we tell ourselves stories in order to live collected nonfiction

The author on her own strugglesĭidion was equally unsparing about her own struggles. Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The White Album and other books became essential collections of literary journalism, with notable writings including her takedown of Hollywood politics in Good Citizens and a prophetic dissent against the consensus that in 1989 five young Black and Latino men had raped a white jogger in Central Park (the men's convictions were later overturned and they were freed from prison).

Writer Joan Didion says the only way she can deal with grief is to write through it (reprise).

Or, as she more famously put it: 'Writers are always selling somebody out.'ĭidion received a National Humanities Medal in 2012, when she was praised for devoting 'her life to noticing things other people strive not to see.' For decades, she had engaged in the cool and ruthless dissection of politics and culture, from hippies to presidential campaigns to the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, and became known for her distrust of official stories. With large, sad eyes often hidden behind sun glasses and a soft, deliberate style of speaking, she was a novelist, playwright and essayist who once observed that: 'I am so physically small, so temperamentally unobtrusive, and so neurotically inarticulate that people tend to forget that my presence runs counter to their best interests.' Her bestselling works of fiction, commentary, and memoir have received numerous honours and are considered modern classics,' Penguin Random House said in a statement.Īlong with Tom Wolfe, Nora Ephron and Gay Talese, Didion reigned in the pantheon of 'New Journalists' who emerged in the 1960s and wedded literary style to nonfiction reporting.

'Didion was one of the country's most trenchant writers and astute observers.

She died from complications from Parkinson's disease, the company said. She was 87.ĭidion's publisher Penguin Random House announced the author's death on Thursday. Joan Didion, the revered author and essayist whose precise social and personal commentary in such classics as The White Album and The Year of Magical Thinking made her a uniquely clear-eyed critic of turbulent times, has died.

We tell ourselves stories in order to live collected nonfiction