The Last Love Song (114 page)

“an unusually high number of savage murders”: Barry Farrell,
How I Got to Be This Hip,
ed. Steve Hawk (New York: Washington Square Press, 1999), 94–95.

“overkills”: ibid., 95.

“curse of the Donner Party”: ibid., 91.

“nation's most dysfunctional prison system”: Talbot,
Season of the Witch,
170.

“spying on law-abiding individuals”: David Johnston, “L.A. Police Officials Allegedly Hid Crimes; An Ex-Officer's Book Says a Spy Unit Also Looked into the Sex Lives of State Officials,”
Philadelphia Inquirer,
July 13, 1992, available at
articles.philly.com/1992-07-13/news/26026052_1_organized-crime-intelligence-division
. See also “A Timeline of LAPD Spying and Surveillance,” posted at
stoplapdspying.org
; and David Cay Johnston, “Daryl Gates' Real Legacy,” posted at
laobserved.com/visiting/2010/04/daryl_gates_secret_legacy.php
.

“incidents of conspiracy to commit murder”: Johnston, “L.A. Police Officials Allegedly Hid Crimes.”

“government agent”: Krassner, “Symbionese Liberation Army.”

“tried to keep his military”: Talbot,
Season of the Witch,
173.

“the gentlest, most beautiful man”: Patty Hearst quoted in Krassner, “Symbionese Liberation Army.”

Lake Headley: Talbot,
Season of the Witch,
193–95.

“kind, honest person”: Sara Davidson, “Patty Hearst in the Land of the Cobra,”
New York Times Magazine,
June 2, 1974; available at
www.saradavidson.com/articleD3.html
.

“[T]he name ‘symbionese'”: “Who Were the Symbionese, and Were They Ever Liberated?”

“[d]iscussions were held”: Krassner, “The Parts Left Out of the Patty Hearst Trial, Part Two.”

“Declaration of Revolutionary War”: “Who Were the Symbionese, and Were They Ever Liberated?”

“hatred, fear and disunity”: Talbot,
Season of the Witch,
179.

“palsy-walsy with everybody in the glass house”: The Jonestown Institute, Jonestown Audiotape Primary Project, tape number Q 622, transcribed by Fielding M. McGehee III; available at
jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page-id-27498
.

“brilliant” and “leader”: Talbot,
Season of the Witch,
182.

“shot on sight”: ibid.

“extortion”: ibid., 185.

“75% slop”: Mae Brussell, “Why Was Patty Hearst Kidnapped?”
The Realist,
July 1974; available at
prouty.org/brussell/hearst_1.html
.

“hog feed”: Linda Kramer, “Progress Report Due on Hearst Kidnapping,”
Nashua Telegram
(Associated Press), March 18, 1975.

“It's just too bad”: Calvin Welch, “The Legacy of the SLA,” posted at
foundsf.org/index.php?title=The_Legacy_of_the_SLA
.

“I have been given the name Tania”: Morantz, “Escape from the SLA.”

“One thing I learned”: Talbot,
Season of the Witch,
191.

“We love you Tania”: ibid.

“one California busy being born”: Didion,
After Henry,
98.

“looking for a stake”: ibid., 99.

one of the strangest proposals: Joan Didion letter to Jann Wenner, October 20, 1975, Lois Wallace Literary Agency Records, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

“California experience” and subsequent quotes from letter: Lois Wallace letter to James Silberman, October 20, 1975; in ibid.

Cinque was the nation's first black Lee Harvey Oswald: Stephanie Caruana, “About Women…”
Playgirl,
August 1974; available at
prouty.org/brussell/playgirl.html
.

“He'll be killed, probably in a shootout”: Talbot,
Season of the Witch,
194.

“an art form”: Mae Brussell, “From Monterey Pop to Altamont: Operation Chaos, the CIA's War Against the Sixties Counter-Culture,” November 1976 (unpublished); available at
maebrussell.com/Mae%20Brussell%20Articles/Operation%20Chaos.html
.

“abrupt sloughing of the past”: Didion,
After Henry,
102.

