Sunday, December 05, 2010

Happy Birthday, Joan Didion

Joan Didion, born on December 5, 1934, turns 76 years old today.

At the risk of showing my relative unfamiliarity with Ms. Didion's work, I will admit to having read only three of her books, and that I read two of those something like 20 years ago (Salvador and Miami).  The third is Ms. Didion's strange, and unexpectedly touching, memoir The Year of Magical Thinking in which she very frankly discusses her mental reaction (breakdown) to losing her 39-year-old daughter and her husband (author John Gregory Dunne) in the same year.  That one will stay with me for a long time.

 Thankfully, Didion is still writing and word is that in 2011 Knopf plans to publish Blue Nights, her memoir about aging.  That promises to be an interesting book.

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