The Last Love Song (115 page)

“romance”: ibid.

“power and beauty”: Henry Robbins letter to Joan Didion, March 24, 1976, Lois Wallace Literary Agency Records, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

magic objects: This list of objects and texts can be found among the Joan Didion Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley.

“low dread”: Davidson, in Friedman, ed.,
Joan Didion,
15.

“The oil rainbow slick” and “He runs guns”: ibid.

“When I heard Charlotte say this”: Kuehl, “Joan Didion, The Art of Fiction No. 71.”

“I don't want to be tired alone”: Pablo Neruda, “A Certain Weariness,” clipping found in the Joan Didion Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley.

“As a child of comfortable family”: Joan Didion,
A Book of Common Prayer
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1977), 59.

“I tell you … about myself”: ibid., 21.

“child of the western United States”: ibid., 59–60.

“Some women”: ibid., 84.

“So you know the story”: ibid., 11.

“underwater narrative”: Joan Didion,
Vintage Didion
(New York: Vintage Books, 2004), 50.

“no history”: Didion,
A Book of Common Prayer,
14.

“occasional mineral geologist”: ibid., 26.

“alone in the dark”: ibid., 24.

“in a dirty room in Buffalo”: ibid., 258.

“I have not been the witness I wanted to be”: ibid., 272.

The way to sell a literary novel: Joan Didion letter to Lois Wallace, August 7, 1976, Lois Wallace Literary Agency Records, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

“capable of having sex with a venetian blind”: ibid.

“I just think he was a saint!”: Caitlin McDermott Click, “People Watching in Washington,”
Politico,
April 2013; available at
politico.com/blogs/click/2013/94/ben-stein-nixon-was-a-saint-162102.html
.

“I just didn't have”: Alicia C. Shepard, “People and Politics: Woodward and Bernstein Uncovered,”
The Washingtonian,
September 1, 2003; available at
washingtonian.com/articles/people/woodward-and-bernstein-uncovered
.

“I remember going to a party”: Ben Stein in conversation with the author, June 6, 2013.

“I wasn't invited”: Dominick Dunne,
The Way We Lived Then
:
Recollections of a Well-Known Name Dropper
(New York: Crown, 1999), 199.

“Put it this way, it's our beads”: Susan Braudy, “A Day in the Life of Joan Didion,”
Ms
., February 1977, 66.

“I wasn't crazy about their playing in the cage”: John Gregory Dunne,
Regards: The Selected Nonfiction of John Gregory Dunne
(New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2006), 41–42.

“It should make us a lot of money”: James Kimbrell
, Barbra: An Actress Who Sings: An Unauthorized Biography
(Wellesley, Mass.: Branden Books, 1984), 198.

“I had seen Barbra”: ibid., 195.

“Jon has a way of seeing me”: ibid., 196.

“Jon's brainstorm”: excerpts of Peters's book proposal, posted at
deadline.com/2009/05/it-should-be-called-dickhead-jon-peters-book-proposal-sets-new-low
.

“
A Star Is Born
was becoming a career”: Dunne,
Regards,
41.

“We couldn't … quit”: ibid., 42.

“Put a band behind me”: Kimbrell,
Barbra,
198.

“The Didion/Dunne third draft”: Frank Pierson, “My Battles with Barbra and Jon,”
New West,
November 22, 1976; available at
barbra-archives.com/bjs_library/70s/new_west_battles_barbra_jon.html
.

“People are curious”: ibid.

“We are going to miss planes”: Didion quoted in Sara Davidson,
Joan: Forty Years of Life, Loss, and Friendship with Joan Didion
(San Francisco: Byliner, 2011).

“for absolutely no reason”: Joan Didion,
Blue Nights
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 87.

“I would drive past Zuma”: Joan Didion,
The White Album
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979), 211.

“some grave solar dislocation”: ibid.

“most aqueous filtered light”: ibid., 216.

most fertile at “full moon”: ibid., 218.

“I had never talked to anyone so direct”: ibid., 221.

she felt she had become impossible to live with: Chris Chase, “The Uncommon Joan Didion,”
Chicago Tribune,
April 3, 1977.

“I'm like a child in my parents' house”: Didion quoted in Davidson,
Joan,
17.

