The Last Love Song (105 page)

“His style … was that of an axe-murderer”: Dunne,
Quintana & Friends,
xix.

“As I remember it”: Rosa Rasiel to the author, August 18, 2012.

“At the party”: Parmentel in conversation with the author, July 11, 2013.

“Noel was around a lot”: Rosa Rasiel to the author, August 18, 2012.

“Joan's eminence grise”: Rosa Rasiel quoted in Hall, “The Writer Who Came In from the Cold,” 31.

“the acne and the ecstasy”: Wakefield,
New York in the Fifties,
268.

“One evening”: Rosa Rasiel to the author, August 18, 2012.

“He's too big”: Parmentel in conversation with the author, July 11, 2013.

“I never saw ambition like that”: Noel Parmentel quoted in Hall, “The Writer Who Came In from the Cold,” 32.

“Action verbs”: Connie Brod,
In Depth
interview with Joan Didion, Book TV, C-SPAN-2, 1992.

“get very angry”: Kuehl, “Joan Didion, The Art of Fiction No. 71.”

“The first few weeks”: Mary Cantwell,
Manhattan Memoir
(New York: Penguin, 1998), 217.

“On its own terms”: Brod,
In Depth
interview with Joan Didion.

“I would have her write”: Allene Talmey 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?ref-joandidion
.

“All through the house” and “It is easy to make light”: Joan Didion,
Telling Stories
(Berkeley, Calif.: Friends of the Bancroft Library, 1978), 4, 5.

“Run it through again, sweetie”: ibid., 5.

“We were connoisseurs”: ibid.

“traditional convention of the portrait”: Joan Didion, “An Annotation,” introduction to Robert Mapplethorpe,
Some Women
(Boston: Bullfinch Press/Little, Brown, 1989), 5.

“part of the texture of life in general” and “drinks for fifty cents”: Interviews with Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne,
New York in the Fifties,
directed by Betsy Blankenbaker (Figaro Films, 2000), film documentary.

“it was not long after
Sputnik
” and subsequent quotes from Noel Parmentel in this section: Parmentel in conversation with the author, July 11, 2013.

“Noel told her”: Dan Wakefield in conversation with the author, May 4, 2013.

“I adored Greg”: Madeleine Noble (née Goodrich) in conversation with the author, August 3, 2013.

“He made me laugh”: Didion quoted in Sara Davidson, “Joan Didion—Losing John,”
O, The Oprah Magazine,
2005; available at
www.saradavidson.com/joan-didion-losing-john
.

“I've thought of myself that way”: Didion quoted in Leslie Garis, “Didion and Dunne: The Rewards of a Literary Marriage,”
New York Times Magazine,
February 8, 1997; available at
www.nytimes.com/1987/02/08/magazine/didion-dunne-the-rewards-of-a-literary-marriage.html
.

“I decided it was pathological”: Didion, “Staking Out California.”

“We talked all night”: Dunne quoted in John Riley, “Writers Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne Play It as It Lays in Malibu,”
People,
July 26, 1979; available at
people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20066717,00.html
.

Didion's early
Vogue
pieces: See, for example, Joan Didion, “Take No for an Answer,”
Vogue,
October 1961, 132–33; Joan Didion, “Emotional Blackmail: An Affair of Every Heart,”
Vogue,
November 1962, 115–16.

“the world takes on for me”: Didion, “Take No for an Answer,” 132.

“[W]e are fatally drawn toward anyone”: ibid., 133.

“direct wire to the PMLA”: Joan Didion, “Finally (Fashionably) Spurious,” originally published in
National Review,
November 18, 1961, reprinted in
Salinger: The Classic Critical and Personal Portrait,
ed. Henry Anatole Grunwald (New York: Harper Perennial, 2009), 77.

CHAPTER 8

“Whatever one may think of them”: “Quo Vadis?”
Mademoiselle,
January 1960, 34.

“several thousand young women”: Joyce Johnson,
Minor Characters: A Beat Memoir
(New York: Penguin, 1999), 118–19.

“Everybody should get high”: “Quo Vadis?” 34.

“plastic, all hues”: ibid.