“Don't examine your feelings”: ibid., 103.

“seemed to project an emotional distance”: ibid., 104.

“This was a California girl”: ibid., 107–108.

“happened” and “minister”: ibid., 108–109.

an anecdote that Lewis Lapham: Joan Didion letter to Jann Wenner, January 7, 1976, Lois Wallace Literary Agency Records, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

“marginal titles”: Boris Kachka,
Hothouse: The Art of Survival and the Survival of Art at America's Most Celebrated Publishing House, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013), 199.

“touch and go,” “frightened the whiskers,” and “had to try”: ibid., 198.

“[f]inancial considerations”: ibid., 200.

“such major writers”: Sarah Gallick, “Some Gossip,”
Harper's
magazine, September 30, 1974, 4.

“None of [my] authors”: Kachka,
Hothouse,
201.

“surrogate father”: ibid., 202.

“to our part of town”: Roger Straus letter to Lois Wallace, July 25, 1974, Farrar, Straus and Giroux Records, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library.

“the new novel is going well”: Roger Straus letter to Joan Didion, November 11, 1975, Lois Wallace Literary Agency Records, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

“not the kind of writer that should be put on the block”: Kachka,
Hothouse,
203.

“terribly impressed” and subsequent quotes about Wharton: Didion quoted in Madore McKenzie, “Writer Joan Didion: A Laugh Like a Silver Bell,”
Boca Raton News,
July 21, 1977.

“an uncertain but determined adolescent”: Joan Didion,
Blue Nights
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 19.

“some gynecological detective work” and “This is not … feasible”: Sara Davidson,
Joan: Forty Years of Life, Loss, and Friendship with Joan Didion
(San Francisco: Byliner, 2011).

“to make it all one book”: McKenzie, “Writer Joan Didion.”

“Maybe because he thought”: ibid.

“[T]hree weeks of one-night stands”: John Gregory Dunne,
Regards
:
The Selected Nonfiction of John Gregory Dunne
(New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2006), 40.

“You'd find yourself”: “Telling Stories in Order to Live,” Academy of Achievement interview with Joan Didion, June 3, 2006; available at
www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/did0int-1
.

“the better part of an afternoon”: Dunne,
Regards,
40.

“Call KL 5-2033”: ibid.

“a groupie”: ibid.

“roomy suite”: Robert Lamm, “Memoir 4: Joan Didion, John Gregory Dunne, and Colonel Klink,” posted at ChicagoTheBand.us/forum/topics/memoir-4-joan-didion-john?commentID=5536203%3AComment%3A31058.

“ate caviar for the first time”: Joan Didion,
Blue Nights
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 89.

“onstage, on one of the amps”: ibid.

“the crowd had rocked the car”: ibid.

“did not want to go to her grandmother's”: ibid., 90.

“I crave the power Charlie Manson had”: Talbot,
Season of the Witch,
176.

“an ongoing program”: ibid., 128.

“blasting off”: ibid.

“If everybody is willing to accept the fact”: “Wayne Says Patty Hearst Should Be Granted Freedom,”
Eugene Register-Guard,
December 2, 1978.

“bad energy”: Stephen Davis, “Power, Mystery, and the Hammer of the Gods: The Rise and Fall of Led Zeppelin,”
Rolling Stone,
July 4, 1985; available at
http://boards.atlantafalcons.com/topic/2988594-the-rise-and-fall-of-led-zeppelin-power-mystery-and-the-hammer-of-the-gods/
.

“greatest domestic firefight”: Farrell,
How I Got to Be This Hip,
71.

“[I]t was clear”: ibid., 81.

“police shoot-out”: Talbot,
Season of the Witch,
194.

“It Took 500 Cops”: Miles Corwin, “The Shootout on East 54th Street,”
Los Angeles Times,
May 18, 1994; available at
articles.latimes.com/1994-05-18/local/me-59109_1_east-54th-street
.

“The LAPD was making a statement”: ibid.

“homage of a coast-to-coast auto-da-fe”: Farrell,
How I Got to Be This Hip,
71–72.

