Word: didions
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...world continues for a couple of paragraphs. Sykes even set up their conversation to include some Harvard name-dropping with an allusion to Zadie Smith: “Do you think you can lose weight by writing? Because it’s like all those girl writers like Joan Didion and Zadie Smith and Donna Tartt are, like, skinnier than cigarettes...
DIED. JOHN GREGORY DUNNE, 71, novelist, essayist and (in collaboration with his wife Joan Didion) screenwriter; of a heart attack; in New York City. For five years in the late '50s, he was a writer for TIME. His novels (Dutch Shea, Jr.; True Confessions) were full of Irishry--tough and compassionate, knowing without being cynical, true expressions of a complicated, cranky, lovable man whose hatred of hypocrisy was legendary. But his best subject was Hollywood, which he anatomized in two books (Monster; The Studio) and many articles. These were inside jobs--but without the malevolence and condescension many writers bring...
...DIED. JOHN GREGORY DUNNE, 71, novelist, essayist and (in collaboration with his wife Joan Didion) screenwriter; in New York City. His novels (Dutch Shea, Jr.; True Confessions) were full of Irishry-tough and compassionate, knowing without being cynical, true expressions of a complicated, cranky, lovable man whose hatred of hypocrisy was legendary. But his best subject was Hollywood, which he anatomized in two books (Monster; The Studio) and many articles. These were inside jobs-but without the malevolence and condescension many writers bring to their true tales of movie work. Dunne generally preferred (for their passion and honesty) the "bullies...
...exploration takes her off on many tangents, from the novels of Frank Norris to the sociology of the aerospace community of Lakewood. Some of these passages feel worked up and only loosely relevant. But as in all of Didion's reportage--including an earlier take on California, Slouching Towards Bethlehemher appraisal is cool, her eye is sharp, and her turn of phrase is wicked...
...family portraits, though, are what weave the book together and provide a welcome human resonance. Didion gives a charming account of her maternal grandmother, an extravagant spirit who, like many women in her family, tended toward "slight and major derangements." Her father, a hard-drinking depressive, leveraged one real estate deal after another with little money. "His idea of a relaxing way to make a payment was to drive to Nevada and shoot craps all night." The remembered details of family life yield vivid metaphors for her theme, none better than this: in a Sacramento house the Didions moved into...