The Last Love Song (104 page)

“there was more to be learned”: Kuehl, “Joan Didion, The Art of Fiction No. 71.”

“[I]t had not yet struck me”: Joan Didion,
Telling Stories
(Berkeley, Calif.: Friends of the Bancroft Library, 1978), 3.

“A lot of people don't get as excited”: Brod,
In Depth
interview with Joan Didion.

“mad” and subsequent quotes from Auden: W. H. Auden. “September 1, 1939,”
The New Republic,
October 18, 1939, 297.

“absolutely terrified”: Didion quoted in Rustin, “Legends of the Fall.”

CHAPTER 5

a boy she referred to in letters: Joan Didion letter to Peggy La Violette, 1955, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Four years after World War II: statistics cited in Larry May,
Recasting America
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 148.

“rigid,” “frozen,” and “closed”: Simone de Beauvoir cited in Elizabeth Spies, “‘Dreaming Houses' and ‘Stilled Suburbs': Sylvia Plath Encounters the American Ranch Home”; available at
www.iun.edu/~nwadmin/plath/vol4/spies.pdf
.

“I have, in the space of six days”: Sylvia Plath,
Letters Home: Correspondence, 1950–1962,
ed. Aurelia Schober Plath (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), 117–18.

“one of the mixed blessings of being twenty”: Joan Didion,
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
(New York: Modern Library, 2000), 207.

“the city's elite dollhouse” and subsequent quotes about the Barbizon: Michael Callahan, “Sorority on E. 63rd S,”
Vanity Fair,
April 2010; available at
www.vanityfair.com/society/features/2010/04/barbizon-hotel-201004?printable=true
.

“I remember Joan”: Gael Greene quoted in Linda Hall, “The Writer Who Came In from the Cold,”
New York,
September 2, 1996, 31.

“I would say, consulting a faulty memory” and other Burroway reminiscences: Janet Burroway to the author, March 21, 2012. Excerpts from Burroway's letters throughout this chapter were provided to the author on March 21, 2012.

“creative energy crackled like summer heat lightning”: Jane Truslow, “Memo from the Guest Editor,”
Mademoiselle,
August 1955, 241.

“It was the first time I'd ever worked in an office”: “Conversation Between Joan Didion and Meghan Daum,”
Black Book,
December 12, 2004; available (2011) at
www.meghandaum.com/about-meghan-daum/36-conversation-between-joan-didion-and-meghan-daum
.

“Joan spends vacations”: Ellen Adams, profile of Joan Didion,
Mademoiselle,
August 1955, 249.

“seems better suited to the age”: Jean Stafford quoted in Joan Didion, profile of Jean Stafford in “We Hitch Our Wagons,”
Mademoiselle,
August 1955, 305.

“discover[ed] to our delight”: Truslow, “Memo from the Guest Editor.”

“champagne and caviar”: Joan Gage, “Bring Back the Mlle. Guest Editor Contest”; available at
www.arollingcrone.blogspot.com/2010/05/bring-back-mlle-guest-editor-contest.html
.

“where fashion scored a touchdown”: Truslow, “Memo from the Guest Editor.”

En route, Didion wrote a series of letters: Joan Didion letter to Peggy La Violette, 1955, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

“[she] was strong enough to make people take care of [her]”: Joan Didion,
Run River
(New York: Ivan Obolensky, 1963), 104.

“Capture a man” and other ads:
Mademoiselle,
August 1955, 28–29, 50–51, 174.

“beads, cotton cloth”: Joseph Conrad, “An Outpost of Progress,” in
Joseph Conrad: The Secret Sharer and Other Stories,
ed. John Lawton (London: Orion Publishing Group, 1999), 8.

“a form of ugliness so intolerable”: Oscar Wilde, “Literary and Other Notes,” in
The Woman's World
, vol. 1, ed. Oscar Wilde (New York: Source Book Press, 1970), 39.

“A night of memories and sighs”: Walter Landor cited in Joan Didion,
The Year of Magical Thinking
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 53–54.

“particularly vigorous panty raid”: Seymour Martin Lipset and Sheldon S. Wolin,
The Berkeley Student Revolt: Facts and Interpretations
(Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1965), 11.

