The Last Love Song (122 page)

“Your cardiac problem”: ibid., 144–45.

“[e]veryone agreed”: ibid., 148.

“No good at human relationships”: Frank Langella,
Dropped Names: Famous Men and Women As I Knew Them
(New York: HarperCollins, 2012), 303.

“practiced reporter's skill”: ibid., 302.

“So, are you gay” and the ensuing conversation: ibid., 303–304.

“a great friend of my sister's”: “Griffin Dunne: Reflections on His Father, Dominick,”
Fresh Air,
National Public Radio, December 15, 2009; available at
wbur.org/npr/127862990/griffin-dunne-reflections-on-his-father-dominick
.

“Dominick and I met” and subsequent Carby quotes: Norman Carby to the author, March 23, 2014.

“Sweeney attacked her”: Jim Hyde, “Dominick Dunne: An Inveterate Connecticut Yankee Tells Us About His Remarkable Life,” posted at
newenglandtimes.com/dominick_dunne/dd_index.shtml
.

“looking after” and “I don't think he'd mind”: “Griffin Dunne: Reflections on His Father, Dominick.”

“I saw the”: ibid.

“Can't die with a secret”: Dominick Dunne,
Too Much Money
(New York: Random House, 2009), 214.

“I call myself”: Tim Teeman, “It Isn't Over, Not When It's Dunne,”
Times
(London), February 12, 2009.

“Frank. I did it”: Langella,
Dropped Names,
306–307.

“even on his deathbed”: ibid.

“Nowadays the substance rendered here”: Guy Trebay, “Trading on Sentiment at Dominick Dunne's Estate Sale,”
New York Times,
November 24, 2010; available at
www.nytimes.com/2010/11/25/fashion/25Gimlet.html?_r=0
.

EPILOGUE: LIFE LIMITS

“a work of stunning frankness”: Joan Didion,
Blue Nights
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), jacket copy.

“[T]here's a discernible remoteness”: Meghan Daum, “Having, or Making, or Thinking about Making a Drink,”
The Los Angeles Review of Books,
October 28, 2011; available at
lareviewofbooks.org/review/having-or-making-or-thinking-about-making-a-drink
.

“twilights turn[ing] long and blue”: Didion,
Blue Nights,
3.

“When we talk about mortality”: ibid., 13.

“Fade as the blue nights fade” and “there is no day in her life”: ibid., 188.

“morality and culture”: Carrie Tuhy, “Joan Didion: Stepping into the River Styx, Again,”
Publishers Weekly,
September 30, 2011; available at
www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/profiles/article/48908-joan-didion-stepping-into-the-river-styx-again.html
.

“It is often said”: Joan Didion,
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
(New York: Modern Library, 2000), 227.

“Earl's job these days”: Eve Babitz in conversation with the author, March 30, 2013.

“unflinching”: Richard Levine's remarks, Yale University, May 23, 2011.

“I'm surprised”: Barack Obama's remarks at the White House, July 10, 2013; available at
thewire.com/politics/2013/07/obama-honors-joan-didion-and-others-well-their-us-policy-criticism/67056
.

“really love Joan Didion”: Caitlin Flanagan, “The Autumn of Joan Didion,”
The Atlantic,
January/February 2012; available at
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/01/the-autumn-of-joan-didion/308851
.

“There are … male writers”: Katie Roiphe,
In Praise of Messy Lives: Essays
(New York: Random House, 2012), 115.

“absolutely essential”: Matthew Specktor to the author, June 5, 2013.

“Sociology is not literature”: Timothy Sedore, “Violating the Boundaries: An Interview with Richard Rodriguez,”
The Michigan Quarterly Review
38, no. 3 (Summer 1999); available at
quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/text/text-idx?cc=mqr;c=mqr;c=mqrarchive;idno=act2080.0038.308;cgn=main;view=text;xc=1;g=mqrg
.

“Sometimes I feel”: Robert Caro quoted in ibid.

“Memories are what you no longer want to remember”: Didion,
Blue Nights,
64.

