The Last Love Song

by Tracy Daugherty

  “logical”: “Telling Stories in Order to Live.”

  “grown steadily less inflammatory”: David Blum, “Literary Lotto,” New York, January 21, 1985, 39.

  “savvy ad campaign” and “plain clothing”: “Everybody’s Falling into the Gap,” Businessweek, September 22, 1991; available at businessweek.com/stories/1991-09-22/everybodys-falling-into-the-gap.

  “contribution” and “financial community”: Peter Minichiello letter to Joan Didion, March 30, 1984, Lois Wallace Literary Agency Records, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

  “Some years back”: Joan Didion’s remarks in the 1984 Gulf & Western shareholders’ report; in ibid.

  “anticipate[d] a terrifically positive response”: Peter Minichiello letter to Joan Didion; in ibid.

  He was the CEO: Businessweek executive profile for James J. Didion, posted at investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?personID=21574&ticker=CY&previousCId=13513368&previousTitle-Bancroft%20Capital.

  “Hollywood ratfuck”: John Gregory Dunne, Monster: Living Off the Big Screen (New York: Random House, 1997), 82.

  “so much to read a script”: ibid., 52.

  “[A]fter each of us”: ibid., 52–53.

  “venomous”: ibid., 8.

  “[I]t was a class issue”: Didion, After Henry, 159.

  “Fuck ’em”: ibid., 163.

  “Not until July of 1988” and subsequent quotes about the convention: ibid., 172–73.

  “We feel this project has a lot of potential”: Dunne, Monster, 10.

  “full of so many silences,” “White Christmas,” and “it’s time to cut our losses”: ibid., 61–62.

  “whammy picture”: ibid., 36.

  “concept line” and “When terrorists threaten”: ibid., 53.

  “did not seem the most fortuitous moment”: ibid., 55.

  “‘Saturday Night Live’ skit”: ibid., 60.

  “visualize what you see”: ibid., 55.

  “You have open-heart surgery”: ibid., 62.

  “The children talked”: Dominick Dunne, “Fatal Charm: The Social Web of Claus von Bulöw,” Vanity Fair, August 1985; available at www.vanityfair.com/magazine/archive/1985/08/vonbulow198508.

  “Tin Man”: Dunne, Monster, 62.

  CHAPTER 30

  “Hi, this is Bill Clinton”: John Gregory Dunne, Monster: Living Off the Big Screen (New York: Random House, 1997), 86–87.

  “bobbing, weaving target”: Sara Davidson, “Travels with Jerry,” posted at www.saradavidson.com/travels-with-jerry.

  “reservoir of self-pity”: Joan Didion, Political Fictions (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), 215.

  “guerrilla”: ibid., 128.

  “He seemed to be the most left-wing and right-wing man”: Jesse Walker, “Five Faces of Jerry Brown,” The American Conservative, November 1, 2004; available at theamericanconservative.com/articles/five-faces-of-jerry-brown/.

  “Jerry rubs people the wrong way”: Dunne quoted in Davidson, “Travels with Jerry.”

  Dunne said most of the guests patronized Brown: ibid.

  “What did you know?”: ibid.

  “If he gets New York”: ibid.

  “He’s apologized” and “powerful leader”: ibid.

  Dunne told him that most of the Irish help: Dunne, Monster, 87.

  “There’s an old saying”: ibid.

  “an experiment”: ibid.

  “We’re change agents” and “full of gooey”: George Skelton, “’92 Democratic Convention: Jerry Brown Vows He’ll Have His Say at Podium,” Los Angeles Times, July 12, 1992; available at articles.latimes.com/1992-07-12/news/mn-4293_1_jerry-brown.

  “blinding fight” and subsequent quotes from Rupert Everett: Rupert Everett, “A Last Hug, Then Days Later Natasha Lay Dead,” Daily Mail, September 17, 2012; available at dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2204811/Death-Natasha-Richardson-plunged-Rupert-Everett-strangest-scene-life.html.

  “I never knew anyone who so loved to make things”: Joan Didion, “An Introduction,” in Tony Richardson, The Long-Distance Runner: A Memoir (New York: William Morrow, 1993), 13.

  “As far as I know”: dialogue from Hills Like White Elephants, posted at may-on-the-short-story.blogspot.com/2009/03/more-on-short-fiction-and-film.html.

  “what is going to happen in this picture”: Dunne, Monster, 17.

  “a small-town girl”: ibid., 14.

