6 writers bear in mind Joan Didion, L.A.’s literary prophet who ‘stays stuffed with shock’

To dwell in Los Angeles is to dwell in Joan Didion’s world. On what would have been the author’s 91st birthday, Didion’s thorny and tangled imaginative and prescient of town endures. A thinker, historian, songbird of grief and prophet, Didion foretold town’s future with startling accuracy.

Of writing, Didion as soon as mentioned, “I’m completely in charge of this tiny, tiny world proper there on the typewriter.” The identical is likely to be mentioned of Los Angeles — a universe she continues to relate to us lengthy after her demise.

“Los Angeles climate is the climate of disaster, of apocalypse,” Didion wrote. In January 2025, when fires ravaged neighborhoods throughout the area, her former residence of Malibu was once more bathed in ash. On social media, the late author’s phrases went viral for his or her startling poignancy. “Horses caught hearth and have been shot on the seashore, birds exploded within the air,” she wrote in “Quiet Days in Malibu.” Of the Santa Ana winds — “satan winds,” as she referred to as them — she warned, “Town burning is Los Angeles’s deepest picture of itself.” As elements of town smoldered, many turned to Didion’s aching, poetic rendering of a paradise misplaced. And because the metropolis rebuilt, she reminded readers of the resilient, pioneering spirit inherent to California and its individuals: “In California we didn’t consider that historical past may bloody the land, and even contact it,” she wrote in “The place I Was From.” For a lot of, these phrases rang out as an affirmation — even a prayer.

“There isn’t a actual solution to cope with every part we lose,” she noticed in “The 12 months of Magical Considering.” Her writing, shrouded in grief, took on a brand new sharpness in post-fire Los Angeles.

Town continues to dwell in each the wreckage and the knowledge of Didion’s work. This 12 months, a collection of reportedly violent ICE raids unsettled Los Angeles, drawing nationwide consideration to immigration formed by political violence overseas. These strains echo a longstanding preoccupation in Didion’s reporting on Latin America. In her indicting ebook “Salvador,” she describes the political terror that engulfed El Salvador in 1982 and examines how U.S. intervention exacerbated it. In her nonfiction ebook “Miami,” Didion chronicles the world of Cuban exiles, portraying a conflict-ridden group with grace and her trademark readability. Her fascination with Latin America loomed massive in her reporting. The results of Didion’s critiques of neoliberalism and American intervention stay forward of their time, taking part in out as we speak on the streets of Los Angeles, the place immigrants are detained by federal brokers — propelled by the insurance policies and hypocrisies Didion as soon as uncovered.

As town faces unparalleled challenges, we will relaxation assured that Joan Didion might be with us every step of the best way. For the author’s 91st birthday, six writers with work printed on Didion spoke on the author’s legacy from their favourite Didion anecdote to her work that also resonates many years later.

Lili Anolik

What’s an anecdote about Joan Didion that resonates with you?

It’s 1967, one 12 months earlier than “Slouching In direction of Bethlehem” is printed, so one 12 months earlier than Joan Didion is Joan Didion. Joan and [husband] John [Gregory Dunne] are each writing for the Saturday Night Submit, and making fairly good cash. They get cocky, purchase a brand new automotive — a Corvette Stingray, banana yellow. They’ve simply pushed it residence, after which they hear a rumor that the Saturday Night Submit is folding. John begins to sweat. He says, “Oh, God, possibly we must always take again the automotive.” Joan appears to be like at him and says, “Don’t suppose poor.”

What’s your favourite piece of Joan Didion writing?

My favourite piece of Joan Didion writing is the opener to “Slouching In direction of Bethlehem,” “Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream.” It’s trashy noir but elevated and completely dead-eyed — as if Flannery O’Connor took a crack at writing a James M. Cain story.

“Didion & Babitz”
(Scribner)

Hilton Als

What’s an anecdote about Joan Didion that resonates with you?

I don’t have a favourite anecdote about Joan; her affect and love is of a bit. However what I adored most was making her snort.

What’s your favourite piece of Joan Didion writing?

The extra I learn Joan, the extra I perceive that with out realizing it, maybe, she was a thinker of types — largely concerning the American arrival fantasy, and what that dream appears to be like like, or doesn’t appear like. It’s laborious to extrapolate one ebook or piece from that monumental physique of labor, however typically I dream of the colours and ideal form and concepts she put forth in “A E book of Frequent Prayer,” which strikes me as a feminist textual content, in the end, starting with the primary line: “I might be her witness.” How marvelous for a feminine narrator to say that about one other lady.

“Joan Didion: What She Means”
(Delmonico Books)

David Ulin

What’s an anecdote about Joan Didion that resonates with you?

After I was 18 and residing in San Francisco, I first learn her. I learn “Slouching In direction of Bethlehem” after which “The White Album.” The advanced, even doom-stricken bleakness of her viewpoint actually resonated with me. I are likely to share that viewpoint when it comes to my fascinated about the world and humanity. It echoed for me, a dimension I used to be sensing whereas residing in California for the primary time that I hadn’t actually seen anyplace else. I subsequently noticed it in a variety of different writers, however she was actually the primary who taught me that California was a fancy, difficult, multivaried panorama — a spot with a variety of contradictory historical past.

What’s your favourite piece of Joan Didion writing?

