The Last Love Song (110 page)

“The two worlds met”: Travis Elborough, “Kicking Against the Pricks,” interview with Barney Hoskyns in
P.S.,
end section to Barney Hoskyns,
Hotel California: Singer-Songwriters and Cocaine Cowboys in the LA Canyons, 1967–1976
(London: Fourth Estate, 2005), 2.

“Folk
+
Rock
+
Protest = Dollars”: Hoskyns,
Hotel California,
7.

“We put ‘Lay Lady Lay' on the record player”: Didion,
The White Album,
41.

“Joan and I connected”: Eve Babitz quoted in Lili Anolik, “All About Eve and Then Some,”
Vanity Fair,
March 2014, 291.

“Los Angeles had no modern art museum”: Hunter Drohojowska-Philp,
Rebels in Paradise: The Los Angeles Art Scene and the 1960s
(New York: Henry Holt, 2011), xxiii–xxiv.

“[T]he book is so curious”: Philip Leider, “Books Received:
Twentysix Gasoline Stations,
by Edward Ruscha,”
Artforum,
September 1963, 57.

“I want absolutely neutral material”: Ed Ruscha quoted in John Coplans, “Concerning ‘Various Small Fires': Edward Ruscha Discusses His Perplexing Publications,” in Edward Ruscha,
Leave Any Information at the Signal,
ed. Alexandra Schwartz (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2004), 26.

“direct response to life”: John Coplans, “The New Painting of Common Objects,” in
Pop Art: A Critical History,
ed. Steven Henry Madoff (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 43. For more about Ruscha's work, see Alexandra Schwartz,
Ed Ruscha's Los Angeles
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2010).

“contemporary morality”: C. D. B. Bryan, “‘The Pump House Gang' and ‘The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,'”
New York Times Book Review,
August 18, 1968; available at
www.nytimes.com/1968/08/18/books/1968wolfe-acid.html?_r=0
.

“There is a very thin line”: Ed Ruscha quoted in Coplans, “Concerning ‘Small Various Fires,'” 22.

“I never ask”: Joan Didion,
Play It As It Lays
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1970), 1.

“I imagined that my”: Didion,
The White Album,
41.

“The first time I dropped acid”: Dominick Dunne, “Murder Most Unforgettable,”
Vanity Fair,
April 2001; reprinted at
sensationalsharontate.blogspot.com/2009/08/one-of-sharons-friends-dies-author.html
.

“Jay had a private room”: ibid.

“She wore her blonde hair straight”: ibid.

“jitters”: Didion,
The White Album,
42.

“You could smell the semen”: Eve Babitz quoted in Hoskyns,
Hotel California,
70.

“my moon lamp”: John Gregory Dunne,
Dutch Shea, Jr.
(New York: Pocket Books, 1983), 195. Didion has said that phrases attributed to Cat in the novel came from Quintana.

“We invited one hundred people”: Elizabeth Mehren, “Authors Share Personal Footnotes: Joan Didion, Tom Wolfe Speak to Literati at PEN Meeting,”
Los Angeles Times,
November 13, 1985; available at
articles.latimes.com/print/1985-11-13/news/vw-5406_1_novelist-joan-didion
.

“It was a fucking zoo”: Jemima Hunt, “The Didion Bible,”
The Guardian,
January 12, 2003; available at
www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jan/12/fiction.society
.

“I thought it was Colonel Klink”: Griffin Dunne quoted in “Sarasota Film Festival 2013: Closing Weekend,”
Sarasota
, April 13, 2013; available at
sarasotamagazine.com/on-stage/2013/04/15/sarasota-film-festival-2013-closing-weekend
.

“Chicken salad”: Hunt, “The Didion Bible.”

“[W]hen I gave it to her”: Mehren, “Authors Share Personal Footnotes.”

“She had just done a concert”: Didion,
The White Album,
25.

“passed out on the divan”: Mehren, “Authors Share Personal Footnotes.”

“convenience of being close to the street dealers”: Echols,
Scars of Sweet Paradise,
295.

“It's so strong”: ibid., 300.

CHAPTER 16

“We've got entertainment”: John Gregory Dunne,
The Studio
(New York: Limelight Editions, 1985), 111.

“accept the nomination”: Lyndon Johnson quoted in Norman Mailer,
Miami and the Siege of Chicago
(New York: New American Library, 1968), 102.

