The Last Love Song (120 page)

“not new in New York”: ibid., 279–80.

“I will try to get”: Samuel Byck quoted in Matthew C. Duersten, “The Man in the Santa Claus Suit,”
L.A. Weekly,
September 12, 2001; available at
laweekly.com/news/the-man-in-the-santa-claus-suit-2133809
.

“deal broker” and “alleged associations”: James Hatfield, “Why Would Osama bin Laden Want to Kill Dubya, His Former Business Partner?” posted at
www.onlinejournal.com/Attack
.

“specializing in personal”: See
www.rloatman.com
.

“Humanity learned how to destroy”: Matthys Levy and Mario Salvadori,
Why Buildings Fall Down
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2002), 239.

“Everyone's … talking”: Didion quoted in Tom Christie, “The Secret Agent: Joan Didion Talks,”
L.A. Weekly,
October 3, 2001; available at
laweekly.com/news/the-secret-agent-2133880
.

“had been just too frail”: Joan Didion,
Where I Was From
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), 204.

“when she died”: Hari Kunzru, “Joan Didion's Yellow Corvette,” posted at
harikunzryu.com/archive/joan-didions-yellow-corvette-interview-transcript-2011
.

“two pieces of silver flatware”: Didion,
Where I Was From,
225–26.

“lightening of spirit”: ibid., 204.

“I took one bite”: ibid., 207.

“call-to-action”: ibid., 205.

“
[W]ho will remember me
”: ibid., 204.

“[I]t's fine”: ibid., 206.

“I insisted to my brother”: Kunzru, “Joan Didion's Yellow Corvette.”

“
Joan Didion and Nancy Kennedy
”: Didion,
Where I Was From,
224.

“When my father died”: ibid., 225.

“I dare you to spit on my flag!”: John M. Hubbell, “A Sharp Eye on Politics: Joan Didion Reflects on New York's Tragedy, Washington's Elite,”
San Francisco Chronicle,
September 25, 2001; available at
sfgate.com/entertainment/article/A-sharp-eye-on-politics-Joan-Didion-reflects-on-2874929.php
.

“an infinitely romantic notion”: cited in ibid.

“The last of the sentence”: ibid.

“encounter with an America”: Joan Didion,
Fixed Ideas,
5.

“good deal of opportunistic ground”: ibid., 6.

“[T]he words ‘bipartisanship'”: ibid.

“Washington was still talking”: ibid., 7.

“These people got it”: ibid.

“Bush says the country needs to be reborn” and ensuing dialogue: Christie, “The Secret Agent.”

“view of our cold war victory”: Thomas Mallon, “On Second Thought,”
New York Times,
September 25, 2005; available at
www.nytimes.com/2003/09/28/books/on-second-thought.html
.

“notion that non-voters are a seething, alienated mass”: Joe Klein, “Bulworthism,”
The New Republic,
November 15, 2001; available at
powells.com/review/2001_11_15.html
.

“Remember Mencken?”: Linda Hall, “The Writer Who Came In from the Cold,”
New York,
September 2, 1996, 30.

“My responses are pretty much the same”: Didion quoted in Christie, “The Secret Agent.”

“I don't know who is represented”: ibid.

“political trajectory”: Rachel Donadio, “Every Day Is All There Is,”
New York Times,
October 9, 2005; available at
www.nytimes.com/2005/10/09/books/review/09donadio.html
.

“I think of political writing”: Didion quoted in ibid.

“[P]eople, if they got it”: Didion,
Fixed Ideas,
7.

“was being processed, obscured, systematically leached”: ibid., 8–9.

“evildoers,” “moral clarity,” and “America's New War”: Frank Rich, “Preface” to ibid., ix.

“[T]his reinvention of Bush as a leader”: Didion quoted in J. Hale Russell, “Joan Didion Takes On the Political Establishment,”
The Harvard Crimson,
October 19, 2001; available at
thecrimson.com/article/2001/10/19/joan-didion-takes-on-the-political/
.

“You know that famous Vietnam thing”: Didion quoted in Christie, “The Secret Agent.”

“[W]e have been instructed”: Rich, “Preface” to Didion,
Fixed Ideas,
vii.

“discussion got short-circuited”: Steven Weber quoted in Didion,
Fixed Ideas,
20–21.

