“What Adams really meant”: Timothy Parrish, From the Civil War to the Apocalypse: Postmodern History and American Fiction (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2008), 194.
“must submit”: Adams, The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma, 206.
“within the Democratic Party”: Michael Szalay, Hip Figures: A Literary History of the Democratic Party (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012), 251.
“thinly veiled Jackie Kennedy” and “a left-leaning liberal”: ibid., 252. Szalay’s remarks about Harry Victor use quotes from another literary critic, John McClure. I owe Szalay the insight about the Democratic Leadership Council.
“asshole”: Didion, Democracy, 173.
Didion claimed: See, for example, Didion, “Second Thoughts.”
“Let me die”: Didion, Democracy, 60.
“Let me just be in the ground”: Joan Didion, Blue Nights (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 49.
“After I finished my first novel”: Didion, Democracy, 39.
“kept a copy”: ibid., 193.
“[D]espite an appearance of factuality” and subsequent quotes from McCarthy: Mary McCarthy, “Love and Death in the Pacific,” New York Times Book Review, April 22, 1984; available at www.nytimes.com/books/00/03/26/specials/mccarthy-didion.html.
“Miss McCarthy”: John Gregory Dunne, “Conrad’s ‘Victory,’” New York Times, May 6, 1984; available at www.nytimes.com/1984/05/06/books/l-conrad-s-victory-168073.html.
“[J]argon ends”: V. S. Naipaul quoted in Joan Didion, “Without Regret or Hope,” The New York Review of Books, June 12, 1980; available at www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1980/jun/12/without-regret-or-hope/.
“The wisdom of the heart”: ibid.
“absolutely against regulations”: John Gregory Dunne, Regards: The Selected Nonfiction of John Gregory Dunne (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2006), 394.
“the arteries to the pump are shot” and “In a way”: True Confessions movie dialogue cited in Richard Grenier, “Our Lady of Corruption,” Commentary, December 1, 1981; available at commentarymagazine.com/article/our-lady-of-corruption/.
a public slap from William F. Buckley, Jr.: ibid.
“Oddly enough”: John Gallagher, Film Directors on Directing (Los Angeles: ABC-CLIO, 1989), unpaginated.
“[He] has established a distinctive voice”: Michiko Kakutani, “How John Gregory Dunne Puts Himself into His Books,” New York Times, May 3, 1982; available at www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/02/reviews/dunne-work.html.
“I’ve always thought a novelist”: Dunne, Regards, 384.
“What I mean is”: Dunne quoted in Kakutani, “How John Gregory Dunne Puts Himself into His Books.”
“the loss of public honor”: Paul Schrader, “Notes on Film Noir,” posted at montevallotimetravel.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/notes-on-noir.doc.
“Miss Didion’s dust-jacket image”: Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, “Critic’s Notebook: Pondering the Secrets Photographs Reveal,” New York Times, July 5, 1984; available at www.nytimes.com/1984/07/05/arts/critic-s-notebook-pondering-the-secrets-photographs-reveal.html.
“It just shows somebody”: ibid.
In his letter: John Gregory Dunne letter to Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, August 1, 1984, Lois Wallace Literary Agency Records, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.
“history of an investigation” and “absurd daintiness”: Dunne, Regards, 394–95.
CHAPTER 27
“In truth, she and I” and subsequent quotes from Connolly: Anna Connolly to the author, March 20, 2013.
“There were always open bars”: Tim Steele in conversation with the author, April 2, 2013.
“I knew a lot of privileged kids” and subsequent quotes from Matthew Specktor: Matthew Specktor to the author, June 6, 2013.
“socially vicious” and subsequent quotes from Greenfeld: Karl Taro Greenfeld, Boy Alone: A Brother’s Memoir (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), 125, 134–35.
“Karl knew some of the same people”: Josh Greenfeld in conversation with the author, April 6, 2013.
Josh Greenfeld said: ibid.
“wishing for death”: Joan Didion, Blue Nights (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 49.
“She was depressed”: ibid., 48.
“depths, shallows”: ibid., 47.
“borderline personality disorder”: ibid., 48.
