The Last Love Song
Page 77
“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.
“His style … was that of an axe-murderer”: Dunne, Quintana & Friends, xix.
“As I remember it”: Rosa Rasiel to the author, August 18, 2012.
“At the party”: Parmentel in conversation with the author, July 11, 2013.
“Noel was around a lot”: Rosa Rasiel to the author, August 18, 2012.
“Joan’s eminence grise”: Rosa Rasiel quoted in Hall, “The Writer Who Came In from the Cold,” 31.
“the acne and the ecstasy”: Wakefield, New York in the Fifties, 268.
“One evening”: Rosa Rasiel to the author, August 18, 2012.
“He’s too big”: Parmentel in conversation with the author, July 11, 2013.
“I never saw ambition like that”: Noel Parmentel quoted in Hall, “The Writer Who Came In from the Cold,” 32.
“Action verbs”: Connie Brod, In Depth interview with Joan Didion, Book TV, C-SPAN-2, 1992.
“get very angry”: Kuehl, “Joan Didion, The Art of Fiction No. 71.”
“The first few weeks”: Mary Cantwell, Manhattan Memoir (New York: Penguin, 1998), 217.
“On its own terms”: Brod, In Depth interview with Joan Didion.
“I would have her write”: Allene Talmey quoted in Michiko Kakutani, “Joan Didion: Staking Out California,” New York Times, June 10, 1979; available at www.nytimes.com/1979/06/10/books/didion-calif.html?ref-joandidion.
“All through the house” and “It is easy to make light”: Joan Didion, Telling Stories (Berkeley, Calif.: Friends of the Bancroft Library, 1978), 4, 5.
“Run it through again, sweetie”: ibid., 5.
“We were connoisseurs”: ibid.
“traditional convention of the portrait”: Joan Didion, “An Annotation,” introduction to Robert Mapplethorpe, Some Women (Boston: Bullfinch Press/Little, Brown, 1989), 5.
“part of the texture of life in general” and “drinks for fifty cents”: Interviews with Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, New York in the Fifties, directed by Betsy Blankenbaker (Figaro Films, 2000), film documentary.
“it was not long after Sputnik” and subsequent quotes from Noel Parmentel in this section: Parmentel in conversation with the author, July 11, 2013.
“Noel told her”: Dan Wakefield in conversation with the author, May 4, 2013.
“I adored Greg”: Madeleine Noble (née Goodrich) in conversation with the author, August 3, 2013.
“He made me laugh”: Didion quoted in Sara Davidson, “Joan Didion—Losing John,” O, The Oprah Magazine, 2005; available at www.saradavidson.com/joan-didion-losing-john.
“I’ve thought of myself that way”: Didion quoted in Leslie Garis, “Didion and Dunne: The Rewards of a Literary Marriage,” New York Times Magazine, February 8, 1997; available at www.nytimes.com/1987/02/08/magazine/didion-dunne-the-rewards-of-a-literary-marriage.html.
“I decided it was pathological”: Didion, “Staking Out California.”
“We talked all night”: Dunne quoted in John Riley, “Writers Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne Play It as It Lays in Malibu,” People, July 26, 1979; available at people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20066717,00.html.
Didion’s early Vogue pieces: See, for example, Joan Didion, “Take No for an Answer,” Vogue, October 1961, 132–33; Joan Didion, “Emotional Blackmail: An Affair of Every Heart,” Vogue, November 1962, 115–16.
“the world takes on for me”: Didion, “Take No for an Answer,” 132.
“[W]e are fatally drawn toward anyone”: ibid., 133.
“direct wire to the PMLA”: Joan Didion, “Finally (Fashionably) Spurious,” originally published in National Review, November 18, 1961, reprinted in Salinger: The Classic Critical and Personal Portrait, ed. Henry Anatole Grunwald (New York: Harper Perennial, 2009), 77.
CHAPTER 8
“Whatever one may think of them”: “Quo Vadis?” Mademoiselle, January 1960, 34.
“several thousand young women”: Joyce Johnson, Minor Characters: A Beat Memoir (New York: Penguin, 1999), 118–19.
“Everybody should get high”: “Quo Vadis?” 34.
“plastic, all hues”: ibid.
“Call it the weather” and subsequent quotes from “Berkeley’s Giant”: Joan Didion, “Berkeley’s Giant: The University of California,” Mademoiselle, January 1960, 88, 103, 105.