“like sitting down at the typewriter”: Sara Davidson,
Joan: Forty Years of Life, Loss,
and
Friendship with Joan Didion
(San Francisco: Byliner, 2011).

“I wouldn't get married again”: Didion quoted in Mark Matousek,
When You're Falling, Dive
(London: Hay House, 2009), 22.

“I just jumped ship” and Didion's subsequent remarks to Davidson: Davidson,
Joan
.

“[I]t's an enterprise” and “There's something missing in survival”: Didion quoted in Andrew O'Hehir, “Golden State of Hypocrisy,” posted at
salon.com/2003/10/18/didion_4/
.

 

Selected Bibliography

BOOKS BY JOAN DIDION

Run River
(novel). New York: Ivan Obolensky, 1963.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem
(essays). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968.

Play It As It Lays
(novel). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1970.

A Book of Common Prayer
(novel). New York: Simon & Schuster, 1977.

The White Album
(essays). New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979.

Salvador
(nonfiction). New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983.

Democracy
(novel). New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984.

Miami
(nonfiction). New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987.

After Henry
(essays). New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.

The Last Thing He Wanted
(novel). New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.

Political Fictions
(essays). New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001.

Fixed Ideas: America Since 9.11
(essay). New York: New York Review of Books, 2003.

Where I Was From
(nonfiction). New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003.

The Year of Magical Thinking
(nonfiction). New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.

Blue Nights
(nonfiction). New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011.

SELECTED BOOKS ON JOAN DIDION'S WORK

Berman, Jeffrey.
Companionship in Grief: Love and Loss in the Memoirs of C. S. Lewis, John Bayley, Donald Hall, Joan Didion, and Calvin Trillin.
Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2010.

Davidson, Sara.
Joan: Forty Years of Life, Love, and Friendship with Joan Didion.
San Francisco: Byliner, 2011.

Felton, Sharon, ed.
The Critical Response to Joan Didion.
Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1993.

Friedman, Ellen G., ed.
Joan Didion: Essays and Conversations.
Princeton, N.J.: Ontario Review Press, 1984.

Henderson, Katharine Usher.
Joan Didion.
New York: Frederick Ungar, 1981.

Houston, Lynn Marie, and William V. Lombardi, eds.
Reading Joan Didion
. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2009.

Loris, Michelle Carbone.
Innocence, Loss and Recovery in the Art of Joan Didion.
New York: Peter Lang, 1989.

Parrish, Timothy.
From the Civil War to the Apocalypse: Postmodern History and American Fiction.
Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2008.

Stout, Janis P.
Strategies of Reticence: Silence and Meaning in the Works of Jane Austen, Willa Cather, Katharine Anne Porter, and Joan Didion.
Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1990.

Szalay, Michael.
Hip Figures: A Literary History of the Democratic Party.
Redwood City, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2012.

Weingarten, Marc.
The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight: Wolfe, Thompson, Didion and the New Journalism Revolution.
New York: Crown, 2006.

Winchell, Mark Royden.
Joan Didion.
Boston: Twayne, 1980.

SELECTED CRITICAL ARTICLES AND PROFILES OF JOAN DIDION

Atlas, James. “Slouching Towards Miami.”
Vanity Fair,
October 1987;
www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/1987/10/joan-didion-on-miami
.

Brady, Jennifer. “Points West, Then and Now: The Fiction of Joan Didion.”
Contemporary Literature
20 (1979): 452–470.

Braman, Sandra. “The ‘Facts' of El Salvador According to Objective and New Journalism.”
Journal of Communication Inquiry
13, no. 2 (1985): 75–96.

Braudy, Susan. “A Day in the Life of Joan Didion.”
Ms.,
February 1977, 65–68, 108–109.

Chabot, Barry C. “Joan Didion's
Play It As It Lays
and the Vacuity of the Here and Now.”
Critique: Studies in Modern Fiction
21, no. 3 (1980): 53–60.

Coale, Samuel. “Didion's Disorder: An American Romancer's Art.”
Critique: Studies in Modern Fiction
25, no. 1 (1984): 160–170.