“Borderline individuals”: Marsha Linehan quoted in Scott O. Lilienfeld and Hal Arkowitz, “Diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder Is Often Flawed,” Scientific American, January 4, 2012; available at scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-truth-about-borderline&print=true.
“I have not yet seen that case”: Didion, Blue Nights, 47.
“Let me just be in the ground”: ibid., 49.
Susanna Moore wrote Quintana: Susanna Moore letter to Quintana Roo Dunne, November 17, 1982; Susanna Moore Papers, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.
“I killed my girlfriend”: Brad Darrach, “An American Tragedy That Brought Death to Actress Dominique Dunne Now Brings Outrage to Her Family,” People, October 10, 1983; available at people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20086105,00.html.
“I need you” and subsequent dialogue: Dominick Dunne, Justice: Crimes, Trials, and Punishments (New York: Crown, 2001), 2.
“The news is not good,” “brain damage,” and “permission to insert”: ibid., 4–5.
“She looks even worse than Diana did”: Lenny Dunne quoted in Didion, Blue Nights, 67.
“It’s not black and white”: Dominick Dunne, Justice, 6.
“It’s not necessarily an either-or situation”: Joan Didion, Democracy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), 151–52.
“Give me your talent”: Dominick Dunne: After the Party, directed and produced by Kirsty de Garis and Timothy Jolley (Mercury Media/Road Trip Films/Film Art Docco, 2008), film documentary.
“Oh, what difference does it make?” and subsequent dialogue: Dominick Dunne, Justice, 7–8.
“two television programs”: ibid., 9.
“Most people I know at Westlake”: Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 172–73. See also John Gregory Dunne, Harp (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), 106.
“It all evens out in the end”: Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking, 173. See also Dunne, Harp, 106.
“I have watched too many murder trials”: Dunne, Harp, 107.
“John, who knew his way around”: Dominick Dunne, “A Death in the Family,” originally published in Vanity Fair, March 2004; reprinted in Andrew Blauner, ed., Brothers: 26 Stories of Love and Rivalry (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009), 191.
“Lenny, Griffin, Alex and I”: ibid.
“When Miss Dunne got in from the bars”: Dominick Dunne, Justice, 13.
“prejudicial”: ibid., 21.
“opened first one envelope” and subsequent courtroom dialogue: ibid., 30–31.
“Dominick, you don’t want to do this”: Kim Masters, “You Don’t Want to Do This,” posted at slate.com/articles/arts/hollywoodland/2007/08/you-don’t-want-to-do-this.html.
He told the story this way: Dominick Dunne, The Way We Lived Then: Recollections of a Well-Known Name Dropper (New York: Crown, 1999), 215. See also James H. Hyde, “Dominick Dunne: An Inveterate Connecticut Yankee Tells Us About His Remarkable Life,” posted at newenglandtimes.com/dominick_dunne/dd_index.shtml; Marie Brenner, “Behind the Big Round Glasses,” Vanity Fair, August 20, 2009; available at www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2009/08/marie-brenners-dominick-dunne-tribute.
“If I hadn’t kept that journal”: Dominick Dunne quoted in Mick Brown, “Dominick Dunne: Lost and Found,” The Telegraph, October 18, 2008; available at telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/3562275/Dominick-Dunne-lost-and-found.html.
“Tina … saw something”: Dominick Dunne, The Way We Lived Then, 215.
“For the first time in my life”: Dominick Dunne, Justice, xi.
“great, highbrow, bling-bli
ng”: Hyde, “Dominick Dunne.”
“Wealthy people aren’t quite shooting themselves”: Graydon Carter quoted in Dominick Dunne: After the Party, film documentary.
“I had an exciting revelation”: Didion, Blue Nights, 131.
“The guests, gathered on a terrace”: Leslie Garis, “Didion and Dunne: The Rewards of a Literary Marriage,” New York Times Magazine, February 8, 1987; available at www.nytimes.com/1987/02/08/magazine/dunne-didion-the-rewards-of-a-literary-marriage.html. See also David Rieff, Los Angeles: Capital of the Third World (New York: Touchstone, 1992), 92–93.
“The last time I saw Joan”: Don Bachardy in conversation with the author, April 23, 2013.
“You still have not taken my advice”: Dunne, Harp, 72.
