Didion << DIH dee uhn >>, Joan (1934-2021), was an American essayist and novelist. She was born on Dec. 5, 1934, in Sacramento, California, and often used California’s culture and geography and the lives of its residents as topics and symbols. Didion wrote in a spare and intense style that conveys a lack of roots and a sense of social disintegration. Her style is also characterized by a combination of social analysis and personal confession.
In the title essay of her collection Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968), Didion examined the drug culture of the mid-1960’s in San Francisco. Her collection The White Album (1979) similarly explores such California phenomena as freeways and exotic religious groups. The nonfiction works After Henry (1992) and Where I Was From (2003) also deal primarily with California subjects. Her nonfiction book Miami (1987) analyzes the impact of Cuban exiles on the city of Miami. Didion concentrated on political subjects in such nonfiction books as Salvador (1983), based on a trip to El Salvador, and Political Fictions (2001), essays that examine American politics from 1988 to 2000. These seven books were collected in We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live (2006). A later collection of nonfiction pieces was published as South and West: From a Notebook (2017). Let Me Tell You What I Mean (2021) is a collection of memorable essays written by Didion from the 1960’s to the 2000’s.
Didion’s novels include Run River (1963), Play It As It Lays (1970), A Book of Common Prayer (1977), Democracy (1984), and The Last Thing He Wanted (1996). Didion also wrote several screenplays with her husband, the author John Gregory Dunne. The Year of Magical Thinking (2005) is a memoir of Didion’s life during the year following Dunne’s death at the end of 2003. Another memoir, Blue Nights (2011), centers on the death of her daughter, Quintana Roo, in 2005. Didion died on Dec. 23, 2021. The Library of America has published collections of some of Didion’s major writings as Joan Didion: The 1960s & 70s (2019) and Joan Didion: The 1980s & 90s (2021).
