Joan Didion

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Joan Didion (2008)

Joan Didion (born December 5, 1934 in Sacramento , California , † December 23, 2021 in New York City , New York ) was an American journalist , writer , essayist and screenwriter . Didion wrote regularly for The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker . She wrote several screenplays in collaboration with her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne , who died in 2003 .

In the German-speaking world, Didion became best known for her autobiographical book The Year of Magical Thinking (2005), in which she dealt with the death of her husband and the life-threatening illness of her adopted daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne.

Live and act

Didion grew up in different parts of the USA. In 1956 she received a BA in Literature from the University of California, Berkeley . Joan Didion began her journalistic beginnings in New York in 1955, where she, like the budding writer Sylvia Plath , worked for the magazine Mademoiselle . Didion then wrote for the fashion magazine Vogue and was there “junior editor”.

Didion and John Gregory Dunne were married on January 30, 1964 in San Juan Bautista , San Benito County, California. As a result, they worked closely on scriptwriting for television films , plays, and films such as: B. The Panic in Needle Park ( 1971 ), A Star Is Born ( 1976 ) and True Confessions ( 1981 ) and an adaptation of novellas written by Dunne. In the industry, the two were considered the model couple who worked together. While her forte was research and essays, he was considered the better novelist and analyst of human behavior.

Didion authored five novels and many non-fictional books. Didion's work is often about California, especially in the 1960s. Her descriptions of conspiracy theorists , paranoiacs and sociopaths (including Charles Manson ) are now considered an integral part of American literature. Her collections of essays, Slouching Toward Bethlehem (1968) and The White Album (1979) - a book that has been described time and again as an aid to defining California as the "global capital of paranoia" - made her well-known as an observer of American politics and culture and in Acknowledged widely: Greta Gerwig, for example - whom Joan Didion describes as her “patron saint” - ranks The White Album among the ten most important books for her: “This collection of essays helped me understand the world I was not around for but that still shaped my life. Her [= Joan Didions] truths are tiny knives, piercing the surface and bleeding out the illusions of life, especially life in California. "Outside of the USA, too, Joan Didion gained a lasting reputation as an" arch chronicler of Californian and American life ".

In a distinctive reporting style, she combined personal experiences with social analyzes. As a result, she is often associated with representatives of New Journalism such as Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson , although this connection was never considered particularly close by herself. "Her language is a marvel: elegant, precise, and straightforward. In person, as on the page, she says exactly what she thinks, and in exactly the number of words required. Hemingway was a formative inspiration ", said Maud Newton in the laudation for Joan Didion on the occasion of the award of the National Humanities Medal 2012, and she quotes Didion:" 'Writing is the only way I've found that I can be aggressive,' she once said. 'I'm totally in control of this tiny, tiny world.' "

In 1981 Joan Didion was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and in 1989 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . From 2006 she was an elected member of the American Philosophical Society .

Didion's book Where I Was From (2003) is considered the work with the strongest biographical features. It contains both collected and new essays, reflections, and myths related to California. Your book is a settlement with the myth of successful individualism; She illuminates the self-interest of the Californians at the expense of the state in all its facets. Indirectly, the book has the effect of reflecting on the myth about the American outer border, the rootless, consumer-oriented lifestyle that California helped promote. She also goes into the difficult relationship with her place of birth and her mother.

In the 2005 autobiographical book The Year of Magical Thinking , Joan Didion processed the sudden death of her husband, John Dunne, and the life-threatening illness of her adopted daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne. The novel became a bestseller in the US, won the National Book Award, and was released for Broadway . Vanessa Redgrave , who performed the one-woman play on stage, also spoke an audio book version of the text. In the German-speaking world, the “Mourning Protocol” is the best-known work by Joan Didion today. Shortly before the book was published, Didion's adopted daughter died at the age of 39. Didion described her hopelessness after losing her daughter in the 2011 book Blue Nights .