“discussion with nowhere to go”: ibid., 21.

“I made up my mind”: George W. Bush quoted in ibid., 36.

“Given all we have said”: ibid.

“It draws you toward it”: ibid.

“I think that democracy has shallow roots”: Jonah Raskin, “Joan Didion”; available at
Sonoma.edu/users/r/raskin/interview_didion.htm
.

“Stall. Keep the options open”: Didion,
Fixed Ideas,
21–22.

“Jesus Christ”: Joan Didion,
The Last Thing He Wanted
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), 61.

CHAPTER 35

as one critic pointed out: Thomas Larson, “Music, Memory, and Prose: On Joan Didion's Memoirs,”
Puerto del Sol
47, no. 1 (Summer 2012); available at
thomaslarson.com/publications/essays-and-memoirs/242-music-memory-prose.html
.

“There is no real way to deal with everything we lose”: Joan Didion,
Where I Was From
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), 225.

“All of the great English fiction”: Meghan Daum, “Conversation Between Joan Didion and Meghan Daum,”
Black Book
, December 12, 2004; available (2011) at
meghandaum.com/about-meghan-daum/36-conversation-between-joan-didion-and-meghan-daum
.

“I think specifically novels”: ibid.

“My great-great-great-great-great-grandmother”: Didion,
Where I Was From,
3.

“California likes to be fooled”: Frank Norris quoted in Andrew O'Hehir, “Golden State of Hypocrisy”; available at
salon.com/2003/10/18/didion_4/
.

“willingness to abandon”: ibid.

“Well, it is hard to know”: ibid.

“towns I knew”: Didion,
Where I Was From,
183.

“[w]e were seeing nothing ‘new' here”: ibid.

“[W]hen the families of inmates”: ibid., 186–87.

“It was only Quintana who was real”: ibid., 219.

“saying goodbye” and “It's a love song”: O'Hehir, “Golden State of Hypocrisy.”

“about being older”: Adair Lara, “You Can't Keep the California Out of Joan Didion,”
San Francisco Chronicle,
January 6, 2004.

“Be a better person” and “[N]obody can ever be nice enough”: ibid.

CHAPTER 36

“My father likes nobody”: Rosemary Breslin,
Not Exactly What I Had in Mind
(New York: Villard Books, 1997), 64.

“was dating some anemic offspring” and “children of successful parents”: ibid.

“the chronicler of the society set” and “who [said] in all his years”: ibid.

“an extremely rare occurrence”: ibid.

“someone with a center made of steel” and subsequent quotes by Rosemary Breslin: ibid., 88.

“I remember being dazzled”: Dominick Dunne quoted in Chris Smith, “Dominick Dunne vs. Robert Kennedy,”
New York
; available at
nymag.com/nymetro/news/crimelaw/features/n_8816
.

“Joe Kennedy be so”: ibid.

“pathetic creature” and “The formula”: ibid. In 2012 a Connecticut judge overturned Skakel's murder conviction and recommended he be retried. See Mike Hogan, “Michael Skakel Retrial Order Would Have Infuriated Dominick Dunne,”
Vanity Fair,
October 24, 2013; available at
www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2013/10/michael-skakel-retrial-dominick-dunne
.

“I don't give a fuck”: Smith, “Dominick Dunne vs. Robert Kennedy.”

“friendship” and Nick's subsequent story: ibid.

“I've had prostate cancer”: ibid.

“by happenstance” and Nick's subsequent comments on the brothers' reconciliation: Dominick Dunne, “A Death in the Family,” originally published in
Vanity Fair,
March 2004; reprinted in Andrew Blauner, ed.,
Brothers: 26 Stories of Love and Rivalry
(San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009), 192–93.

“He had these big, arty glasses”: Meghan Daum to the author, March 29, 2013.

“John was having problems with his heart”: Dominick Dunne, “A Death in the Family,” 193.

not for eleven million dollars: Fox News, March 14, 2005; available at
foxnews.com/story/2005/03/14/condit-settles-lawsuit-against-writer-dunne/
.

“being found”: Joan Didion,
Blue Nights
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 128.

“shattering”: ibid., 129.

“I phoned her once or twice”: Anna Connolly to the author, March 20, 2013.

“It was a meeting by proximity” and all subsequent quotes from Sean Day Michael: Sean Day Michael to the author, November 2, 2013.