There’s a bit referred to as “On the Morning After the Sixties,” which ends with this lovely line: “If I may consider that going to a barricade would have an effect on man’s destiny within the slightest, I might go to that barricade.” That essay particularly ought to be higher identified as a result of the writing is so lovely and her sensibility so sharp and contrarian. It’s very transient; it’s an impression, virtually like a sketch. I really like that sort of writing normally. She was a author who taught me that I may write in lengthy kind and briefly kind, with the shape dictated by the content material. “On the Morning After the Sixties” is a wonderful encapsulation of her aesthetic and viewpoint in a really transient format.

“Joan Didion: The Eighties & 90s”
(Library of America)

Evelyn McDonnell

What’s an anecdote about Joan Didion that resonates with you?

Joan Didion went to Sacramento Metropolis Faculty for a short time. As she wrote, she solely utilized to Stanford. She was simply capturing for the celebrities. And as everyone knows, you’re purported to have your first selection, your medium selection, after which your backup. It was a mixture of vanity and naivete. Her mother and father weren’t directing her accurately about learn how to apply for faculty, so she put all her eggs in a single basket — and that basket denied her. That was a lesson in humility for Didion, and he or she took it very laborious. She truly mentioned she thought she would kill herself, which additionally demonstrates her tendency to dramatize. She had initially wished to be an actor. Later, she took the rejection as a lesson and pinned the letter to her wall, the place she saved it for a few years. Then she utilized to Berkeley and was accepted. It was too late to begin within the fall, so she accomplished a summer time and a semester at Sacramento Metropolis Faculty, which was truly good for her as a result of it related her to Sacramento as an grownup, not simply as a toddler. Later in life, when she talked about her Sacramento roots — the river events, the beer events, and her boyfriend Bob — a lot of that got here from the time she spent there.

What’s your favourite piece of Joan Didion writing?

“Why I Write” resonates with me as a result of her causes for writing are similar to my very own. It felt validating. She wrote with a view to work out what she thought. The method of placing phrases on the web page helped her perceive herself and the world. As a author, I fully relate to that. I inform my college students to not use AI — there’s something about that course of, about formulating one’s ideas by writing them, that’s important. I believe a lot of her resonance comes from the best way she was tutorial in her writing. She gave many speeches that are actually a part of her lore. Despite the fact that she was by no means formally a trainer, I really feel she was a trainer to many people and a mentor to numerous writers.

“The World In accordance with Joan Didion”
(HarperOne)

Cory Leadbeater

What’s an anecdote about Joan Didion that resonates with you?

Among the most clever and proficient individuals would come to dinner along with her and spend hours arguing their case about some present occasion or author or movie or no matter, and Joan would sit in silence the complete time. Finally, somebody would get round to asking Joan, “Nicely, what do you suppose?” And Joan would let loose an extended exhale by her nostril, after which say very quietly, “I don’t know.”

What’s your favourite piece of Joan Didion writing?

My favourite piece she ever wrote is a small essay in “The White Album” referred to as “On the Dam.” It’s about visiting the Hoover Dam. It’s not a bit I usually see mentioned when individuals speak about her monumental and overwhelming physique of labor. If you wish to perceive her worldview and the feeble makes an attempt human beings make to deliver order to a chaotic universe, that essay is the very best place to begin. It focuses on the large effort to rein in nature and produce the works of humankind to bear on a panorama that’s fully detached to us. Within the essay, she displays on her personal smallness, the smallness of humankind, and our collective efforts to create one thing lasting or significant. It ends along with her fascinated about the Hoover Dam after humanity is gone. It’s a quintessential Joan Didion picture: She imagines the day after the human race is gone, capturing each apocalyptic self-annihilation and surprise on the great efforts we make to do one thing significant with our time. On a craft stage, that final sentence — “transmitting energy and releasing water to a world the place nobody is” — reveals her on the peak of her creative powers.

“The Uptown Native”
(Ecco)

Steffie Nelson

What’s an anecdote about Joan Didion that resonates with you?

I really like the story Didion tells of going to Ralphs in a bikini on a 105-degree day. It’s simply such a humorous picture to me. To think about this lady all of us revere — it’s unimaginable to think about her doing it. It appears so out of character. But she did it along with her reserved method of talking and her buttoned-up method. The lady who confronted her was fully outraged, banging her purchasing cart into her and saying, “What a what a factor to put on to Ralphs.” I really like that picture as a result of it reveals an individual who may at all times shock everybody. To me, Didion stays stuffed with shock.

What’s your favourite piece of Joan Didion writing?

My favourite piece continues to be the primary piece of hers that I ever learn: “Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream,” which is the opening essay of “Slouching In direction of Bethlehem.” It’s not simply the story of the assassin, Lucille Miller, who burned her husband alive, that I discover so compelling. Nevertheless it’s the idea of the golden dream and the promise of California, which has taken on a lifetime of its personal in my mind. It continues morphing as our cultural beliefs change, and I truly interpret the golden dream in another way than Didion presents it. Her definition consists of the inevitable fall and the last word disappointment once you attain for this golden dream. However I consider the efficiency of the golden dream is within the aspiration and the want for one thing larger. This envisioning and reaching is an expertise of the golden dream that all of us can have, versus one thing that no one can ever have.

“Slouching In direction of Los Angeles: Residing and Writing by Joan Didion’s Mild”
(Uncommon Chicken Books)

Connors is a author residing in Los Angeles. She hosts the literary studying “Unreliable Narrators” at Nico’s Wine each month.