“President Nixon Vietnam Watergate”: John Gregory Dunne,
Quintana & Friends
(New York: E. P. Dutton, 1978), 6.

CHAPTER 22

“[T]here was a sense that something was happening”: This and subsequent quotes in this chapter are from Caitlin Flanagan's article “The Autumn of Joan Didion,”
The Atlantic,
January/February 2012, 95–100.

“Certainly I have nothing in common with Hunter”: 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
.

“This may be the year”: Hunter S. Thompson, “Fear and Loathing: The Fat City Blues,” cited in Marc Weingarten,
The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight: Wolfe, Thompson, Didion, and the New Journalism Revolution
(New York: Crown, 2005), 267.

“At night I would be the only person on the campus”: Don Swaim's audio interview with Joan Didion, October 29, 1987; available at
www.wiredforbooks.org/joandidion
.

“[I] wrapped myself in my bedspread”: Joan Didion,
After Henry
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 115–16.

“I'm not telling you to make the world better”: Didion quoted in Rachel Donadio, “Every Day Is All There Is,”
New York Times,
October 9, 2005; available at
www.nytimes.com/2005/10/09/books/review/09donadio.html?pagewanted=all
.

“Drink”: John Gregory Dunne,
Harp
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), 31–32.

“I had always thought body bags were black”: ibid., 33.

“a dozen or so students in the English Department”: Joan Didion,
Democracy
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), 71–72.

“in the face of definite annihilation”: Didion,
After Henry,
123.

“blue in the glass at Chartres”: ibid., 124.

“the blue that is actually a shock wave in the water”: ibid.

“question of whether one spoke of Saigon ‘falling'”: ibid., 117.

“plotting of
Vanity Fair
”: ibid.

“Tank battalions vanished”: Didion,
Democracy,
73.

“colors of the landing lights”: ibid.

“amount of cash burned”: ibid., 73–74.

“formed a straight line”: 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
.

“I'm a writer” and subsequent quotes regarding this encounter: Didion,
After Henry
, 118.

“At nineteen I had wanted to write”: ibid.

“large numbers of … Vietnamese”: George Esper, “Evacuation from Saigon Tumultuous at the End,”
New York Times,
April 30, 1975; available at
www.nytimes.com/learning/general/specials/Saigon/evacuation.html
.

“Americans can [now] regain the sense of pride”: Gerald Ford's speech at Tulane University, April 23, 1975, posted at
historyplace.com/speeches/ford-tulane.htm
.

“number of Vietnamese soldiers”: Didion,
Democracy,
74.

“[E]ditors do not, in the real world”: Didion,
After Henry,
21.

Didion said she had worked up the nerve: Joan Didion letter to Lois Wallace, August 7, 1976, Lois Wallace Literary Agency Records, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

“I've been sitting here”: Didion quoted in Susan Braudy, “A Day in the Life of Joan Didion,”
Ms.,
February 1977, 108.

“[T]here's no getting around the fact”: Joan Didion, “Why I Write,”
New York Times Book Review,
December 5, 1976; reprinted in
Joan Didion
:
Essay and Conversations,
ed. Ellen G. Friedman (Princeton, N.J.: Ontario Review Press, 1984), 5.

“By which I mean”: ibid.

“You just lie low”: ibid.

CHAPTER 23

“I don't mean physically”: Susan Stamberg, “Cautionary Tales,” in
Joan Didion: Essays and Conversations,
ed. Ellen G. Friedman (Princeton, N.J.: Ontario Review Press, 1984), 22.

“
A Book of Common Prayer
to some extent”: ibid., 23.

“What I work out in a book”: ibid.

“congealed into a permanent political class”: Joan Didion,
Political Fictions
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), 9.

“In North America”: Didion quoted in Sara Davidson, “A Visit with Joan Didion,” in Friedman, ed.,
Joan Didion,
14.

“fantastic researcher”: 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
.

“intercutting”: ibid.

“big set-piece”: ibid.

“still hadn't delivered [the] revolution”: 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
.