  Didion remained convinced that Simon & Schuster: The correspondence paraphrased in this section is all in the Lois Wallace Literary Agency Records, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

  “This book is dedicated to Henry Robbins”: Joan Didion, After Henry (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), dedication page.

  “were on different channels” and “The dedication speaks for itself”: Esther B. Fein, “Book Notes: A Talked-About Dedication,” New York Times, April 29, 1992; available at www.nytimes.com/1992/04/29/books/book-notes-815492.html.

  “I’d never thought of Joan Didion as dependable”: Constance Casey, “When the Writer Is Also a Good Reporter,” Los Angeles Times, May 5, 1992; available at articles.latimes.com/print/1992-05-05/news/vw-1272_1_joan-didion.

  “[S]he’s truly one of the premier essayists”: Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 1992; available at www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/joan-didion/after-henry/.

  “regular guy”: Didion, After Henry, 62.

  “marketing people” and “deliberate dumb-down”: ibid., 239.

  “systematically ruined”: ibid., 300.

  “an exact representation”: ibid.

  “subversion of authority”: Didion, Political Fictions, 269.

  “not far from that of the Taliban”: ibid., 302.

  “the old-time religion”: ibid., 143.

  “entitlement” and “empowerment”: ibid., 123.

  “welfare as we know it”: “Clinton Signs Welfare Reform Bill, Angers Liberals,” posted at cgi.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/news/9608/22/welfare.sign/.

  “Vietnam base”: Didion, Political Fictions, 143.

  “The choice we offer” and subsequent quotes on the New Covenant: ibid., 120–21.

  “Instead of talking about Democrats”: ibid., 146.

  “crisis” and “structural malfunction”: ibid., 207.

  “At Madison Square Garden”: ibid., 119–20.

  On December 22: Lois Wallace letter to Joan Didion, Lois Wallace Literary Agency Records, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

  “Are we on the right road?”: Joan Didion, Where I Was From (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), 215.

  “She meant where did Gilroy go”: ibid.

  “all San Jose”: ibid., 216.

  “with the son of a rancher”: ibid.

  “in front of everybody” and subsequent dialogue: ibid., 216–17.

  CHAPTER 31

  “adorable”: Dominick Dunne, Justice: Crimes, Trials, and Punishments (New York: Crown, 2001), 108.

  $700,000: ibid., 85.

  “endemic” and “remarkably stupid”: Susie Linfield, “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” Los Angeles Times, February 16, 1997; available at articles.latimes.com/1997-02-16/books/bk-29251_1_big-girls-don-t-cry.

  “Leslie Abramson’s curly blond hair”: Dominick Dunne, Justice, 134.

  “venomous little pieces”: Terrence Butcher, “Dominick Dunne: After the Party,” posted at popmatters.com/review/95250-dominick-dunne-after-the-party/.

  “admired her, and she doted on him”: Dominick Dunne, “A Death in the Family,” originally published in Vanty Fair, March 2004; reprinted in Andrew Blauner, ed., Brothers: 26 Stories of Love and Rivalry (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009), 191.

  “a believer”: John Gregory Dunne, The Red White and Blue (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), 80.

  “curious”: George Rush, Joanna Molloy, and Baird Jones, “Contempt Citation Refuels Dunne-ybrook,” New York Daily News, March 5, 1997; available at nydailynews.com/archives/gossip/contempt-citation-refuels-dunne-ybrook-article-1
.750652.

  “complicated”: ibid.

  “at the very time”: Dominick Dunne, “A Death in the Family,” 191–92.

  “All O.J.”: Dominick Dunne, Justice, 144.

  “a second-rate Brentwood restaurant”: John Gregory Dunne, Regards: The Selected Nonfiction of John Gregory Dunne (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2006), 176.

  “Ninety-five million Americans”: ibid., 180.

  “On a wet Sunday morning”: Dominick Dunne, “Three Faces of Evil,” Vanity Fair, June 1996; available at www.vanityfair.com/magazine/archive/1996/06/dunne199606.

  “O.J. will never be accepted”: ibid.

  “a third-rate middlebrow Depends ad”: Alex Ross, “Hollywood Babylon: Dominick Dunne, Gary Indiana, and the Whole Shebang,” posted at slate.com/articles/arts/books/1997/12/Hollywood_babylon.html.

  “Can you imagine”: Matthew DeBord, “Keyed Up,” posted at weeklywire.com/ww/04-06-98/boston_books_2.html.

  “novel in the form of a memoir”: Celia McGee, “Dunne In: Society Scrivener Throws Fit Over Harsh Review,” New York Observer, January 26, 1998; available at observer.com/1998/01/dunne-in-society-scrivener-throws-fit-over-harsh-review/.