“
A Book of Common Prayer
was an evil impulse” and subsequent quotes from Noel Parmentel unless otherwise noted: Noel Parmentel in conversation with the author, July 11, 2013.

“calumny”: Noel Parmentel letter to Dick Snyder, January 28, 1977, Lois Wallace Literary Agency Records, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

“[S]he was incapable”: Didion,
Book of Common Prayer,
85.

“it would [not] be legally improper”: Rachel Ulell letter to Noel Parmentel, February 7, 1977, Lois Wallace Literary Agency Records, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

“Where are we heading”: Didion,
The White Album,
173.

“She's remarkably well-adjusted”: Dominick Dunne quoted in John Gregory Dunne,
Quintana & Friends
(New York: E. P. Dutton, 1978), 6.

“We go out to dinner in Tucson”: Didion,
The White Album,
162.

“The Hilton Inn”: Didion,
Blue Nights,
90.

“[S]he had no business in these hotels”: ibid., 88.

“[U]nder no condition” and “I believed as I did”: ibid., 126.

“How do you like our monuments?”: ibid., 91.

“Had an interesting talk with Carl Bernstein”: Didion,
The White Album,
177.

“all white”: Didion,
Blue Nights,
91.

most Americans were too soft: 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?pagewanted=all
.

“[W]e were often, my child and I”: Didion,
The White Album,
176.

“more sad songs”:
Kirkus Reviews,
March 1, 1977; available at
www.kirkusreviews.com/book-review/joan-didion/a-book-of-common-prayer/
.

“its own capacity to come up with the truth”: Russell Davies, “Then and Now, 1977,”
Times Literary Supplement,
July 8, 1977, available at
the-tls.co.uk/tls//files/16/71/66/f167166/public/article833615.ece
.

“a not untypical North American”: Joyce Carol Oates, “A Taut Novel of Disorder,”
New York Times Book Review,
April 3, 1977; available at
www.nytimes.com/1977/04/03/books/didion-prayer.html?_r=0
.

“The oft-rewritten script”: John Simon, “May, Bogdonovich, and Streisand: Varieties of Death Wish,”
New York,
January 10, 1977, 56.

“A concert sequence”: Jay Cocks, “Barbra: A One-Woman Hippodrome,”
Newsweek,
January 3, 1977, 68.

“During the filming”: Simon, “May, Bogdonovich, and Streisand,” 56.

“windfall”: John Gregory Dunne,
Crooning
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), 179.

“Quintana just said”: Dunne,
Quintana & Friends,
6.

CHAPTER 24

“I knew doom when I saw it”: Mike Davis, “Let Malibu Burn: A Political History of the Fire Coast,” posted at
ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/misc/misc/SoCalFires.html
.

“The seven million people”: ibid.

“But when do you give her the money?”: Joan Didion,
Blue Nights
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 92.

“[A]s little girls do”: John Gregory Dunne,
Quintana & Friends
(New York: E. P. Dutton, 1978), 6.

“other mother”: ibid.

“What do you think?”: Sara Davidson,
Joan: Forty Years of Life, Loss, and Friendship with Joan Didion
(San Francisco: Byliner, 2011).

“something obscene about rolling pastry”: Chris Chase, “The Uncommon Joan Didion,”
Chicago Tribune,
April 3, 1977.

“combat intelligence”: ibid.

“She fucked her way to the middle”: ibid.

“Saturday jits”: Sara Davidson, “A Visit with Joan Didion,” in
Joan Didion: Essays and Conversations,
ed. Ellen G. Friedman (Princeton, N.J.: Ontario Review Press, 1984), 13.

“ideal writer's wife”: Josh Greenfeld in conversation with the author, April 6, 2013.

“They were like one person”: Dominick Dunne quoted in Susanna Rustin, “Legends of the Fall,”
The Guardian,
May 20, 2005; available at
www.theguardian.com/books/2005/may/21/usnationalbookawards.society
.

“[F]rankly, I'm in the office most of the time”: Emily Stokes, “Lunch with the FT: Robert B. Silvers,”
Financial Times,
January 25, 2013; available at
ft.com/cms/s/2/091b61b6-11e2-a3db-00144feab49a.html
.