In 2015 the first biography about Joan Didion was published. The author Tracy Dougherty, previously the biographer of Donald Barthelme and Joseph Heller , was not in personal contact with Didion while working on his book.

Griffin Dunne , a nephew of Joan Didion, directed the documentary Joan Didion. The Center Will Not Hold (USA 2017).

About Joan Didion's compilation of essays Let Me Tell You What I Mean (2021), Maia Silber, alluding to the book title, wrote that Didion does not, “at least not always”, describe what she means, rather she shows it. Last but not least, she is an astute observer and critic of the US press from the middle of the 20th century.

Didion had lived in California from the mid-1960s to 1988, when he moved back to New York City . Joan Didion died there in December 2021 at the age of 87 in her Manhattan home of complications from Parkinson's disease.

Awards

Works (selection)

Novels

Non-fiction

  • Slouching Towards Bethlehem. 1968.
  • The White Album. 1979.
  • Salvador. 1983.
    • Salvador. German by Charlotte Franke. Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 1984, ISBN 3-462-01610-5 .
  • Miami. 1987.
  • New York, Sentimental Journeys. In: The New York Review of Books. Volume 38, Issue 1 & 2, January 1991.
    • Raid in Central Park. A report. German by Eike Schönfeld. Hanser, Munich 1991, ISBN 3-446-16357-3 .
  • After Henry . Simon & Schuster, New York City 1992.
    • After Henry. Reports and essays, German by Mary Fran Gilbert, Karin Graf and Sabine Hedinger. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1995, ISBN 3-498-01296-7 .
    • slightly changed new edition with a new title: Sentimentale Reisen. Essays. Ullstein, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-550-08134-7 .
  • Political Fictions. 2001.
  • Where I Was From. 2003.
  • Fixed ideas. America Since 11/9 2003.
  • The Year of Magical Thinking. 2005.
  • We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live. Collected Nonfiction. 2006.
    • We tell each other stories in order to live. German by Antje Rávic Strubel. Claassen, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-546-00409-1 .
  • In the land of God. How America became what it is today. Essays, German by Sabine Hedinger and Mary Fran Gilbert; Tropen, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-932170-85-7 .
  • Blue Nights. 2011.
  • South and West. From a notebook . Knopf, New York City 2017, ISBN 978-1-5247-3279-0 .
    • South and west. Notes. German by Antje Rávic Strubel. Ullstein Verlag, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-550-05022-0 .
  • 2021 Let Me Tell You What I Mean . With a foreword by Hilton Als . Alfred A. Knopf, New York 2021, ISBN 978-0-593-31848-5 .

Scripts

literature

  • Tracey Daugherty: The Last Love Song: A Biography of Joan Didion . St. Martin's Press, New York 2015, ISBN 978-1-250-01002-5 .
  • Sharon Felton (Ed.): The Critical Response to Joan Didion. Greenwood Press, Wesatport, Conn. 1994, ISBN 0-313-28534-9 .
  • Ellen G. Friedman (Ed.): Joan Didion: Essays and Conversations. Ontario Review Press, Princeton, NJ 1984, ISBN 0-86538-035-X .
  • Lynn Marie Houston and William V. Lombardi: Reading Joan Didion . Greenwood Press, Santa Barbara 2009, ISBN 978-0-313-36403-7 .
  • Michelle C. Loris: Innocence, Loss and Recovery in the Art of Joan Didion. Peter Lang, New York 1989, ISBN 0-8204-0661-9 .
  • Mark Z. Muggli: The Poetics of Joan Didion's Journalism. In: American Literature. Vol. 59, No. 3, 1987, pp. 402-421.
  • Mark Royden Winchell: Joan Didion. (= Twayne's United States Authors Series. 370). 2nd, revised edition. Twayne, Boston 1980, ISBN 0-8057-7535-8 .