  “litany of show-business”: Ross, “Hollywood Babylon.”

  “I am not aware of any animus”: McGee, “Dunne In.”

  “Wasserman is a fucking liar” and subsequent quotes regarding the Dunne-Indiana feud: ibid.

  “sensitive and shy and incredibly spiritual”: Kevin Gray, “A Kind of Deliverance,” People, August 25, 1995; available at people.com/article/0,,20101426,00.html.

  “I thought he was dead”: ibid.

  “transcendental experience” and “It’s a little less than plausible”: ibid.

  “We’ve lost Alex in our lives”: James H. Hyde, “Dominick Dunne: An Inveterate Connecticut Yankee Tells Us About His Remarkable Life,” posted at newenglandtimes.com/dominick_dunne/dd_index.shtml.

  “in lieu of flowers”: “Deaths: Dunne, Ellen Griffin,” New York Times, January 13, 1997; available at www.nytimes.com/1997/01/13/classified/paid-notice-deaths-dunne-ellen-griffin.html.

  “We had a real life”: Joan Didion, The Last Thing He Wanted (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), 42.

  “She was twenty-nine or thirty” and “She drank too much”: Adam Higginbotham, “Joan Didion on Love, Loss, and Parenting,” The Telegraph, October 30, 2011; available at telegraph.co.uk/culture/8852890/Joan-Didion-on-love-loss-and-parenting.html.

  “It’s like a Big Ten campus”: “The Rehab Review: Hazelden,” posted at thefix.com/content/hazelden.

  “It’s about two movie stars”: John Gregory Dunne, Monster: Living Off the Big Screen (New York: Random House, 1997), 105.

  She apologized: Quintana Roo Dunne letter to Susanna Moore, May 9, 2001, Susanna Moore Papers, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

  “Of course, mine was more serious” and “exclaim in outrage”: Dunne, Monster, 156.

  “uncritical endorsement of”: Michael Medved quoted in ibid., 202.

  CHAPTER 32

  “Some real things have happened lately”: Joan Didion, The Last Thing He Wanted (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), 3.

  “interestingly described”: ibid., 3–4.

  “You know me” and “I wanted to come at this straight”: ibid., 5.

  “History’s rough draft”: ibid., 11.

  “You may recall the rhetoric”: ibid., 13.

  “weightless”: ibid., 3.

  “picking out with one hand”: Joan Didion, A Book of Common Prayer (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1977), 24.

  “I still believe in history”: Didion, The Last Thing He Wanted, 33.

  “If you remember 1984” and “You know the context”: ibid., 9.

  “I want[ed] those two”: ibid., 227.

  “The hotel was pink”: ibid., 225–226.

  “I wanted to do a very, very tight plot”: Dave Eggers, “The Salon Interview: Joan Didion,” October 28, 1996, available at salon.com/1996/10/28/interview_11/.

  “sketching in a rhythm” and “The arrangement was the meaning”: Joan Didion, Blue Nights (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 104.

  “I knew the end”: “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.

  “tended to appear”: Didion, The Last Thing He Wanted, 67.

  “conspiratorial view of history”: Michiko Kakutani, “From a Life of Wealth into a Life of Danger,” New York Times, September 3, 1996; available at www.nytimes.com/1996/09/03/books/from-a-life-of-wealth-into-a-life-of-danger.html.

  “strangle liberty in the night”: “Death Plot in El Salvador,” St. Petersburg Times, July 26, 1984.

  “hard to buy”: Kakutani, “From a Life of Wealth into a Life of Danger.”

  “[i]f you put an assassination plot into play”: Didion, The Last Thing He Wanted, 185.

  “I’m not sure I know what business”: ibid., 200.

  “What … occurred was”: Joan Didion, Political Fictions (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), 281.

  “He came in here and he trashed the place”: David Broder quoted in ibid., 287.

  “The question of ‘impeachment’”: Joan Didion in conversation with Michael Bernstein, the Revelle Forum at the Neurosciences Institute, University of California at San Diego, October 15, 2002.

  “quandary” and “No analysis can absolve”: Don Eberly quoted in Didion, Political Fictions, 278.

  “non-governmental institutions”: posted at activistcash.com/organizations/496-civil-society-project/.

  “He’s the luckiest man alive”: Eggers, “The Salon Interview.”

  “an unreliable first person narrator”: Didion, Political Fictions, 243.