“BRENTWOOD PARK STEAL!”: John Gregory Dunne letter to Tom Johnson, September 8, 1981, Lois Wallace Literary Agency Records, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.
“That’s Rupert Murdoch for you”: John Gregory Dunne quoted in Lois Wallace letter to Anthony Sheil, September 18, 1983; in ibid.
“At some point … I think I twigged to the fact”: Hari Kunzru, “Joan Didion’s Yellow Corvette,” posted at harikunzru.com/archive/joan-didion-yellow-corvette-interview-transcript-2011.
“a stressful time,” “adolescent substance abuse,” and the subsequent dialogue exchange: Didion, Democracy, 61–63.
“reminded me of you” and “Cuddling on the ice floe”: Didion, Blue Nights, 151.
“Like when someone dies”: ibid., 168.
“foundered on the twin rocks”: John Gregory Dunne, Regards: The Selected Nonfiction of John Gregory Dunne (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2006), 61.
“the pay is good”: John Gregory Dunne, The Red White and Blue (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), 34.
“celebrity and political action”: ibid., 15.
“not guilty by reason of insanity”: ibid., 474.
“There is in the development of every motion picture”: Joan Didion, Political Fictions (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), 111.
“a lovely little war”: posted at pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/reagan-grenada/.
“the number of medals”: Didion, Political Fictions, 101.
“new generation with no alternative source of information”: ibid., 96.
“slime”: John Gregory Dunne, Crooning (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), 271.
“Two things the Irish would think”: Elizabeth Venant, “Pages Open for Dunne, Didion,” Los Angeles Times, February 2, 1987.
“odd waters” and “very tedious”: ibid.
“in light of the many changes” and subsequent details and quotes regarding Dunne’s health tests: Dunne, Harp, 110–114.
CHAPTER 28
“I now know” and “You no more know”: Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 203.
“I know Jim” and “pretentious asshole”: John Gregory Dunne, Harp (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), 119.
“Milk it”: ibid., 121.
“I was ever aware”: ibid.
“the little widow”: ibid., 122.
“He’s too terrible to die”: ibid., 124.
“Bye, bye, life” and subsequent details of Dunne’s angioplasty and its aftermath: ibid., 126–129.
“Twenty-four years”: ibid., 132.
“I don’t know why we moved back to New York”: 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.
“hetero-coastal”: Elizabeth Mehren, “Why They Left,” Los Angeles Times, May 9, 1988; available at articles.latimes.com/print/1988-05-09/news/vw-1725_1_didion-and-dunne.
“I don’t know”: “Telling Stories in Order to Live,” Academy of Achievement interview with Joan Didion, June 3, 2006; available at www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/didOint-1.
“[We’ve] stayed too long at the fair”: Dunne, Harp, 132.
In their conflicting accounts: See, for example, Bernard Weinraub, “At Lunch with John Gregory Dunne: The Bad Old Days in All Their Glory,” New York Times, September 14, 1994, available at www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/02/reviews/dunne-lunch.html; Andrew O’Hehir, “Golden State of Hypocrisy,” posted at salon.com/2003/10/18/didion_4/.
“cocaine days” and “scandal-plagued faculty”: Jonathan Lethem, The Ecstasy of Influence (New York: Doubleday, 2011), 23.
“about youth culture in L.A” and “very much in the style”: Jaime Clarke, “An Interview with Bret Easton Ellis,” posted at geocities.com/Athens/forum/8506/Ellis/clarkeint.html.
“It was inconvenient that I liked him”: Lethem, The Ecstasy of Influence, 23.
“I would rewrite paragraphs of hers”: Carl Swanson, “The Haunting of Bret Easton Ellis,” New York, June 6, 2010; available at nymag.com/arts/books/features/66447/index1.html.
“Quintana seemed spooky to me”: Jonathan Lethem to the author, March 9, 2012.
One fellow resident: Anonymous to the author, March 12, 2012.
“it was upsetting to her”: Jeff Glor, “Blue Nights by Joan Didion,” Author Talk, CBS News, January 28, 2012; available at cbsnews.com/videos/author-talk-blue-nights-by-joan-didion.
“I have a child in college now”: Don Swaim’s audio interview with Joan Didion, October 29, 1987; available at wiredforbooks.org/joandidion.
