some tidings, though not unexpected, when they do come still jolt one to the very core; so it is with the death of one of the United States\u2019 finest writers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There could be very few who have not been bedazzled by the beauty and coolness – in structure and syntax – of Joan Didion\u2019s prose, the integrity and incisiveness of her investigations into the American culture and society of the last half century – uncompromising, often going there where it is at its very darkest. Who could not have appreciated her intellectual brilliance and the finest sense of irony that she brought to her stories – be they fact or fiction? As I have done, how many others have cried with her and for her – because of injustices done or out of grief crying to be heard; knowing well that all those tears are really for oneself – perhaps as the writer, Didion, would have wished? As a chronicler of, not only her time and her country, but her inner self with all its contradictions and human frailties and failures, Didion has<\/em> no peer. She will remain present, until she is not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The New York Times<\/em> is full of accolades – here is their obituary<\/a>, and tributes from two generations -a younger represented by Parul Sehgal<\/a> and, old habits die hard, Kakutani <\/a>(luck or subscription whichever comes first!). This afternoon I watched again Griffin Dunne’s 2017 Netflix documentary about his aunt (I had a need to return to her – Christmas or no Christmas!). Not everybody was satisfied if I remember, and it cannot help but be a labour of love, but the warts are there to be found, and I liked it. Here is the trailer on YouTube:<\/p>\n\n\n\nAvailable, for the moment at least,<\/s> (edit. Jan 7 2022)<\/sup> Available to subscribers, this very famous 1991 essay<\/a> written for The New York Review of Books<\/em> about the trial of the Central Park Five in which Didion deconstructs the prosecution’s arguments, exposing the racial profiling and the political pressures about which they erected their case. Be warned, thirty years ago long form was really that – long! And every word, every page worth it. As prescient as the issues she raises in here essay were then, regrettably they remain the reality to this day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n