  “who don’t have a very deep commitment”: Didion quoted in Rebecca Meyer, “Berkeley Alumna Discusses Politics After ‘Fictions,’” Daily Californian, October 19, 2001; available at randomhouse.com/knopf/authors/didion/desktopnew.html.

  “basic craft error[s]”: Didion, Political Fictions, 244.

  “voting as a consumer transaction”: Didion, Political Fictions, 12.

  “choice”: ibid., 9.

  “sentimentally does ‘the vote’ give”: ibid., 12.

  “It was a perfect thing”: Didion quoted in J. Hale Russell, “Joan Didion Takes On the Political Establishment,” in The Harvard Crimson, October 19, 2001; available at thecrimson.com/article/2001/10/19/joan-didion-takes-on-the-political/.

  “fact that the 2000 presidential election in Florida”: Didion, Political Fictions, 14.

  “I think people do think”: Cokie Roberts quoted in ibid., 15.

  “‘rule of law’”: ibid., 16.

  “Assassins”: “Federal Agents Seize Elian in Predawn Raid: Boy to Be Reunited with His Father in Maryland,” CNN, April 22, 2000; available at archives.cnn.com/2000/US/04/22/cuba.boy.05/index.html.

  “Many underground operatives”: Victor Triay quoted in Yenisel Porro Delgado, “Operation Pedro Pan and Its Political Implications in the U.S. Peter Pan: The Fairy Tale That Became a Reality,” posted at writing.uncc.edu/student-writing/operation-pedro-pan-and-its-political-implications-us-fairy-tale-became-reality.

  “He’s a very mysterious figure to me”: Didion quoted in Meyer, “Berkeley Alumna Discusses Politics After ‘Fictions.’”

  “faith-based”: Didion, Political Fictions, 293.

  “redemption” and “reform”: ibid., 313.

  “personal transformation”: ibid., 334.

  “hearts”: ibid., 309.

  CHAPTER 33

  “It’s been very up and down”: Quintana Roo Dunne quoted in Celia McGee, “State Editions for American Lawyer,” New York Daily News, October 22, 1998; available at nydailynews.com/archives/money/state-edition-american-lawyer-article-1.810034.

  “At Elle Décor magazine”: ibid.

  “[O]n a Saturday morning”: Joan Didion, Blue Ni
ghts (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 120.

  “The sister had agreed”: ibid., 121.

  “I cannot easily express”: ibid., 123–24.

  “Saturday delivery” and “as if maintaining focus”: ibid., 122.

  “12-step recovery community” and subsequent quotes from Kaufman: Sue Kaufman to the author, March 10, 2012.

  “she was so excited to see you” and subsequent quotes from Cooper: Amy Cooper to the author, May 11, 2013.

  “[m]argaritas were mixed”: Didion, Blue Nights, 127.

  “she had seemed distraught”: ibid.

  “What a long strange journey”: ibid., 130.

  “On top of everything else”: ibid.

  CHAPTER 34

  “half the nation’s citizens”: Joan Didion, Political Fictions (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), 18.

  “postmodern”: Edward Rothstein, “Attacks on U.S. Challenge the Perspectives of Postmodern True Believers,” New York Times, September 22, 2001, available at www.nytimes.com/2001/09/22/arts/connections-attacks-us-challenge-perspectives-postmodern-true-believers.html.

  “moral clarity”: Joan Didion, Fixed Ideas: America Since 9.11 (New York: New York Review of Books, 2003), 11.

  “One good thing”: Roger Rosenblatt quoted in ibid., 10.

  “frightened and fragmented world”: Michiko Kakutani, “The Age of Irony Isn’t Over After All; Assertions of Cynicism’s Demise Belie History,” New York Times, October 9, 2001; available at www.nytimes.com/2001/10/09/arts/critic-s-notebook-age-irony-isn-t-over-after-all-assertions-cynicism-s-demise.html.

  “mujaheddin in Afghanistan”: Joan Didion, Miami (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), 205.

  “nothing to be gained”: Didion, Political Fictions, 61.

  “broad strokes”: Joan Didion, After Henry (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 67.

  “not new in New York”: ibid., 279–80.

  “I will try to get”: Samuel Byck quoted in Matthew C. Duersten, “The Man in the Santa Claus Suit,” L.A. Weekly, September 12, 2001; available at laweekly.com/news/the-man-in-the-santa-claus-suit-2133809.

  “deal broker” and “alleged associations”: James Hatfield, “Why Would Osama bin Laden Want to Kill Dubya, His Former Business Partner?” posted at www.onlinejournal.com/Attack.

  “specializing in personal”: See www.rloatman.com.