“They find an almost childlike fascination” and “[i]ndoors or outdoors”: James Shepley, a letter from the publisher in
Time,
July 7, 1967, photo insert captions (unpaginated).

“The only American newspapers”: Joan Didion, “Alicia and the Underground Press,”
The Saturday Evening Post,
January 13, 1968, 14.

“I find that most people east of Nevada”: Henry Robbins letter to Robert Coles, October 18, 1967, Farrar, Straus and Giroux Records, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library.

“A lot of shit”: John Gregory Dunne letter to Julie Coryn, April 5, 1968: in ibid.

“the Norman Mailers of the Top Forty”: Joan Didion,
The White Album
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), 212.

“Protest songs are dead”: Roger McGuinn quoted in Barney Hoskyns,
Waiting for the Sun: Strange Days, Weird Scenes, and the Sound of Los Angeles
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996), 159.

“from behind some disabling aphasia,” “There was a sense,” and “to the fly”:
The White Album
, 24–25.

Eve Babitz told me: Eve Babitz in conversation with the author, March 30, 2013.

“Each of us was mad at the other”: Didion quoted in Sara Davidson, “Joan Didion—Losing John,”
O, The Oprah Magazine,
2005; available at
www.saradavidson.com/joan-didion-losing-john
.

“Manifest Destiny”: John Gregory Dunne,
Crooning
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), 60.

“
Why seek ye the living
”: Joan Didion,
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968), 208.

“lawns of the men”: ibid., 213.

“my arena, my stage”: Jane Howard cited in the “Biographical Note” to the Jane Howard Papers, ca. 1930–1996, Columbia University Libraries Archival Collections; available at
www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/archival/collections/ldpd_4079538
.

“so depressing”: Joan Didion,
Telling Stories
(Berkeley, Calif.: Friends of the Bancroft Library, 1978), 13.

“
2 skirts
”: Didion,
The White Album,
34–35.

“payable by the state”: ibid.
,
70.

“That, apparently, was my big mistake”: Nancy Reagan,
My Turn
(New York: Random House, 2011); available at
books.google.com/books?isbn=0307766520
.

“It was kind of a mean piece”: Lou Cannon cited in
The Annotated Script
; available at
http://newshour-the-pbs.org/newshour/nancy-reagan/annotated_bib/Act5AnnotatedScriptRET.pdf
.

“My biggest fault”: Reagan,
My Turn.

“watch[ing] Nancy Reagan being watched by me”: Didion,
The White Album,
90.

“Fake the nip”: ibid., 92.

“aggressive manipulator” and “not one of Nancy Reagan's greatest admirers”: Bernard Weinraub, “The Public's Feelings About Its First Ladies Are Decidedly Mixed,”
New York Times,
March 8, 1987; available at
www.nytimes.com/1987/03/08/weekinreview/the-public-s-feelings-about-its-first-ladies-are-decidedly-mixed
.

“It has the feeling of the dust bowl”: John Gregory Dunne,
Quintana & Friends
(New York: E. P. Dutton, 1978), 103.

“hot and close” and “Dozens of vending machines”: ibid., 82–83.

“where the rich used to live”: ibid., 89.

“If Canada is a bummer”: ibid., 91.

“How many men must the U.S. send?”:
Time,
July 7, 1967, 13.

“if the Republican Party comes beating at my door”: ibid., 14.

“I hope we get a look at your next one”: Robert Giroux quoted in a letter to Henry Robbins from John Gregory Dunne, March 1, 1968, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA Special Collection.

“Quintana's mommy” and “mindlessly happy”: Joan Didion, “Where
Tonight Show
Guests Go to Rest,”
Esquire,
October 1976, 25.

“You are at all times prey to subversive elements”: Dunne,
Quintana & Friends,
87.

“reality contact” and subsequent quotes from Didion's psychiatric report: Didion,
The White Album,
14–15.

“an inappropriate response”: ibid., 15.

“Many saw the unleashing”:
Time,
June 14, 1968, 15.

“It became clear to me:” ibid., 93.

“total breakdown” and subsequent quotes from “Singular Voices” questionnaire: rough draft of
Harper's Bazaar
questionnaire, “Singular Voices: 100 Women in Touch with Our Time,” Farrar, Straus and Giroux Records, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library.

