home
first person stories
feature stories
crime stories
new journalists
photos
course info
about UF 441
Frames
contact

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Joan Didion


   "Writers are always selling somebody out."
  — Joan Didion

 

About Joan Didion:
     "An elegant prose stylist . . . Joan Didion Joan Didionpossesses a distinct literary voice, widely praised for its precision and control." Born in Sacramento to a fifth generation Central Valley family, she received a B.A. from U.C. Berkeley in 1956. Among the many awards and nominations she has received are first prize in Vogue's Prix de Paris, 1956, National Book Award nomination in fiction, 1971, American Book Award nomination in non fiction, 1981. Although she has published several novels, she has received the greatest public attention for Slouching Towards Bethlehem, 1968, a collection of essays. More recently she has been collaborating with her husband, John Gregory Dunn, on screen plays.
     It was Didion's mother who gave her a notebook and suggested she start writing. She wrote her first story at age 5. "In her quest for controlled perfection, Didion revises her writing repeatedly, working and reworking the exact placement of important details."
     From: Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series

 

     "The willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life is the source from which self-respect springs."
                     — Joan Didion

 

Books by Joan Didion:

Salvador (1983)
Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968)
Requiem Por Una Burguesa (1978)
Democracy: a novel (1984)
Joan Didion: essays & conversations (1984)
The White Album (1979)
Miami (1987)
After Henry (1992)
A Book of Common Prayer (1977)
Play It As It Lays (1970)
Run River (1963)
The Last Thing He Wanted (1966)

 

Joan Didion Links:

 

     "When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking didionnot that we want something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble.
                     — Joan Didion

 

Go back to
The 'Old' New Journalists
main page