Joan Didion - 1934
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San Pedro High School in San Pedro, California
A prose stylist and journalist, Joan Didion began as a nonintellectual writer, more concentrated on images and detail rather than ideas. "Nobody writes better English prose than Didion," The New York Times describes. "She takes things personally, the voice is always precise, the tone unsentimental, and the view subjective." For many years, California was her favorite subject. Though, in recent years, she has turned to troubled countries of Central America and Southeast Asia. "I'm not much interested in spontaneity," Didion explains to The Los Angeles Times. According to Newsweek, she is "able to condense into a paragraph what others would take three pages to expound."
I. Biography
Born on December 5,1934 in Sacramento, California, Joan Didion is a fifth-generation Californian. From a Central Valley family, she is the daughter of Frank Reese and Eduene ( Jerret ) Didion. It was Didion's mother who introduced her to a notebook, where she began writing. At the age of five she wrote her first story. She received a BA at the University of California, Berkeley as an English major. There, she won an essay prize sponsored by Vogue magazine. Vogue hired her and she worked there for eight years, rising from promotional copywriter to associate feature editor. During this time, she published her first novel, Run River , in 1963 and married the writer, John Gregory Dunne. The following year in 1964, they moved back to the West Coast, where they lived for twenty-five years.
Writing for many years, Didion has produced a small output. Her reputation lies on the collection of essays, Slouching toward Bethlehem in 1968 and the White Album in 1979. In addition to these best-selling novels, she published, Play it as it Lays in 1970. Receiving a National Book Award nomination also brought great controversy. Her most recent novel is The Last Thing He Wanted in 1996.
II. Literary Works
Play it as it Lays: Composed of 84 brief chapters, tells the story of Maria Wyeth's struggle to find meaning in a meaningless world. The setting is the desert in Las Vegas and Hollywood during the late 1960's. A woman in her early thirties, she is emotionally unbalanced by a divorce from her husband and friends. Haunted by her past and future, she doesn't realize pain from pleasure. An abortion, lies, mischief, and her mental retarded daughter adds to her depression.
Slouching towards Bethlehem: A collection of essays that take the theme of Yeat's poem, which sums up the chaos of the sixties for Didion; a chaos that affected her ability to perform. She then went to Haight Ashbury to see and explore the hippie movement. There, out of that experience came the title essay.
The White Album: A second collection of magazine essays. Didion gave it this title in consideration of a famous Beatle's album that captured for her the disturbing scenes from the sixties. Diagnosed as "fundamentally pessimistic, fatalistic, and depressive," she includes personal things such as her psychiatric profile.
III. Los Angeles, the Desert and Joan Didion
Didion writes about the dysfunction in society. Here are some places in her literature:
Hollywood: This book mainly takes place in a modern society that exposes the careless living and emotional surroundings. A place where Maria Wyeth constantly tries to escape yet finds it impossible.
The Freeways: As Maria Wyeth is bombarded by a divorce from her husband and the abortion, her only destination and means of escape are the freeways. Driving through the San Diego to the Harbor, to Hollywood, to the Golden State, the Santa Monica, Santa Ana, Pasadena and Ventura. Here, through each freeway she enjoyed the flawless roads, "the organism that absorbed all her reflexes, all her attention."
The Desert: Here Maria's husband, Carter, brings her to the filming. He tries to keep her mind free but only succeeds in more betrayal.
IV. Literary Works
Run River (1963)
Slouching towards Bethlehem (1968)
Play it as it Lays (1970)
A Book of Common Prayer (1977)
Requiem Por Una Burguesa (1978)
The White Album (1979)
El Salvador (1983)
Democracy (1984)
Joan Didion: essays and conversations (1984)
Chicago Tribune Book World
Miami (1987)
After Henry (1992)
The Last Thing He Wanted (1996)
V. Sources
barnesandnoble.com - Author Biography
This essay was submitted by a student of Grant Farley, a teacher at San Pedro High School in San Pedro, California.