The Last Love Song (108 page)

“There is a time”: ibid., 217.

“Literature, poetry and history”: ibid., 225.

To
be
is to be
heard
: ibid., 12.

“right things”: Joan Didion, “A Social Eye,”
National Review,
April 20, 1965, 329.

“most serious New York novel”: ibid., 330.

“[it was an] unmitigatable fact”: Norman Mailer excerpt from
An American Dream
in
The Time of Our Time
(New York: Random House, 1998), 499.

“[her] breast made its pert way”: ibid.

“What a marvelous girl Joan Didion must be”: Norman Mailer's letter to William F. Buckley (1965) cited in Adam Clark Estes, “Some Literary Advice from Norman Mailer,”
The Atlantic,
October 17, 2011; available at
thewire.com/entertainment/2011/10/some-literary-advice-norman-mailer/43781/
.

“She's a perfect advertisement”: Mailer quoted by Noel Parmentel in conversation with the author, July 11, 2013.

“general erosion of technique”: Joan Didion, “Questions About the New Fiction,”
National Review,
November 30, 1965, 1101.

“[I]mprovisation is no art but a stunt”: ibid.

“real vacuity”: ibid.

“follow or think”: ibid.

“Everyone wants to tell the truth”: ibid.

“well-dressed, high-strung young woman” and subsequent quotes about
Lilith
: Joan Didion, “Lilith: Emotional Slippage,”
Vogue,
November 1964, 64.

“What makes Iago evil?”: Joan Didion,
Play It As It Lays
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1970), 1.

“constitutional inferiority”: Joan Didion letter to Mary Bancroft, May 9, 1965, Mary Bancroft Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute.

“in certain ways” and subsequent quotes from “John Wayne: A Love Song”: Joan Didion,
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968), 34, 37, 41.

“Oh yeah”: Ben Stein in conversation with the author, June 6, 2013.

“I have found my way around
plenty of museums
”: Joan Didion, “New Museum in Mexico: An Assault upon the Imagination,”
Vogue,
August 1965, 48.

“Two months might be stretching that particular role”: ibid.

“[S]he cradles herself”: Alfred Kazin, “Joan Didion: Portrait of a Professional,”
Harper's
magazine, December 1971, 114.

She told Mary Bancroft: Joan Didion letter to Mary Bancroft, May 9, 1965, Mary Bancroft Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute.

“traumatic blindness”: Kazin, “Joan Didion,” 114.

“You don't
look
like a migraine personality”: Joan Didion,
The White Album
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979), 171.

“Mountain Greenery”: Joan Didion letter to Mary Bancroft, May 9, 1965, Mary Bancroft Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute.

“I had, [at this] time”: Didion,
The White Album,
46.

“Joan's husband” and subsequent quotes from “On Going Home”: Didion,
Slouching Towards Bethlehem,
165.

“Joan and John were tremendous celebrity-fuckers”: Josh Greenfeld in conversation with the author, April 6, 2013.

“fairy”: Joan Didion letter to Mary Bancroft, August 26, 1965, Mary Bancroft Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute.

“were strivers”: Hunter Drohojowska-Philp in conversation with the author, March 27, 2013.

“Mrs. Misery and Mr. Know-All”: Christopher Isherwood,
Liberation: Diaries 1970–1983,
ed. Katharine Bucknell (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2012), 676.

“spoke in [a] tiny little voice”: ibid., 272.

“Those tragic and presumably dying women”: ibid., 601.

“Well, it was obvious why Chris didn't warm to Joan”: Don Bachardy in conversation with the author, April 23, 2013.

“Harrison”: Eve Babitz in conversation with the author, March 27, 2013.

“art groupie/art model”: ibid.

“In every young man's life”: Earl McGrath cited in Lili Anolik, “All About Eve and Then Some,”
Vanity Fair,
March 2014, 291.

“Mostly, he was supported by his wild Italian wife”: Eve Babitz in conversation with the author, March 27, 2013.

“Marilyn Monroe was [a] role model”: “Oral History Interview with Eve Babitz,” 2000 Jun 14, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

“I mean, it was built for, you know, peccadilloes:” Eve Babitz quoted in A. M. Homes,
Los Angeles: People, Places, and the Castle on the Hill
(Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2002), 25.