“Call it the weather” and subsequent quotes from “Berkeley's Giant”: Joan Didion, “Berkeley's Giant: The University of California,”
Mademoiselle,
January 1960, 88, 103, 105.

“get top jobs”:
Mademoiselle,
January 1960, 105.

“We were all oblivious”: Larry Colton in conversation with the author, April 8, 2013.

“yearning for California”: Joan Didion,
Where I Was From
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), 156–57.

“nightmare”: Mary Cantwell,
Manhattan Memoir
(New York: Penguin, 1998), 217.

“silliest occupations going”: Joan Didion letter to Peggy La Violette, September 27, 1959, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley.

“leading a rebellion in beauty”: “People Are Talking” column,
Vogue,
January 1963, 34.

“neither topical nor punchy”: “People Are Talking” column,
Vogue,
August 1963, 73.

“hair tonic”: “People Are Talking” column,
Vogue,
October 1962, 150.

“sleepiness of the enlarged”:
“People Are Talking” column,
Vogue,
October 1963, 81.

“Have Wife With Gun Must Travel”: “People Are Talking” column,
Vogue,
January 1960, 111.

“profoundly moving young woman”: “People Are Talking” column,
Vogue,
September 1962, 190.

“looking like a man ridden”: “People Are Talking” column,
Vogue,
March 1960, 135.

“threatened” people: “People Are Talking” column,
Vogue,
March 1962, 111.

“satisfying rightness of the baseball phrase”: “People Are Talking” column,
Vogue,
November 1959, 129.

“double-talk adjective”: “People Are Talking” column,
Vogue,
June 1960, 102.

“‘elliptical'”: “People Are Talking” column,
Vogue,
April 1961, 123.

“‘Flash'”: “People Are Talking” column,
Vogue,
April 1960, 85.

“zortz”: “People Are Talking” column,
Vogue,
July 1962, 48.

“developers blast[ing] miles of ski runs”:
Vogue,
November 1959, 160.

campaign speeches: “The Campaign Speech Writers,”
Vogue,
August 1960, 158–59.

“the tripping sound of ‘plastique'”:
Vogue,
January 1963, 39.

“young writer with an uncompromising moral intelligence”: “People Are Talking” column,
Vogue,
April 1960, 122.

“irritating”: “People Are Talking” column,
Vogue,
September 1961, 159.

“dope dreams”: “People Are Talking” column,
Vogue,
January 1963, 102.

“what it means to be a Westerner”: “People Are Talking” column,
Vogue,
October 1960, 158.

“helpless”: Joan Didion, “Notes from a Helpless Reader,”
National Review,
July 15, 1961, 21–22.

“exploring the vagaries of his career”: “People Are Talking” column,
Vogue,
November 1961, 117.

“fence-sitting”: “People Are Talking” column,
Vogue,
March 1960, 94.

“our economy”: “People Are Talking” column,
Vogue,
December 1961, 110.

“part of the boredom”: “People Are Talking” column,
Vogue,
November 1959, 120.

“forced breaking up of some of the big San Joaquin Valley ranches”:
Vogue,
October 1962, 150.

“passion for the documentation of irrelevant detail”: Joan Didion, “Jealousy—Is It a Curable Illness?”
Vogue,
June 1961, 96.

“improvised … in two sittings”: Joan Didion, comments at the National Book Award ceremony, November 17, 2007, upon receiving the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

“the magazine had a piece that had been assigned”: Christopher Bollen, “Joan Didion,”
V Magazine
; available at
christopherbollen.com/portfolio/joan-didion.pdf
.

“character count”: Didion, comments at the National Book Award ceremony.

“She was better than all of them”: Noel Parmentel in conversation with the author, July 11, 2013.

“Joan Didion, the fantastically brilliant writer”: quoted in Linda Hall, “The Writer Who Came In from the Cold,”
New York,
September 2, 1996, 32.

“beat-up desks”: Allene Talmey, “Biography of a Musical: ‘Damn Yankees,'”
Vogue,
March 1956, 152.

“A lot of people read these pieces”: Joan Didion in conversation with Sloane Crosley, New York Public Library, November 21, 2011.

