6 writers remember Joan Didion, L.A.'s literary prophet who 'remains full of surprise'

To unrecorded successful Los Angeles is to unrecorded successful Joan Didion’s world. On what would person been the writer’s 91st birthday, Didion’s thorny and tangled imaginativeness of the metropolis endures. A philosopher, historian, songbird of grief and prophet, Didion foretold the city’s aboriginal with startling accuracy.

Of writing, Didion erstwhile said, “I’m wholly successful power of this tiny, tiny satellite close determination astatine the typewriter.” The aforesaid mightiness beryllium said of Los Angeles — a beingness she continues to narrate to america agelong aft her death.

“Los Angeles upwind is the upwind of catastrophe, of apocalypse,” Didion wrote. In January 2025, erstwhile fires ravaged neighborhoods crossed the region, her erstwhile location of Malibu was again bathed successful ash. On societal media, the precocious writer’s words went viral for their startling poignancy. “Horses caught occurrence and were changeable connected the beach, birds exploded successful the air,” she wrote successful “Quiet Days successful Malibu.” Of the Santa Ana winds — “devil winds,” arsenic she called them — she warned, “The metropolis burning is Los Angeles’s deepest representation of itself.” As parts of the metropolis smoldered, galore turned to Didion’s aching, poetic rendering of a paradise lost. And arsenic the metropolis rebuilt, she reminded readers of the resilient, pioneering tone inherent to California and its people: “In California we did not judge that past could bloody the land, oregon adjacent interaction it,” she wrote successful “Where I Was From.” For many, these words rang retired arsenic an affirmation — adjacent a prayer.

“There is nary existent mode to woody with everything we lose,” she observed successful “The Year of Magical Thinking.” Her writing, shrouded successful grief, took connected a caller sharpness successful post-fire Los Angeles.

The metropolis continues to unrecorded successful some the wreckage and the contented of Didion’s work. This year, a bid of reportedly convulsive ICE raids unsettled Los Angeles, drafting nationalist attraction to migration shaped by governmental unit abroad. These strains echo a longstanding preoccupation successful Didion’s reporting connected Latin America. In her indicting publication “Salvador,” she describes the governmental panic that engulfed El Salvador successful 1982 and examines however U.S. involution exacerbated it. In her nonfiction publication “Miami,” Didion chronicles the satellite of Cuban exiles, portraying a conflict-ridden assemblage with grace and her trademark clarity. Her fascination with Latin America loomed ample successful her reporting. The consequences of Didion’s critiques of neoliberalism and American involution stay up of their time, playing retired contiguous connected the streets of Los Angeles, wherever immigrants are detained by national agents — propelled by the policies and hypocrisies Didion erstwhile exposed.

As the metropolis faces unparalleled challenges, we tin remainder assured that Joan Didion volition beryllium with america each measurement of the way. For the writer’s 91st birthday, six writers with enactment published connected Didion spoke connected the writer’s bequest from their favourite Didion anecdote to her enactment that inactive resonates decades later.

Lili Anolik

What is an anecdote astir Joan Didion that resonates with you?

It’s 1967, 1 twelvemonth earlier “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” is published, truthful 1 twelvemonth earlier Joan Didion is Joan Didion. Joan and [husband] John [Gregory Dunne] are some penning for the Saturday Evening Post, and making beauteous bully money. They get cocky, bargain a caller car — a Corvette Stingray, banana yellow. They’ve conscionable driven it home, and past they perceive a rumor that the Saturday Evening Post is folding. John starts to sweat. He says, “Oh, God, possibly we should instrumentality backmost the car.” Joan looks astatine him and says, “Don’t deliberation poor.”

What is your favourite portion of Joan Didion writing?

My favourite portion of Joan Didion penning is the opener to “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” “Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream.” It’s trashy noir yet elevated and wholly dead-eyed — arsenic if Flannery O’Connor took a ace astatine penning a James M. Cain story.

(Scribner)

“Didion & Babitz”
(Scribner)

Hilton Als

What is an anecdote astir Joan Didion that resonates with you?

I don’t person a favourite anecdote astir Joan; her power and emotion is of a piece. But what I adored astir was making her laugh.

What is your favourite portion of Joan Didion writing?

The much I work Joan, the much I recognize that without realizing it, perhaps, she was a philosopher of sorts — mostly astir the American accomplishment myth, and what that imagination looks like, oregon doesn’t look like. It’s hard to extrapolate 1 publication oregon portion from that monumental assemblage of work, but sometimes I imagination of the colors and cleanable signifier and ideas she enactment distant successful “A Book of Common Prayer,” which strikes maine arsenic a feminist text, ultimately, opening with the archetypal line: “I volition beryllium her witness.” How marvelous for a pistillate narrator to accidental that astir different woman.

(DelMonico)

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

David Ulin

What is an anecdote astir Joan Didion that resonates with you?

When I was 18 and surviving successful San Francisco, I archetypal work her. I work “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” and past “The White Album.” The complex, adjacent doom-stricken bleakness of her constituent of presumption truly resonated with me. I thin to stock that constituent of presumption successful presumption of my reasoning astir the satellite and humanity. It echoed for me, a magnitude I was sensing portion surviving successful California for the archetypal clip that I hadn’t truly seen anyplace else. I subsequently saw it successful a batch of different writers, but she was truly the archetypal who taught maine that California was a complex, complicated, multivaried scenery — a spot with a batch of contradictory history.

What is your favourite portion of Joan Didion writing?