“When I was growing up”: Griffin Dunne quoted in ibid., 28.

“Someday you will” and “because I wanted a baby”: Joan Didion,
Slouching Towards Bethlehem,
138–39.

“like an all-out war zone”: Sgt. Ben Dunn quoted at
sites.google.com/site/wattsriotsofla/the-riot/thumbnailCAOQQ512.jpg?attredirect=0
.

Noel Parmentel: All details of Noel Parmentel's visit in August 1965 are from Joan Didion in letters to Mary Bancroft, May 9, 1965, and August 26, 1965, and from John Gregory Dunne in a letter to Mary Bancroft, March 30, 1966, Mary Bancroft Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute.

“Black people had been taught non-violence”: Huey P. Newton,
The Huey P. Newton Reader,
ed. David Hilliard and Donald Weise (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002), 49.

“goddamned elephant”: John Gregory Dunne quoted in “Exploring L.A. Through the Eyes of a Writer,”
Los Angeles Times,
January 30, 1994; available at
latimes.com/1994-01-30/opinion/op-18357_1_john_gregory_dunne
.

Parmentel disputes this: Noel Parmentel in conversation with the author, July 11, 2013.

“You were wrong”: Joan Didion,
The Year of Magical Thinking
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 138.

“The Old Duke” was gratified: John Wayne in a letter to Joan Didion, September 28, 1965, cited at the Web site for the 2011 October Personal Property of John Wayne Signature Auction #7045, “A Joan Didion Set of Correspondence, 1965.”

CHAPTER 13

“his ear to the ground”: John Gregory Dunne's notebook, John Gregory Dunne Papers, 1962–1967, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA Library Special Collections.

“like driving four hundred miles on a pool table”: John Gregory Dunne,
Quintana & Friends
(New York: E. P. Dutton, 1978), 115.

“Cesar is a mystic”: John Gregory Dunne's notebook, John Gregory Dunne Papers 1962–1967, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA Library Special Collections.

“It was rough in those early years”: Cesar Chavez quoted in Luis Valdez, Sister Mary Prudence, and Cesar Chavez, “Tales of the Delano Revolution,”
Ramparts,
July 1966, 6.

“having or thinking about having”: Joan Didion,
Blue Nights
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 59.

“[T]he next week I was meeting Blake Watson”: ibid.

“on Palos Verdes Drive”: John Gregory Dunne,
Vegas
(New York: Random House, 1974), 9.

“sat in a stall”: ibid.

“[u]nable to have children of their own”: Didion quoted in Susanna Rustin, “Legends of the Fall,”
The Guardian,
May 20, 2005; available at
www.theguardian.com/books/2005/may/21/usnationalbookawards.society
.

“not strong enough”: John Gregory Dunne,
True Confessions
(New York: Pocket Books, 1977), 343.

“incompetent” cervixes: John Gregory Dunne,
The Red White and Blue
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), 213.

“a migraine attack”: Joan Didion, “A Review of
The Soft Machine,
”
Bookmark,
March 1966, 2–3.

“In my beginning is my end”: T. S. Eliot,
Four Quartets
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1971), 13, 23.

“L'adoptada”
: Didion,
Blue Nights,
60.

“[e]ither birth parent”: California Family Code, Section 8700-8720; available at
legalinfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=fam&group=08001-09000&file=8700-8720
.

“is not open to inspection”: California Family Code, 9200 (a); available at
law.onecle.com/California/family/9200.html
.

“troubled lot”: Griffin Dunne quoted in Boris Kachka, “I Was No Longer Afraid to Die. I Was Now Afraid Not to Die,”
New York,
October 16, 2011; available at
nymag.com/arts/books/features/joan-didion-2011-10/index3.html
.

“I have never gotten over it”: Blake Watson quoted in Al Martinez, “For Obstetrician, Life is Not Routine,”
Sarasota Herald-Tribune,
August 11, 1974.

“I think you should feel”: J. Randy Taraborrelli,
Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot
(New York: Warner Books, 2000), 344.

