Joan Didion:The Last Interview and Other Conversations

by MELVILLE HOUSE

• ISBN13: 9781685890117
• ISBN10: 1685890113
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2022-06-28
• Publisher: Melville House

Summary

The iconic writer whose prose was as influential and as it is unmistakably hers is joined in conversation with Sheila Heti, Hilton Als, Dave Eggers, Hari Kunzru and many more.

Some writers define a generation. Some a genre. Joan Didion did both, and much more. Didion rose to prominence with her nonfiction collection, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, and she quickly became the writer who captured the zeitgeist of the washed-out, acid hangover of the 60s. But as a bicoastal writer of fiction and nonfiction whose writing ranged from personal essays and raw, intimate memoirs to reportage on international affairs and social justice, Didion is much harder to pin down than her reputation might suggest.
 
This collection encompasses it all, in conversations that delve into her underappreciated mid-career works, her influences, the loss of her husband and daughter, and her most infamous essays. Far from the evasive, terse minimalist that has come to dominate the image of Joan Didion, what this collection reveals is a warm, thoughtful woman whose well earned legacy promises to live on for readers and writers for many generations to come.

Author Biography

JOAN DIDION is widely considered to be one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. Born in Sacramento, California in 1934, she moved to New York City to begin her writing career after receiving a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of California, Berkeley in 1956. She worked as a promotional copywriter and associate feature editor at Vogue. It was during her tenure at Vogue that she wrote her fist novel, Run, River. Writer John Dunne helped her edit the book, and they married in 1964. They moved to Los Angeles shortly afterwards where they adopted daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne, in 1966. Didion published her first collection of nonfiction pieces, titled Slouching Towards Bethlehem, in 1968, which is considered to be a seminal exaple of New Journalism. Novels Play It As It Lays and A Book of Common Prayer followed in 1970 and 1977 respectively. In 1979, she published her second collection of nonfiction, entitled The White Album. She began to co-write screenplays with Dunne in 1971, with The Panic at Needle Park. An adaptation of her own novel Play It as It Lays followed along with the script for the 1976 remake of A Star is Born. She continued publishing both novels and books of nonfiction, including Salvador, Democracy, Miami, After Henry, and The Last Thing He Wanted throughout the 80s, 90s, and 00s. In 2003, Dunne died suddenly of a heart attack. She wrote the memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, covering his death and its aftermath. Her daughter, Quintana Roo, passed away shortly aftewards, and Didion wrote another memoir, Blue Nights, in 2011 about her relationship with her late daughter. Joan Didion passed away due to complications of Parkinson’s Disease at home in Manhattan on December 23, 2021 at the age of 87.