There’s a portion called “On the Morning After the Sixties,” which ends with this beauteous line: “If I could judge that going to a barricade would impact man’s destiny successful the slightest, I would spell to that barricade.” That effort successful peculiar should beryllium amended known due to the fact that the penning is truthful beauteous and her sensibility truthful crisp and contrarian. It’s precise brief; it’s an impression, astir similar a sketch. I emotion that benignant of penning successful general. She was a writer who taught maine that I could constitute successful agelong signifier and successful abbreviated form, with the signifier dictated by the content. “On the Morning After the Sixties” is simply a beauteous encapsulation of her aesthetic and constituent of presumption successful a precise little format.

(Library of America)

“Joan Didion: The 1980s & 90s”
(Library of America)

Evelyn McDonnell

What is an anecdote astir Joan Didion that resonates with you?

Joan Didion went to Sacramento City College for a little time. As she wrote, she lone applied to Stanford. She was conscionable shooting for the stars. And arsenic we each know, you’re expected to person your archetypal choice, your mean choice, and past your backup. It was a operation of arrogance and naivete. Her parents weren’t directing her correctly astir however to use for college, truthful she enactment each her eggs successful 1 handbasket — and that handbasket denied her. That was a acquisition successful humility for Didion, and she took it precise hard. She really said she thought she would termination herself, which besides demonstrates her inclination to dramatize. She had primitively wanted to beryllium an actor. Later, she took the rejection arsenic a acquisition and pinned the missive to her wall, wherever she kept it for galore years. Then she applied to Berkeley and was accepted. It was excessively precocious to commencement successful the fall, truthful she completed a summertime and a semester astatine Sacramento City College, which was really bully for her due to the fact that it connected her to Sacramento arsenic an adult, not conscionable arsenic a child. Later successful life, erstwhile she talked astir her Sacramento roots — the stream parties, the brew parties, and her fellow Bob — overmuch of that came from the clip she spent there.

What is your favourite portion of Joan Didion writing?

“Why I Write” resonates with maine due to the fact that her reasons for penning are precise akin to my own. It felt validating. She wrote successful bid to fig retired what she thought. The process of putting words connected the leafage helped her recognize herself and the world. As a writer, I wholly subordinate to that. I archer my students not to usage AI — determination is thing astir that process, astir formulating one’s thoughts by penning them, that is essential. I deliberation overmuch of her resonance comes from the mode she was instructional successful her writing. She gave galore speeches that are present portion of her lore. Even though she was ne'er formally a teacher, I consciousness she was a teacher to galore of america and a mentor to countless writers.

(HarperOne)

“The World According to Joan Didion”
(HarperOne)

Cory Leadbeater

What is an anecdote astir Joan Didion that resonates with you?

Some of the astir intelligent and talented radical would travel to meal with her and walk hours arguing their lawsuit astir immoderate existent lawsuit oregon writer oregon movie oregon whatever, and Joan would beryllium successful soundlessness the full time. Eventually, idiosyncratic would get astir to asking Joan, “Well, what bash you think?” And Joan would fto retired a agelong exhale done her nose, and past accidental precise quietly, “I don’t know.”

What is your favourite portion of Joan Didion writing?

My favourite portion she ever wrote is simply a tiny effort successful “The White Album” called “At the Dam.” It’s astir visiting the Hoover Dam. It’s not a portion I often spot discussed erstwhile radical speech astir her tremendous and overwhelming assemblage of work. If you privation to recognize her worldview and the feeble attempts quality beings marque to bring bid to a chaotic universe, that effort is the champion spot to start. It focuses connected the monolithic effort to rein successful quality and bring the works of humankind to carnivore connected a scenery that is wholly indifferent to us. In the essay, she reflects connected her ain smallness, the smallness of humankind, and our corporate efforts to make thing lasting oregon meaningful. It ends with her reasoning astir the Hoover Dam aft humanity is gone. It’s a quintessential Joan Didion image: She imagines the time aft the quality contention is gone, capturing some apocalyptic self-annihilation and wonderment astatine the tremendous efforts we marque to bash thing meaningful with our time. On a trade level, that past condemnation — “transmitting powerfulness and releasing h2o to a satellite wherever nary 1 is” — shows her astatine the highest of her creator powers.

(Ecco)

“The Uptown Local”
(Ecco)

Steffie Nelson

What is an anecdote astir Joan Didion that resonates with you?

I emotion the communicative Didion tells of going to Ralphs successful a bikini connected a 105-degree day. It’s conscionable specified a comic representation to me. To ideate this pistillate we each revere — it’s intolerable to ideate her doing it. It seems truthful retired of character. Yet she did it with her reserved mode of speaking and her buttoned-up manner. The pistillate who confronted her was wholly outraged, banging her buying cart into her and saying, “What a what a happening to deterioration to Ralphs.” I emotion that representation due to the fact that it reveals a idiosyncratic who could ever astonishment everyone. To me, Didion remains afloat of surprise.

What is your favourite portion of Joan Didion writing?

My favourite portion is inactive the archetypal portion of hers that I ever read: “Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream,” which is the opening effort of “Slouching Towards Bethlehem.” It’s not conscionable the communicative of the murderer, Lucille Miller, who burned her hubby alive, that I find truthful compelling. But it’s the conception of the aureate imagination and the committedness of California, which has taken connected a beingness of its ain successful my brain. It continues morphing arsenic our taste ideals change, and I really construe the aureate imagination otherwise than Didion presents it. Her explanation includes the inevitable autumn and the eventual disappointment erstwhile you scope for this aureate dream. But I judge the potency of the aureate imagination is successful the aspiration and the privation for thing greater. This envisioning and reaching is an acquisition of the aureate imagination that we each tin have, arsenic opposed to thing that cipher tin ever have.

(Rare Bird Books)

“Slouching Towards Los Angeles: Living and Writing by Joan Didion’s Light”
(Rare Bird Books)

Connors is simply a writer surviving successful Los Angeles. She hosts the literate speechmaking “Unreliable Narrators” astatine Nico’s Wine each month.