“get top jobs”: Mademoiselle, January 1960, 105.
“We were all oblivious”: Larry Colton in conversation with the author, April 8, 2013.
“yearning for California”: Joan Didion, Where I Was From (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), 156–57.
“nightmare”: Mary Cantwell, Manhattan Memoir (New York: Penguin, 1998), 217.
“silliest occupations going”: Joan Didion letter to Peggy La Violette, September 27, 1959, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley.
“leading a rebellion in beauty”: “People Are Talking” column, Vogue, January 1963, 34.
“neither topical nor punchy”: “People Are Talking” column, Vogue, August 1963, 73.
“hair tonic”: “People Are Talking” column, Vogue, October 1962, 150.
“sleepiness of the enlarged”: “People Are Talking” column, Vogue, October 1963, 81.
“Have Wife With Gun Must Travel”: “People Are Talking” column, Vogue, January 1960, 111.
“profoundly moving young woman”: “People Are Talking” column, Vogue, September 1962, 190.
“looking like a man ridden”: “People Are Talking” column, Vogue, March 1960, 135.
“threatened” people: “People Are Talking” column, Vogue, March 1962, 111.
“satisfying rightness of the baseball phrase”: “People Are Talking” column, Vogue, November 1959, 129.
“double-talk adjective”: “People Are Talking” column, Vogue, June 1960, 102.
“‘elliptical’”: “People Are Talking” column, Vogue, April 1961, 123.
“‘Flash’”: “People Are Talking” column, Vogue, April 1960, 85.
“zortz”: “People Are Talking” column, Vogue, July 1962, 48.
“developers blast[ing] miles of ski runs”: Vogue, November 1959, 160.
campaign speeches: “The Campaign Speech Writers,” Vogue, August 1960, 158–59.
“the tripping sound of ‘plastique’”: Vogue, January 1963, 39.
“young writer with an uncompromising moral intelligence”: “People Are Talking” column, Vogue, April 1960, 122.
“irritating”: “People Are Talking” column, Vogue, September 1961, 159.
“dope dreams”: “People Are Talking” column, Vogue, January 1963, 102.
“what
it means to be a Westerner”: “People Are Talking” column, Vogue, October 1960, 158.
“helpless”: Joan Didion, “Notes from a Helpless Reader,” National Review, July 15, 1961, 21–22.
“exploring the vagaries of his career”: “People Are Talking” column, Vogue, November 1961, 117.
“fence-sitting”: “People Are Talking” column, Vogue, March 1960, 94.
“our economy”: “People Are Talking” column, Vogue, December 1961, 110.
“part of the boredom”: “People Are Talking” column, Vogue, November 1959, 120.
“forced breaking up of some of the big San Joaquin Valley ranches”: Vogue, October 1962, 150.
“passion for the documentation of irrelevant detail”: Joan Didion, “Jealousy—Is It a Curable Illness?” Vogue, June 1961, 96.
“improvised … in two sittings”: Joan Didion, comments at the National Book Award ceremony, November 17, 2007, upon receiving the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.
“the magazine had a piece that had been assigned”: Christopher Bollen, “Joan Didion,” V Magazine; available at christopherbollen.com/portfolio/joan-didion.pdf.
“character count”: Didion, comments at the National Book Award ceremony.
“She was better than all of them”: Noel Parmentel in conversation with the author, July 11, 2013.
“Joan Didion, the fantastically brilliant writer”: quoted in Linda Hall, “The Writer Who Came In from the Cold,” New York, September 2, 1996, 32.
“beat-up desks”: Allene Talmey, “Biography of a Musical: ‘Damn Yankees,’” Vogue, March 1956, 152.
“A lot of people read these pieces”: Joan Didion in conversation with Sloane Crosley, New York Public Library, November 21, 2011.
CHAPTER 9
“[d]istinctively dolorous,” “perfect pitch,” and “East End Avenue Ophelia”: Joan Didion, “Gentlemen in Battle,” National Review, March 27, 1962; available at old.nationalreview.com/flashback/flashback200604180656.asp.
“by the time the battle was done”: Joan Didion, “Wayne at the Alamo,” National Review, December 31, 1960, 414–15.
“There was once a day”: Joan Didion, “Into the Underbrush,” National Review, January 28, 1961, 54–55.
“lost money and lost families”: Joan Didion, “A Celebration of Life,” National Review, April 22, 1961, 254–55.