“vacuum”: Joan Didion,
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968), 122–23.

“no longer pretend”: ibid.

early career start: For details about Gerry Michael and the Bummers, I have drawn on Weston Blalock and Julia Blalock, remarks posted at
rootsofwoodstock.com/2013/03/28/gerry-michael-and-the-bummers
. I am grateful to Weston Blalock for his help.

CHAPTER 37

“
When something happens to me
”: Joan Didion,
The Year of Magical Thinking
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 196.

reminded Didion of a night alone: ibid., 131.

“What exactly do those wit-nits”: Joan Didion e-mail to Susanna Moore, April 16, 2005, Susanna Moore Papers, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

“Not our friend from the bridge”: Didion,
The Year of Magical Thinking,
38.

“[Didion's] place in American letters”: Linda Hall, “The Writer Who Came In from the Cold,”
New York,
September 2, 1996, 30.

“quick sunlight dappling” and “apprehension of death”: Didion,
The Year of Magical Thinking,
76.

“[O]n the contrary”: ibid., 77.

“Let's do it”: Joan Didion,
Blue Nights
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 5.

“I remember how unhappy John was that day”: Josh Greenfeld in conversation with the author, April 6, 2013.

“Wasn't that just about perfect”: Didion,
The Year of Magical Thinking,
71.

“That settles it then”: ibid., 80.

Episcopalians “took” Communion: ibid., 81.

“Joan Didion,” “hack,” and “bitch”: John Gregory Dunne e-mail to Susanna Moore, December 7, 2003, Susanna Moore Papers, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

“You were right about Hawaii”: Didion,
The Year of Magical Thinking,
82.

“fritter[ed] away”: ibid., 186.

“You can use it if you want to”: ibid., 23.

“Goddamn. Don't ever tell me again you can't write”: ibid., 166.

Didion said she envied her friend: Joan Didion e-mail to Susanna Moore, December 24, 2003, Susanna Moore Papers, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

CHAPTER 38

“fell into a kind of semi-conscious state”: Amy Ephron, “Kind of Blue,”
Los Angeles Review of Books,
October 27, 2011; available at
tumblr.lareviewofbooks.org/post/11988483028/kind-of-blue
.

“
How does ‘flu' morph into whole-body infection
”: Joan Didion,
The Year of Magical Thinking
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 67.

“There really was no explanation given”: Didion quoted in Adam Higginbotham, “Joan Didion: A Mother's Journey Into Grief,”
Belfast Telegraph,
November 14, 2011; available at
belfasttelegraph.co.uk/woman/life/joan-didion-a-mothers-journey-into-grief-28680460.html
.

“walking pneumonia” and “nothing serious”: Didion,
The Year of Magical Thinking,
64.

“feeling terrible”: ibid., 63.

“I was in town”: Sean Day Michael to the author, November 2, 2013.

“Do I think her lifestyle contributed to her death?”: Sean Day Michael to the author, November 4, 2013.

“She's still beautiful”: Didion,
The Year of Magical Thinking,
218.

“More than one more day”: ibid., 68.

“sobbed about his daughter”: Dominick Dunne, “A Death in the Family,” originally published in
Vanity Fair
, March 2004; reprinted in Andrew Blauner, ed.,
Brothers: 26 Stories of Love and Rivalry
(San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009), 184.

“which way this is going”
: Didion,
The Year of Magical Thinking,
62.

“Why did I waste time”: ibid., 82.

“
I don't think I'm up for this
” and “
You don't get a choice
”: ibid., 217.

“
Don't do that
”: ibid., 10.

Quintana's dreams about the Broken Man: ibid., 219.

“The minute I got to him”: Didion quoted in Dominick Dunne, “A Death in the Family,” 184–85.

Didion took a taxi home: For details of the night of Dunne's death, see Didion,
The Year of Magical Thinking,
3–23.

“leaden”: ibid., 31.

The obituary in
The New York Times
: Richard Severo, “John Gregory Dunne, Novelist, Screenwriter, and Observer of Hollywood Is Dead at 71,”
New York Times,
January 1, 2004; available at
www.nytimes.com/2004/01/01/arts/john-gregory-dunne-novelist-screenwriter-and-observer-of-hollywood-is-dead-at-71.html
.