JOAN DIDION was born in Sacramento in 1934 and graduated from the
University of California, Berkeley, in 1956. After graduation,
Didion moved to New York and began working for Vogue, which
led to her career as a journalist and writer. Didion published her
first novel, Run River, in 1963. Didion’s other novels include A
Book of Common Prayer (1977), Democracy (1984), and The Last Thing
He Wanted (1996).
Didion’s first volume of essays, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, was
published in 1968, and her second, The White Album, was published
in 1979. Her nonfiction works include Salvador (1983), Miami
(1987), After Henry (1992), Political Fictions (2001), Where I Was
From (2003), We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live (2006),
Blue Nights (2011), South and West (2017) and Let Me Tell You What
I Mean (2021). Her memoir The Year of Magical Thinking won the
National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2005.
In 2005, Didion was awarded the American Academy of Arts & Letters
Gold Medal in Criticism and Belles Letters. In 2007, she was
awarded the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished
Contribution to American Letters. A portion of National Book
Foundation citation read: "An incisive observer of American
politics and culture for more than forty-five years, Didion’s
distinctive blend of spare, elegant prose and fierce intelligence
has earned her books a place in the canon of American literature as
well as the admiration of generations of writers and journalists.”
In 2013, she was awarded a National Medal of Arts and Humanities by
President Barack Obama, and the PEN Center USA’s Lifetime
Achievement Award.
Didion said of her writing: "I write entirely to find out what I’m
thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.” She
died in December 2021.
One of the Best Books of the Year: NPR, Harper's Bazaar
“Vintage Didion. . . . Remind[s] us of her brilliance as a stylist,
social commentator and observer.” —The Washington Post
“Elegant, eerily prescient. . . . At once informal and
immediate, magisterial and indelible.” —Elle
“Fascinating. . . . Shine[s] with her trademark ability to capture
mood and place.” —The New York Times
“In these two pieces, Didion isn’t so much seeing the country as
she is x-raying it, cataloging the presenting symptoms of the
ailing republic. . . . [This] volume will persist in the memory.”
—The Village Voice
“Reveals the author at her most fascinatingly unfiltered. . . .
Captures the thrill of a writer discovering her richest subject:
the American mythologies that governed her own romantic girlhood.”
—Vogue
“Intimate, yet preternaturally detached, as though her matchless
ear bears witness from the beyond.” —The Boston Globe
“Exemplif[ies] Didion’s signature brand of reportorial haiku—her
pitiless camera eye, razor-sharp wit and telling techniques of
self-deprecation that only bring the reader . . . further along for
the ride.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“Deeply personal. . . . Offer[s] new insight into a formative time
in the author's life.” —Rolling Stone
“One of contemporary literature’s most revered essayists revives
her raw records from a 1970s road trip across the American
southwest . . . her acute observations of the country’s culture and
history feel particularly resonant today.” —Harper’s Bazaar
“Vintage Didion, idiosyncratic and tantalizingly self-revealing.”
—USA Today
“This is the charm of South and West: while its political
observations are both prescient and canny, the greater pleasure is
the view into her mind at work. For a writer who has never shied
away from exploring the personal in her writing, Didion's notebooks
might be her most vulnerable work yet.” —Bomb
“Compelling . . . rooted utterly in a past now all but lost to us,
while also incredibly timely and relevant.” —Los Angeles Review of
Books
“If this is how Didion's notebooks read, let's have them all. . . .
The form suits her particular brilliance: the ability to sequence
arresting sentences, crammed with observation and insight, and let
them generate their own momentum.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune
“A marvelous time capsule. . . . Fascinating documents spiked with
virtuosic turns. . . . Cast[s] light backward and forward on her
work, illuminating her reportorial process and the themes she would
develop in later novels and nonfiction.” —Vulture
“[Didion’s] idiosyncratic genius is in full evidence in South and
West. . . . Didion seemed to be aware that she was recording a
singular moment in the culture. . . . She did not want to transcend
the madness of the day, escape it, but rather to capture it
completely.” —Newsweek
“Engaging and haunting. . . . Didion’s observations of the South
are remarkable to read, dripping with a sense of unease. . .
. Didion at her most unfiltered. Those who admire her will
find this glimpse into her notebooks exhilarating.” —Paste
“An amazing snapshot of Didion at work, her interviews with regular
folks, her descriptions of motels and highways in one section and
of what California means to her in another.” —Austin
American-Statesman
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