Web links

Commons : Joan Didion  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Naumann: "Where I came from": The party is over . In: The time . May 1, 2019, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed on February 2, 2020]).
  2. ↑ Sharon Walker: Waking up to New York: secrets of the world's most famous women-only hotel. From Grace Kelly to Joan Crawford and Sylvia Plath… Many of the residents of the Barbizon hotel went on to change the world. In: The Guardian. March 14, 2021, accessed October 22, 2021 .
  3. ^ Brian Dillon: The Perfect Prose of a Joan Didion Photo Caption. In: The New Yorker. September 22, 2020, accessed October 22, 2021 .
  4. ↑ cf. B. Anthony York: Caliparanoia dreamin '. In: salon. February 16, 2001, accessed October 22, 2021 .
  5. ↑ Greta Gerwig: Top Ten Books. One grand. Desert Island Books, accessed October 22, 2021 .
  6. ^ Larry Ryan: Degrees of separation: what connects Ana de Armas to Joan Didion? The Guardian, October 9, 2021; accessed October 13, 2021 .
  7. ^ Maud Newton: Joan Didion. National Endowment for the Humanities, accessed October 22, 2021 .
  8. ^ Member History: Joan Didion. American Philosophical Society, accessed July 16, 2018 .
  9. ↑ Unusual gloss . Süddeutsche Zeitung ( sueddeutsche.de [accessed on February 2, 2020]).
  10. ↑ Susanne Weingarten: Mourning without consolation . In: The mirror . September 26, 2006.
  11. ↑ Jesse McKinley: Year of Magical Thinking Headed for Broadway . In: New York Times . December 6, 2005.
  12. ↑ audible original The Year of Magical Thinking. Retrieved October 13, 2021 .
  13. ^ Joey Horsley: Joan Didion. FemBio Women.Biography Research, accessed October 13, 2021 .
  14. ↑ Susanne Mayer : The survivor. In: The time. September 14, 2006. Interview with Joan Didion about her work The Year of Magical Thinking.
  15. ↑ Jana Simon : The survivor. In: ZEITmagazin. March 1, 2012, No. 10
  16. ↑ Maia Silber: The Last Love Song: A Biography of Joan Didion. In: Harvard Review Online. November 10, 2015, accessed November 14, 2021 .
  17. ↑ Joan Didion. The Center Will Not Hold. Retrieved October 13, 2021 .
  18. ↑ Maia Silber: Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion. In: Harvard Review Online. March 30, 2021, accessed November 14, 2021 .
  19. ^ Heidi Harrington-Johnson: Joan Didion: Living and Writing Between LA and New York City . In: lindsaymagazine.co of October 16, 2017.
  20. ^ William Grimes: Joan Didion, 'New Journalist' Who Explored Culture and Chaos, Dies at 87 , nytimes.com, published and accessed December 23, 2021.
  21. ↑ Nadine Brozan: Chronicle: JOAN DIDION, the author, will go to the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, NH, this weekend to receive the prestigious Edward MacDowell Medal for outstanding contributions to the arts. In: The New York Times. August 16, 1996, accessed October 22, 2021 .
  22. ^ Joan Didion Accepts the 2005 National Book Award in Nonfiction. National Book Foundation, Presenter of the National Book Awards, accessed October 22, 2021 .
  23. ^ President Obama Awards the National Humanities Medal to Joan Didion. The White House, President Barack Obama, accessed October 22, 2021 .
  24. ↑ Louis Menand : Out of Bethlehem. The radicalization of Joan Didion. The New Yorker, August 24, 2015.
  25. ↑ Antje Rávic Strubel : In the endless loops of suffering. “The year of magical thinking”. The great American intellectual Joan Didion comes to terms with the shock of her husband's death. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung . September 17, 2006, No. 37, p. 63.
  26. ^ Elisabeth Raether : Joan Didion newly translated - The essay as a way of life. In: the daily newspaper . June 17th, 2008. Review of "We tell each other stories in order to live"
personal data
SURNAME Didion, Joan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer, essayist, and screenwriter
BIRTH DATE December 5, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH Sacramento , California
DATE OF DEATH December 23, 2021
PLACE OF DEATH New York City , New York