The last love song : a biography of Joan Didion

849 Pages·2015·4.19 MB·English

by  Daugherty

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Table of Contents
About the Author
Photos
Copyright Page

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Making a book is the lighting of a candle.
This candle burns in memory of
Jo Anne Daugherty
Robert Homler
Christina Ward
Acknowledgments
Kit Ward, Colleen Mohyde, and Michael Homler made this book possible. My
admiration for them extends well beyond their professional skills. Until the very
end, Kit sacrificed her time for others, and Colleen and Michael stepped up with
grace and fortitude during moments of great difficulty.
Ted Leeson and Marjorie Sandor taught me to write better sentences. They
are not responsible for the embarrassments that remain on the page. Elizabeth
Wyckoff was an indispensable researcher. Keith Scribner enthusiastically shared
his ideas on the American dream with me. Jon Lewis was a fine companion
through the filmic and historical back alleys of Los Angeles. Kerry Ahearn
keeps alerting me to the whereabouts of the Dead Father—a way of finding true
north. I am grateful to the staffs of the Bancroft Library, the New York Public
Library, the UCLA Library, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of
Texas, and the libraries at Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, and Texas State
University for their help. Laura Wyss and Elizabeth Seramur conducted the
photo research and editing. Dinah Lenney and Lyle Wilen made marvelous tour
guides. The St. Martin’s team, particularly Lauren Jablonski (tireless!), Carol
Edwards, Meg Drislane, Amelie Littell, Steve Snider, Steven Seighman,
Yolanda Pluguez, Dori Weintraub, Ivan Lett, Jessica Lawrence, Emily Walters,
as well as William McNaull and Eric Rayman on the legal team, handled the
book with extraordinary care during the copyediting and production process.
I am grateful to the creative writing students at Oregon State University. For
nearly three decades, they have energized me with their vitality and curiosity.
For his help with this book and for care and feeding, I am beholden to Tim
Steele. I dearly miss him.
Below are some of the people who were kind enough to share their memories
and thoughts, or point me in helpful directions. Any misunderstandings or errors
of interpretation are mine, not theirs. For their extra generosity, I’d like to
acknowledge Noel Parmentel, Rosa Rasiel, Dan Wakefield, Eve Babitz, Hunter
Drohojowska-Philp, Josh and Foumi Greenfeld, Shirley Streshinsky, and Sean
Day Michael. Their insights and stories were crucial to my understanding of the
narrative. For permission to print previously unpublished material, my thanks to
Philip and Amy Robbins, Margi Fox, and Roger W. Straus III.
Also, my gratitude to Don Bachardy, Weston Blalock, Christopher Buckley,
William Burg, Janet Burroway, Phyllis Butler, Norman Carby, Jon Carroll,
Larry Colton, Anna Connolly, Amy Cooper, Meghan Daum, Jim Desmond, Julie
Didion, Willard Dixon, James Fallows, Carol Felsenthal, Jodie Ferrara-Adler,
Gael Greene, Karl Taro Greenfeld, Linda Hall, Joan Haug-Smith, Carol Herman,
Alex Ives, Boris Kachka, Sue Kaufman, Brian Kellow, Jonathan Lethem, Kel
Munger, John Newhagen, Madeleine Noble, Joyce Carol Oates, Ivan Obolensky,
Jay Parini, Harriet Polt, Claire Potter, John Ridland, Jill Schary Robinson,
Gabriel Rummonds, Anna Schneider, Lynn Sharon Schwartz, Nora Sheehan,
Gary Snyder, Matthew Specktor, Ben Stein, Susan Straight, Rob Turner, David
Ulin, Paul VanDevelder, George Vazques, Lois Wallace, and Sam Waterston.
Finally, my love and thanks to Don and Debra Daugherty, Charlie and Joey
Vetter, Jeanne Sandor and the rest of her lovely extended family, Willie and
Alice, and most especially to Marjorie Sandor and Hannah Crum.
The consciousness of the human organism is carried in its grammar.
—Joan Didion,
A Book of Common Prayer I think it is fair to say that the West has lost its place
in the national imagination because, by some sad evolution, the idea of human
nature has become the opposite of what it was when the myth of the West began,
and now people who are less shaped and constrained by society are assumed to
be disabled and dangerous. This is bad news for the American psyche, a fearful
and antidemocratic idea, which threatens to close down change. I think it would
be a positively good thing for the West to assert itself in the most interesting
terms, so that the whole country must hear and be reanimated by dreams and
passions it has too casually put aside and too readily forgotten.
—Marilynne Robinson, When I Was a Child I Read Books Look for it only in
books, for it is no more than a dream remembered.
—Sidney Howard,
Gone With the Wind screenplay The whole cosmology of America tends toward
the West … the quenching of the sun in the sea.
—Christopher Hitchens, “It Happened on Sunset”