King of Beasts:
Aesop's Fables
cited in Hugh Sidey,
Time,
June 28, 1968, 16.

“[He offers] a dizzying series”: William Gass, “The Leading Edge of the Trash Phenomenon,”
The New York Review of Books,
April 25, 1968; available at
www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1968/apr/25/the-leading-edge-of-the-trash-phenomenon
.

“enthusiasm and literary fireworks”: C. D. B. Bryan, “‘The Pump House Gang' and ‘The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,'”
New York Times Book Review,
August 18, 1968; available at
www.nytimes.com/1968/08/18/books/1968wolfe-acid.html?_r=0
.

“some of the finest magazine pieces”: Dan Wakefield, “People, Places, and Personalities” in
New York Times Book Review,
June 21, 1968; available at
www.nytimes.com/1968/06/21/books/didion-bethlehem.html
.

“Mailer presents this book”: Alfred Kazin, “The Trouble He's Seen,”
New York Times Book Review,
May 5, 1968; available at
www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/04/reviews/mailer-armies.html
.

“The new journalism”: Gay Talese quoted in Nicolaus Mills
, The New Journalism: A Historical Anthology
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974), xii.

“never dreamed”: Tom Wolfe, “The Birth of ‘The New Journalism'; Eyewitness Report,”
New York,
February 14, 1972; available at
nymag.com/news/media/47353/
.

“A new kind of journalism”: Dwight Macdonald quoted in Marc Weingarten,
The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight: Wolfe, Thompson, Didion, and the New Journalism Revolution
(New York: Crown), 5.

“So far nobody in or out of the medical profession”: Tom Wolfe quoted in ibid., 107–108.

“The ceiling is moving”: ibid., 114.

“Despite the skepticism”: ibid., 105.

“though her own personality”: Wakefield, “People, Places, and Personalities.”

“cat's ass”: handwritten note from John Gregory Dunne to Henry Robbins, October 2, 1967, Farrar, Straus and Giroux Records, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library.

“I am comfortable”: Didion,
Slouching Towards Bethlehem,
62–63.

“I had a strong feeling that it was necessary”: “Telling Stories in Order to Live,” Academy of Achievement interview with Joan Didion, June 3, 2006; available at
www.achievment.org/autodoc/page/did0int-1
.

“The fiction voice”: Didion quoted in Connie Brod,
In Depth
interview with Joan Didion, Book TV, C-SPAN 2, 1992.

her “beauty”: Henry Robbins letter to Joan Didion, October 1967, Farrar, Straus and Giroux Records, Manuscript and Archives Division, New York Public Library.

“hippie” jacket: Joan Didion letter to Henry Robbins, October 2, 1967; in ibid.

“pretty shocking”: ibid.

“bleak and joyless”: “Melancholia, U.S.A.,”
Time,
June 28, 1968, 84.

“Journalism by women”: Melvin Maddocks quoted in “Contemporary Reviews of
Slouching Towards Bethlehem,
” compiled by Jesse Donaldson for the author; available at
http://didion.wikispaces.com/Contemporary+Reviews+of+Slouching+Towards+Bethlehem
.

“to that bend in the river”:
Time,
June 28, 1968, 84.

“Defoe, Addison and Steele”: Jack Newfield quoted in Mills,
The New Journalism,
xvi.

“In the Sixties you kept hearing”: Nora Sayre,
Sixties Going on Seventies
(New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1996), 5.

“The so-called stylistic excesses”: Robert Scholes, “Double Perspective on Hysteria,”
The Saturday Review,
August 24, 1968, 37.

“I am not the society in microcosm”: Didion,
The White Album,
135.

“movements of the Army day”: ibid., 152.

REACH OUT AND GRAB THE GREATEST SUMMER EVER
: Sayre,
Sixties Going on Seventies,
12.

“Chicago is a police state”: Mailer,
Miami and the Siege of Chicago,
145.

“We will try to develop”: ibid., 135.

“[J]oy, nooky, circle groups”: ibid.

“not American”: ibid., 103.

“time, I think”: ibid., 48.

“faraway places”: ibid., 80.

“country had learned an almost unendurable lesson”: ibid., 34.

“political ideas are reduced”: Didion,
The White Album,
86.