“Zen lunatic drunks”: Jack Kerouac,
Dharma
Bums
(New York: Penguin, 1976), 17.

“real poet”: Reading at Six Gallery re-creation, March 11, 1956; audio available at
https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/poetrycenter.bundles/191226
.

“This is very important”: Gary Snyder in conversation with the author, October 26, 2012.

“clique”: Gabriel Rummonds to the author, February 12, 2012.

John Ridland agreed: John Ridland to the author, February 17, 2012.

“ghostly symposium”: Jack Spicer, “One Night Stand,”
The Occident,
Spring 1949, 90.

“pseudo avant-garde”: Joan Didion letter to Peggy La Violette, 1955, Bancroft Library, University of California
,
Berkeley.

“The trouble with you, Didion”: Joan Didion, “Movies,”
Vogue,
May 1964, 60.

“I tried to be friendly with her”: Renata “Harriet” Polt to the author, March 6, 2012.

“It is not professional”: Thomas Parkinson, “Parinson [
sic
] Disects [
sic
], Discusses,”
Daily Californian
, Spring 1956.

“And that had made all the difference” and subsequent quotes from “Sunset”: Joan Didion, “Sunset,”
The Occident,
Spring 1956, 21, 22, 24, 26.

One night she borrowed a dress: Didion recounted this anecdote in “Making Up Stories,” her 1979 Hopwood Lecture at the University of Michigan. The lecture appears in Robert A. Martin, ed.,
The Writing Craft
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press), 235–48.

“Of course I was awfully jealous”: Renata “Harriet” Polt to the author, March 6, 2012.

“two wonderful weeks in Paris”:
Vogue,
August 1956, 68.

“[H]ow crazy I was to get out of California”: “Conversation Between Joan Didion and Meghan Daum.”

“Expect the contest
not
to be a cinch”:
Vogue,
August 1956, 68.

“poets and idealists”: Jacqueline Bouvier, “People I Wish I Had Known,”
Vogue,
February 1951, 134.

“red, red, red”:
Vogue,
August 1954, 98.

“[g]ive ideas for a newspaper advertisement”: ibid., 71.

“unshakable sense of moral righteousness”: Aline B. Saarinen, “Four Architects Helping to Change the Look of America,”
Vogue,
August 1954, 119.

“[Hell] hell hell”: Joan Didion letter to Peggy La Violette, 1955, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley.

“grayed and obscurely sinister light”: 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.

“I would like to tell you”: Henry Nash Smith letter to Joan Didion, June 2, 1956, Henry Nash Smith Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley.

CHAPTER 6

“I can remember asking”: “Conversation Between Joan Didion and Meghan Daum,”
Black Book
, December 12, 2004; available (2011) at
www.meghandaum.com/about-meghan-daum/36-conversation-between-joan-didion-and-meghan-daum
.

“You lose ninety per cent of your body heat”: ibid.

“commercial stuff”: Linda Hall, “The Writer Who Came In from the Cold,”
New York,
September 2, 1996, 31.

“I was trying to write a novel”: ibid.

“in an era”: ibid.

“ruffled the ends of her semi-pageboy”: Rosa Rasiel to the author, August 18, 2012.

“liked being there”: “Conversation Between Joan Didion and Meghan Daum.”

“Gorgon always called”: Rosa Rasiel to the author.

“The late fifties at
Vogue
”: Mary Cantwell,
Manhattan Memoir
(New York: Penguin, 1998), 212.

“verbals” and “visuals”: ibid., 195.

“Well, it's a
look
”: ibid., 257.

“façade” and subsequent quotes about Hawaii: John W. Vandercook, “All Eyes on Hawaii,”
Vogue,
February 1941, 67.

“opaque bewilderment”: Joan Didion,
Where I Was From
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), 8.

“I was never a fan”: Hilton Als, “Joan Didion, The Art of Nonfiction No. 1,”
The Paris Review
48, no. 176 (Spring 2006); available at
www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5601/the-art-of-nonfiction-no-1-joan-didion
.

