RIP Joan Didion

Her memory will only continue to be luminous. She was one of the first to understand the breakdown of communication in America, in her Slouching Towards Bethlehem, written in ’68 about the hippie culture in LA’s Haight-Asbury. It’s even more relevant today. Books, films, a play, the heart-wrenching The Year of Magical Thinking about her author husband John Gregory Dunne and her daughter’s passing will be part of the American literary landscape.

Quoting her from a New Yorker article (Nathan Heller, January 3, 2022), she said: “We know how to write when we begin. What we learn from it is what writing was for.“

RIP Joan.