Garis, Leslie. “Didion and Dunne: The Rewards of a Literary Marriage.”
New York Times Magazine,
February 8, 1987;
www.nytimes.com/1987/02/08/magazine/didion-dunne-the-rewards-of-a-literary-marriage.html
.

Geherin, David J. “Nothingness and Beyond: Joan Didion's
Play It As It Lays
.”
Critique: Studies in Modern Fiction
16, no. 1 (1974): 64–78.

Gornick, Vivian. “The Prose of Nothingness.”
The Women's Review of Books
29, no. 34 (1999): 28.

Hall, Linda. “The Writer Who Came In from the Cold.”
New York,
September 2, 1996, 28, 31–32.

Hanley, Lynne T. “To El Salvador.”
Massachusetts Review
24, no. 1 (1983): 13–29.

Harrison, Barbara Grizzuti. “Joan Didion: The Courage of Her Afflictions.”
The Nation,
September 29, 1979, 277–86.

Kachka, Boris. “I Was No Longer Afraid to Die. I Was Afraid Not to Die.”
New York,
October 16, 2011;
www.nymag.com/arts/books/features/joan-didion-2011-10/
.

Kakutani, Michiko. “Joan Didion: Staking Out California.”
New York Times Magazine,
June 10, 1979, 44–50.

Kazin, Alfred. “Joan Didion: Portrait of a Professional.”
Harper's
magazine, December 1971, 112–14.

Mallon, Thomas. “The Limits of History in the Novels of Joan Didion.”
Critique: Studies in Modern Fiction
21, no. 3 (1980): 43–52.

Reft, Ryan. “A Dive in the Deep End: The Importance of the Swimming Pool in Southern California”;
kcet.org/socal/departures/columns/intersections/a-dive-in-the-deep-end-the-importance-of-the-swimming-pool-in-southern-california-culture
.

Romano, John. “Joan Didion and Her Characters.”
Commentary,
July 1977, 61–63.

Schorer, Mark. “Novels and Nothingness.”
American Scholar
40 (Winter 1970–1971): 168–74.

Stimpson, Catharine. “The Case of Miss Joan Didion.”
Ms.,
January 1973, 36–41.

 

Index

The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.

Abels, Cyrilly

abortion

in Didion literature

Abramson, Leslie

Abu Ghraib prison scandal

Adams, Henry

Adler, Lou

The Adventures of Augie March
(Bellow)

Aesop's Fables

After Henry
(1992)

“Girl of the Goldenwest” in

narrative of

reception of

Agee, James

Airport
(Hailey)

Albert, Carl

Alcoholics Anonymous

Alem

Ali, Muhammad

Alinsky, Saul

Allen, Woody

All the President's Men
(Woodward/Bernstein)

Als, Hilton

Altrocchi, Julia Cooley

An American Dream
(Mailer)

American Dream Machine
(Specktor)

American Enterprise Institute

American Heritage

American Psycho
(Ellis)

American Psychological Association

The American Scholar

The American Supermarket
(art show)

An American Tragedy
(Dreiser)

Amis, Martin

Amistad
(slave ship)

Amsterdam News

Anderson, Jack

Andrews, Julie

Anna Karenina
(Tolstoy)

Annenberg, Lee

Annie Hall

Another City, Not My Own
(Dunne, D.)

Answered Prayers
(Capote)

anti-Communism

anti-Semitism

Apollo 1

Apple, Billy

The Apple

Arbusto Energy

The Armies of the Night
(Mailer)

Arnett, Peter

Artforum

Arthur Freed Orchids

arts, visual

Didion's perspective on

Ash Wednesday

Astor, John Jacob, IV

Atkins, Susan

Atlacatl Battalion (El Salvador)

The Atlantic Monthly

Atlas, James

atomic tests, Pacific

Auden, W. H.

Austen, Jane

Authors Guild

Avco-Embassy

Babitz, Eve

Babitz, Mirandi

Bachardy, Don

Baez, Joan

Bailey, F. Lee

Bainton, Lem

Baker, Ginger

Baldwin, Jimmy

Bancroft Library, Berkeley

Bancroft, Mary

Banker, Steve