CHAPTER 9

“[d]istinctively dolorous,” “perfect pitch,” and “East End Avenue Ophelia”: Joan Didion, “Gentlemen in Battle,”
National Review,
March 27, 1962; available at
old.nationalreview.com/flashback/flashback200604180656.asp
.

“by the time the battle was done”: Joan Didion, “Wayne at the Alamo,”
National Review,
December 31, 1960, 414–15.

“There was once a day”: Joan Didion, “Into the Underbrush,”
National Review,
January 28, 1961, 54–55.

“lost money and lost families”: Joan Didion, “A Celebration of Life,”
National Review,
April 22, 1961, 254–55.

“Every real American story”: Didion, “Gentlemen in Battle.”

“there are no more great journeys”: ibid.

“I would remind you”: Barry Goldwater, acceptance speech at the twenty-eighth Republican National Convention, San Francisco, July 1964; available at
washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/daily/may98/goldwaterspeech.htm
.

“(correctly) perceived”: Priscilla L. Buckley,
Living It Up with National Review: A Memoir
(Dallas: Spence Publishing Company, 2005), 187.

“[h]er prose, while always careful”: Priscilla Buckley cited in Linda Hall, “The Last Thing She Wanted,”
The American Prospect,
October 23, 2005, 19.

“My God, did he love and appreciate his daughter”: Noel Parmentel in conversation with the author, July 11, 2013.

“hysterical smallness” and “good deal of unpleasantness”: Joan Didion letter to Peggy La Violette, August 6, 1960, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley.

“Nothing if not eclectic!”: Joan Didion letter to Peggy La Violette, September 27, 1959, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley.

“I just turned a corner”: Joan Didion letter to Peggy La Violette, November 9, 1961, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley.

“[We] were all Westerners”: F. Scott Fitzgerald,
The Great Gatsby
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953), 177.

A series of short stories: “Coming Home,” “The Welfare Island Ferry,” and “When Did Music Come This Way? Children Dear, Was It Yesterday?” in Joan Didion,
Telling Stories
(Berkeley, Calif.: Friends of the Bancroft Library, 1978).

“everything I saw and heard”: Didion,
Telling Stories,
6.

“a romantic figure in … white suits”: Linda Hall, “The Writer Who Came In from the Cold,”
New York,
September 2, 1996, 31–32.

“hostile”: Noel Parmentel in conversation with the author, July 11, 2013.

“That's what we did then”: ibid.

“In ‘Goodbye to All That'”: Dan Wakefield in conversation with the author, May 4, 2013.

“new people”: Noel Parmentel in conversation with the author, July 11, 2013.

“rumors of abortions”: Mary Cantwell,
Manhattan Memoir
(New York: Penguin, 1998), 199.

“tidal surge”: Joan Didion,
Blue Nights
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 80.

“spent most of every morning in tears”: Nicholas Haslam,
Redeeming Features: A Memoir
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009), 156.

“All the fruit's going”: Didion,
Telling Stories,
6.

“One incident I remember”: Noel Parmentel quoted in Hall, “The Writer Who Came In from the Cold,” 32.

“What do I want with some little nobody”: ibid.

“Those Okies she grew up with”: ibid., 33.

“tapped into a certain vein of discontent”: Joan Didion, “Turning Point,” in
Nostalgia in
Vogue
, 2000–2010
, ed. Eve MacSweeney (New York: Rizzoli, 2010), 81–82.

“equalizers” and “sedation of anxiety”: Joan Didion,
The White Album
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979), 180, 186.

“I was bored”: “Telling Stories in Order to Live,” Academy of Achievement interview with Joan Didion, June 3, 2006; available at
www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/did0int-1
.

“bad afternoon”: Joan Didion, “A Problem of Making Connections,”
Life,
December 5, 1969, 34.

“Noel came over to my place”: Dan Wakefield in conversation with the author, May 4, 2013.

“nothing much touched him” and “Nobody wants to”: Didion, “A Problem of Making Connections,” 34.

“memoir” and “fiction which recalls a time”: John Gregory Dunne,
Vegas
(New York: Random House, 1974), frontispiece.