“whose lobby smelled of the Chinese food” and subsequent Wanger quotes from this article: Shelley Wanger, “It Was 1975…,” posted at
www.nybooks.com/blogs/50-years/2013/apr/17/shelley-wanger-it-was-1975/
.

“Even the telephone sex”: Andrew Brown, “The Writer's Editor,”
The Guardian,
January 23, 2004; available at
www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jan/24/society
.

“I just thought she was a marvelous observer”: Robert Silvers quoted in Rachel Donadio, “Every Day Is All There Is,”
New York Times,
October 9, 2005; available at
nytimes.com/2005/10/09/books/review/09donadio.html?page
wanted=all.

“by no means predictable”: Robert Silvers quoted in Rustin, “Legends of the Fall.”

“with lunch at Patsy's” and “If he doesn't know”: John Gregory Dunne,
Crooning
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), 12–13.

Agoura fire alarms: For details on the Agoura fire, see Molly Burell, “The Hour-by-Hour Battle of $70 Million Holocaust,” Los Angeles Fire Department Historical Archive; available at
lafire.com/famous_fires/1978-1000_MandevilleCanyonFire/102978_mandeville_LBpresstele.htm
.

“a house in West Hartford”: Davidson,
Joan.

“suburbia house”: Didion,
Blue Nights,
50.

“house on a hill above Sunset”: Joan Didion,
After Henry
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 210.

“I lost three years”: Joan Didion,
The White Album
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979), 223.

“I thought we both would cry”: ibid.

“You want today to see flowers”: ibid.

“The fire had come”: ibid.

CHAPTER 25

“Poor dope”: Lines from
Sunset Boulevard
cited in Ryan Reft, “A Dive in the Deep End: The Importance of the Swimming Pool in Southern California,” posted at
kcet.org/socal/departures/columns/intersections/a-dive-in-the-deep-end-the-importance-of-the-swimming-pool-in-southern-california-culture
. I have drawn upon Reft's insightful observations for the opening section of this chapter.

“Water in a swimming pool”: David Hockney quoted in Christopher Simon Sykes,
Hockney: The Biography,
vol. 1 (New York: Random House, 2011).

“control of the uncontrollable” and “pool is, for many of us in the West”: Joan Didion,
The White Album
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979), 64.

“apparent ease”: ibid.

“John in his office” and “room was cool”: Joan Didion,
The Year of Magical Thinking
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 24.

“we'll have a better life”: Sara Davidson,
Joan: Forty Years of Life, Loss, and Friendship with Joan Didion
(San Francisco: Byliner, 2011).

“white Americans”: John Gregory Dunne,
Regards: The Selected Nonfiction of John Gregory Dunne
(New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2006), 173.

“quintessential intimate stranger” and Dunne's subsequent quotes about Simpson: ibid., 172.

“If you don't know Los Angeles”: Rodney King quoted in Aisha Sabatini Sloan, “A Clear Presence,” June 17, 2013, posted at
guernicamag.com/features/a-clear-presence/
.

“All the time we were living at the beach”: Didion quoted in Michiko Kakutani, “Joan Didion: Staking Out California,”
New York Times,
June 10, 1979; available at
www.nytimes.com/1979/06/10/books/didion-calif.html?pagewanted=all&_r=O
.

“to shed their leaves”: Dunne,
Regards,
174.

“newly arrived”: Leslie Garis, “Didion and Dunne: The Rewards of a Literary Marriage,”
New York Times,
February 8, 1987; available at
www.nytimes.com/1987/02/08/magazine/didion-dunne-the-rewards-of-a-literary-marriage.html
.

“cain't” and “youse”: Davidson,
Joan.

“You don't know White Trash”: Dunne quoted in ibid.

“I'm going to have a ‘me' decade”: Didion quoted in ibid.

“Kids grow up”: Tim Steele in conversation with the author, April 29, 2013.

“Writers do not get gross”: Joan Didion,
After Henry
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 163.

“In those days, public schools”: Tim Steele, in conversation with the author, April 29, 2013.

“This place never changes”: Kakutani, “Joan Didion.”

“[W]e encourage them to remain children”: Joan Didion,
Blue Nights
: (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 53.