The Last Love Song

by Tracy Daugherty

  “unassuageable grief”: ibid.

  At the end of April 2005: Joan Didion e-mail to Susanna Moore, April 30, 2005, Susanna Moore Papers, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

  Ten days later: Joan Didion e-mail to Susanna Moore, May 10, 2005, in ibid.

  “entered the hospital”: Joan Didion, Blue Nights (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 158.

  “had been at home”: Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking: A Play, 53.

  “Your daughter wasn’t in great condition,” “five surgical interventions,” and “ventilated”: Didion, Blue Nights, 159.

  acute pancreatitis: Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking: A Play, 53.

  “probably intertwined”: Susan Traylor quoted in Boris Kachka, “I Was No Longer Afraid to Die. I Was Now Afraid Not to Die,” New York, October 16, 2011; available at nymag.com/arts/books/features/joan-didion-2011-10.

  “Alcohol has its well-known defects”: Didion, Blue Nights, 48.

  “torchy” and “The power of cheap music”: ibid., 160.

  “an important moment”: Sean Day Michael to the author, March 7, 2014.

  “She asked specifically for the word ‘Ambivert’”: ibid.

  At Quintana’s memorial service: For details about the service, see Didion, Blue Nights, 162–64.

  “Woodstock wasn’t in his plans”: Sean Day Michael to the author, March 7, 2014.

  “My dad lost a wife”: Sean Day Michael to the author, November 2, 2013.

  “I promised myself that I would maintain momentum”: Didion, Blue Nights, 165.

  “[I]t did not cross my mind to cancel it”: Hari Kunzru, “Joan Didion’s Yellow Corvette,” posted at harikunzru.com/archive/joan-didions-yellow-corvette-interview-transcript-2011.

  “very strong emotional response” and subsequent quotes in this paragraph: Hilton Als, “Joan Didion, The Art of Nonfiction No. 1,” The Paris Review 47, no. 176 (Summer 2006); available at www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5601/the-art-of-nonfiction-no-1-joan-didion.

  “You’re the awesomest”: David Swick, “The Zen of Joan Didion,” Shambhala Sun, January 2007; available at www.lionsroar.com/the-zen-of-joan-didion.

  “she in no way ingratiates herself”: Mark Feeney, “Amid Unbearable Sorrow, She Shows Her Might,” Boston Globe, October 26, 2005; available at boston.com/ae/books/articles/2005/10/26/amid_unbearable_sorrow_she_shows_ her_might/?page=full.

  “I don’t think she’s changed much”: Robert Silvers quoted in ibid.

  “I think my view of death didn’t change”: Didion quoted in ibid.

  The judges’ citation: The citation and Didion’s remarks are posted at national book.org/nba2005_nf_didion.html.

  “There is hardly anything I can say”: ibid.

  “Hats by John Frederics”: Joan Didion, “Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking,” The Telegraph, April 19, 2008; available at telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/3672742/Joan-Didions-Year-of-Magical-Thinking.html.

  “Absolutely too short for the stage”: ibid.

  “The movement … should build”: ibid.

  “I knew that the play would be about language”: ibid.

  “sexually simmering suburban scenes” and “bad boy”: Celia McGee, “A World and an Artist Transformed,” New York Times, May 15, 2013; available at www.nytimes.com/2013/5/16/fashion/eric-fischl-goes-back-to-his-future,html?_r=0.

  “Only when I realized”: Didion, “Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking.”

  “I remember liking the entire process”: Didion, Blue Nights, 166.

  “Cheney did not take the lesson”: Joan Didion, “Cheney: The Fatal Touch,” The New York Review of Books, October 5, 2006; available at www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2006/oct/05/cheney-the-fatal-touch/.

  “separated from [his] body”: Mark Danner, “In the Darkness of Dick Cheney,” The New York Review of Books, March 6, 2014; available at www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/mar/06/darkness-dick-cheney/.

  “Vanessa Redgrave is not playing me”: Didion, “Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking.”

  “You think I’m crazy”: Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking: A Play, 44.

  “I liked watching the performance[s]”: Didion, Blue Nights, 167.

  “I did not want the yellow roses touched”: ibid., 169–70.

  “There are a handful of writers”: Transcription of Michael Cunningham’s remarks at the National Book Awards Ceremony, November 14, 2007, Marriott Marquis Hotel, New York.

  “I didn’t start writing”: Transcript of Joan Didion’s remarks at the National Book Awards Ceremony, November 14, 2007, Marriott Marquis Hotel, New York.

  “children of Gaza”: Ellen Gamerman, “An Encore of Magical Thinking,” Wall Street Journal, October 23, 2009; available at online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704500604574483701735245382.

  “This was never supposed to happen to her”: Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking: A Play, 42.

  “[S]omebody failed Quintana”: Didion quoted in Adam Higginbotham, “Joan Didion: A Mother’s Journey into Grief,” Belfast Telegraph, November 14, 2011; available at belfasttelegraph.co.uk/woman/life/joan-didion-a-mothers-journey-into-grief-28680460.html.

  “Did I lie to you?”: Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking: A Play, 55.

  “five evenings and two afternoons a week”: Didion, Blue Nights: 167.

  CHAPTER 41

  “[Y]ou kind of grow into the role”: Didion quoted in Sheila Heti, “Joan Didion,” The Believer, December 2011; available at believermag.com/exclusives/read=interview_didion.

  “I can hardly stay awake”: Didion quoted in 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 got closer to my brother-in-law” and all subsequent comments from the screening of Dominick Dunne: After the Party: “Joan Didion on Obama: We All Have High Hopes, But Who Knows?” New York Observer, November 2008; available at observer.com/2008/11/joan-didion-on-obama-we-all-have-high-hopes-but-who-knows/.

  “I couldn’t count” and subsequent quotes from this article: Darryl Pinckney and Joan Didion, “Obama: In the Irony-Free Zone,” The New York Review of Books, December 18, 2008; available at www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2008/dec/18/Obama-in-the-irony-free-zone/.

  Obama’s acceptance speech: Susanna Moore e-mail to Joan Didion, November 5, 2008, Susanna Moore Papers, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

  “national coma” and subsequent quotes in this paragraph: Didion’s remarks at a Brooklyn Book Fair panel, “Consequences to Come,” September 2008, sponsored by The New York Review of Books, www.nybooks.com/podcasts/events/2008/sep/24/consequences-come.

  “made an inadequate adjustment” and Didion’s reply: Joan Didion, Blue Nights (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 137.

  “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.”
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  “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 Di
dion: 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