CHAPTER 7

“in a coma” and “I could quote a lot of English poetry”: “Conversation Between Joan Didion and Meghan Daum,
Black Book,
December 12, 2004”; available (2011) at
www.meghandaum.com/about-meghan-daum/36-conversation-between-joan-didion-and-meghan-daum
.

“[I was] a good deal of trouble”: Didion quoted in Susanna Rustin, “Legends of the Fall,”
The Guardian,
May 20, 2005; available at
www.theguardian.com/books/2005/may/21/usnationalbookawards.society
.

“the kind that was sent to stores”: Dan Wakefield,
New York in the Fifties
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin/Seymour Lawrence, 1992), 52.

“She was a) hard to know”: Noel Parmentel quoted in Linda Hall, “The Writer Who Came In from the Cold,”
New York,
September 2, 1996, 32.

“I … tended my own garden”: 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
.

“I think you're the best movie critic in America”: John Gregory Dunne cited in Brian Kellow,
Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark
(New York: Viking, 2011), 195.

“implacable ignorance”: John Gregory Dunne,
Quintana & Friends
(New York: E. P. Dutton, 1978), 154.

“captures the turbulence”: “Jess” at
startnarrativehere.com/2010/02/slouching-towards-bethlehem-by-joan-didion-1968
.

“impose[s] some order”: Marc Weingarten,
The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight: Wolfe, Thompson, Didion, and the New Journalism Revolution
(New York: Crown, 2005), 6.

“had her eyes on the nation”: Jonathan Yardley, “In a Time of Posturing, Didion Dared ‘Slouching,'”
Washington Post,
January 11, 2006; available at
kitspsun.com/news/2006/jan/11/in-a-time-of-posturing-didion-dared-145slouching/?print=1
.

“[In 1969] I was starting a column for
Life
”: “Conversation Between Joan Didion and Meghan Daum.”

“advantages”: Kuehl, “Joan Didion, The Art of Fiction No. 71.”

“At
Vogue,
she worked hard”: Noel Parmentel quoted in Hall, “The Writer Who Came In from the Cold,” 32.

“conned”: Joan Didion letter to Peggy La Violette, September 27, 1959, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley.

“furnished entirely with things taken from storage”: Joan Didion,
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968), 232.

“Noel”: Joan Didion letter to Peggy La Violette, September 27, 1959, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley.

“has never been credited” and “hard-drinking”: Hall, “The Writer Who Came In from the Cold,” 31.

“I owe you an apology”: Noel Parmentel in conversation with the author, August 9, 2012.

“I had a theory”: Hilton Als, “Joan Didion, The Art of Nonfiction No. 1,”
The Paris Review
48, no. 176 (Spring 2006); available at
www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5601/the-art-of-nonfiction-no-1-joan-didion
.

“arch-conservative but a marvelously funny guy”: Norman Mailer, “The Writer as Candidate,”
New York,
April 6, 1998; available at
nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/features/2432
.

“I must love him”: Norman Mailer quoted in Dunne,
Quintana & Friends,
xix.

“non-conservative”: Kevin J. Smant,
How the Great Triumph: James Burnham, Anti-Communism, and the Conservative Movement
(Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1992), 76.

“drunk, of course”: Julia Reed, excerpt from
The House on First Street,
posted at
today.msnbc.msn.com/id/25643400/ns/today-books/t/reporter-reflects-ruin-rebirth-new-orleans
.

“[A]nyone who knew anything about New York”: Wakefield,
New York in the Fifties,
268.

“little Leftist don't-do-it-yourself affair”: Noel Parmentel, “Portrait of the Reviewer,”
National Review,
January 30, 1962, 68.

“Well, Dan had some fun with me”: Parmentel in conversation with the author, August 9, 2012.

“I could have gotten my Ph.D.”: Parmentel in conversation with the author, July 11, 2013.

“small, cluttered apartment”: Wakefield,
New York in the Fifties,
269.

“about six parties a day”: Parmentel in conversation with the author, July 11, 2013.

“shock of light brown hair”: Wakefield,
New York in the Fifties,
268.

“conservative streak”: Jim Desmond in conversation with the author, December 5, 2011.

“he'd been a rake-hell”: Sam Waterston to the author, November 30, 2011.