.

“There are several ‘nations' of students”: Clark Kerr,
The Uses of the University
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963), 33.

led to a specific campus layout: For a discussion of the physical changes to the Berkeley campus in the 1950s, see Max Heirich,
The Spiral of Conflict: Berkeley 1964
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), 58–64.

“happy home”: Kerr,
The Uses of the University
, 124–26.

“[T]he undergraduate students are restless”: Clark Kerr, “Godkin Lectures at Harvard,” April 1963, cited in
The Berkeley Student Revolt: Facts and Interpretations,
ed. Seymour Martin Lipset and Sheldon S. Wolin (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1965), 37. Kerr's remarks also appear in his
The Uses of the University,
91.

“New Dealism”: Starr,
Golden Dreams,
206.

“The Bevatron requires”: Bruce Cork, “Proton Linear Accelerator for the Bevatron,”
Review of Scientific Instruments
26, no. 2 (1955): 210.

“moral force” and “The planet itself seemed less impressive”: Henry Adams,
The Education of Henry Adams
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1973), 380.

“Seize, then, the Atom!”: Henry Adams,
Letters to a Niece and Prayer to the Virgin of Chartres
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1920), 130.

“ingenious channel”: Adams,
The Education of Henry Adams,
380.

“The whole way I think about politics”: Meyer, “Berkeley Alumna Discusses Politics After ‘Fiction.'”

“depends on over-interpreting everything”: Connie Brod,
In Depth
interview with Joan Didion, Book TV, C-SPAN 2, 1992.

“I still go to the text”: Didion in conversation with Bernstein, Revelle Forum.

“I was very excited by Sartre in particular”: Didion quoted in Rustin, “Legends of the Fall.”

“Mark Schorer … helped me”: Kuehl, “Joan Didion, The Art of Fiction No. 71.”

“form and rhythm imposed” and all other quotes from “Technique as Discovery”: Mark Schorer, “Technique as Discovery,” first published in
The Hudson Review
1, no. 1 (Spring 1948); reprinted in Schorer,
The World We Imagine
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968), 5.

“in which we are encamped like bewildered travelers”: Joseph Conrad,
Victory
(Garden City, N.Y.: International Collector's Library, 1921), 3.

“maybe my favorite book in the world”: Als, “Joan Didion, The Art of Nonfiction No. 1.”

“I am not a central character” and all other quotes from
The Wars of Love
: Mark Schorer,
The Wars of Love
(Sag Harbor, N.Y.: Second Chance Press, 1982), 3, 4.

“I tell you this not as aimless revelation”: Didion,
The White Album,
133.

“[Y]ou remember the names”: Joan Didion,
The Last Thing He Wanted
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), 9.

“
Victory
seems to me a profoundly female novel”: Kuehl, “Joan Didion, The Art of Fiction No. 71.”

“you're seeing [the story] from a distance”: Brod,
In Depth
interview with Joan Didion.

“We were constantly being impressed”: Als, “Joan Didion, The Art of Nonfiction No. 1.”

“You hoped he would like it” and subsequent Butler quotes: Phyllis Butler in conversation with the author, July 17, 2012.

“I was so scared in that class I couldn't speak”: Brod,
In Depth
interview with Joan Didion.