“I have a beautiful baby girl”: Didion,
Blue Nights,
55.

“did not trust the uncertainties of unknown blood”: John Gregory Dunne,
Dutch Shea, Jr.
(New York: Pocket Books, 1983), 13.

“an infant with fierce dark hair”: Didion,
Blue Nights,
55.

“Once she was born”: ibid., 54.

“You're safe”: Joan Didion,
The Year of Magical Thinking
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 96.

“Quintana!”: Dunne,
Quintana & Friends,
5. Didion also tells a version of the nursery story in
Blue Nights,
56.

Dunne used the word
fierce
: Dunne,
Quintana & Friends,
3.

Didion wrote “fierce”: Didion,
Blue Nights,
55.

“singularly blessed and accepting child”: Joan Didion,
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
(New York: Modern Library, 2000), 132.

“[W]atching her journey from infancy”: Dunne,
Quintana & Friends,
3.

“Making celebratory drinks”: Didion,
Blue Nights,
56–57.

“Saks because if you spend eighty dollars”: ibid., 57.

“And worse yet, worse by far”: ibid., 58.

“Quintana, Manuel José”: John Gregory Dunne letter to Mary Bancroft, March 30, 1966, Mary Bancroft Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute.

Didion was stunning: ibid.

“
What if you hadn't been home
”: Didion,
Blue Nights,
118.

“
Do the peacocks
”: ibid., 163.

“I heard them cry—the peacocks”: Wallace Stevens,
The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975), 8.

“Swing up into the apple tree”: T. S. Eliot,
The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909–1950
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971), 93.

“It lay before us”: John Lloyd Stephens cited in Joan Didion, “New Museum in Mexico: An Assault upon the Imagination,”
Vogue,
August 1965, 48.

“I just christened the baby”: Didion,
Blue Nights,
77.

phenobarbital: Joan Didion letter to Mary Bancroft, March 30, 1966, Mary Bancroft Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute.

She was also taking ergot: ibid.

“finish the book he had contracted”: Didion,
Blue Nights,
71.

Dunne told Mary Bancroft: John Gregory Dunne letter to Mary Bancroft, March 30, 1966, Mary Bancroft Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute.

“Mexicans on the run”: Didion,
The Year of Magical Thinking,
118–19.

“L' adoptada”
: Didion,
Blue Nights,
60.

“
Qué hermasa
 …
Qué
chula
”: ibid., 62.

“
[V]ibora
in Los Angeles”: ibid., 73.

“Why am I dragging myself all the way out to California?”: PBS Web site for
The American Experience: Robert F. Kennedy,
“People and Events, Cesar Chavez, 1927–1993”; available at
www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/rfk/peopleevents/p_chavez.htm
.

“his head [caught] up with his heart”: ibid.

“The Kennedys sponged up ideas”: Dunne,
Quintana & Friends,
119.

it tended to publish “long”: John Gregory Dunne letter to Carl Brandt, January 8, 1966, John Gregory Dunne Papers, 1962–1967, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA Library Special Collections.

He told his agent: ibid.

Dunne should test the “desirability”: Carl Brandt letter to John Gregory Dunne, June 29, 1966; in ibid.

“big waves”: John Gregory Dunne letter to Carl Brandt, June 1966; in ibid.

“You'll have friends over”: Didion,
Blue Nights,
74.

He would be going to Los Angeles for a few days: Henry Robbins letter to John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion, June 2, 1966, John Gregory Dunne Papers, 1962–1967, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA Library Special Collections.

“I thought so little of myself as a writer”: Joan Didion,
After Henry
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 16.

“we got drunk” and “before the summer was out”: ibid.

“epic” and subsequent Fox quotes: Margi Fox, “God of Books,”
Literal Latté,
Summer 2009; available at
www.literal-latte.com/2009/06/god-of-books
.

“incredibly busy” and “The enclosed check”: Henry Robbins letter to Cesar Chavez, July 5, 1966, John Gregory Dunne Papers, 1962–1967, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA Library Special Collections.

“Anthony Kennedy, attorney”: John Gregory Dunne expenses list; in ibid.