“I have a highly developed capacity for denial”: Didion quoted in O’Hehir, “Golden State of Hypocrisy.”
“The ‘bones’ of the house”: Carol Herman to the author, April 1, 2013.
“man who was buying the house”: Joan Didion, Blue Nights (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 8.
“have to arrange to get the windows washed”: 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.
“Oh no,” friends told them: Dunne, Harp, 134–35.
“There weren’t too many ways I was going to do it”: Mehren, “Why They Left.”
“[Y]ou took all those years”: ibid., 139.
“I hope you’re not going to move back east”: Dunne, Harp, 133.
“When they left”: Josh Greenfeld in conversation with the author, April 6, 2013.
“You ready?”: Mehren, “Why They Left.”
“underwater color”: Didion quoted in Sara Davidson, Joan: Forty Years of Life, Loss, and Friendship with Joan Didion (San Franciso: Byliner, 2011).
“I just tried to ignore”: Mehren, “Why They Left.”
“All ready in case of a storm”: ibid.
“Californian”: ibid.
“pain in the ass”: Dunne, Harp, 232.
“city’s rage at being broke”: Als, “Joan Didion, The Art of Nonfiction No. 1.”
“stories the city [told] itself”: ibid.
“distortion and flattening of character” and “Lady Liberty”: Joan Didion, After Henry (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 279–80.
“market economy”: ibid., 285.
“enemy of the city”: ibid., 222.
“telephones ringing”: Helen Peterson, “Beauty in Ugly Lawsuit,” New York Daily News, January 17, 2001; available at nydailynews.com/archives/news/beauty-ugly-lawsuit-crawford-hubby-noise-row-article-1.911801.
“social and economic phenomena”: Didion, After Henry, 283.
“who could in turn inspire”: ibid.
CHAPTER 29
“[W]e had not stayed married”: John Gregory Dunne, Harp (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), 233.
“I was quite desolate for about a year”: “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.
“Bob kept pushing”: 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.
“Who’s she?”: Joan Didion, Political Fictions (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), 5–6.
“Give me a guesstimate”: ibid., 6.
“I was just in tears”: “Telling Stories in Order to Live.”
“He’s a fucking snake”: Dunne, Harp, 190.
“political groupie,” “She still has that insane glitter,” and “It comes from trying”: ibid., 161.
“An artful presentation” and ensuing dialogue: ibid., 190.
“Pat Curtin’s ma” and ensuing dialogue: ibid., 202.
“small but highly visible group”: Didion, Political Fictions, 279.
“They report the stories”: ibid.
“I don’t know how good an idea” and subsequent quotes regarding Quintana’s Latin American trip: Quintana Roo Dunne, “Photographer’s Notebook: Exploring Guatemala and Nicaragua,” Columbia Spectator, November 14, 1988.
“had gone immediately to bed”: Joan Didion, Blue Nights (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 34.
“exactly yesterday” and “I did not ask”: ibid., 34–35.
“For Mom and Dad”: ibid., 35.
“the characteristic surface wrinkles” and “found in her vagina”: Joan Didion, After Henry (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 254.
“ultimate shriek of alarm”: ibid., 255.
“Teen Wolfpack” and “One [assailant] shouted”: ibid.
“[C]rimes are universally understood”: ibid., 255–56.
“probably one of the top four or five students” and “fun-loving”: ibid., 258.
“Bacharach bride”: ibid.
“protect,” “magical,” and “nature best kept secret”: ibid., 260–61.
“no matching semen”: ibid., 258.
“The accounts given”: “Affirmation in Response to Motion to Vacate Judgment of Conviction: The People of the State of New York Against Kharey Wise, Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam, and Raymond Santana, Defendants,” posted at manhattanda.org/whatsnew/press/2002-12-05a.pdf.
“taking back”: Didion, After Henry, 278–79.
“Lady Courage” and quotes from the other two newspapers: ibid., 259.
“You’re going to get it right”: Joan Didion’s remarks made at Kelly Writers House, University of Pennsylvania, March 31, 2009.
“What you do in the United States of America”: Calvin O. Butts quoted in Didion, After Henry, 265.
The Last Love Song Page 86