What do you think?
Rate this book
Joan Didion: What She Means
An exploration of the visual corollary to Didion’s life and work and the feeling that each generates in her admirers, detractors and critics―including artists from Helen Lundeberg to Diane Arbus, Betye Saar to Maren Hassinger, Vija Celmins and Andy Warhol
In Joan Didion: What She Means, the writer and curator Hilton Als creates a mosaic that explores Didion's life and work and the feeling each generates in her admirers, detractors and critics.
Arranged chronologically, the book highlights Didion's fascination with the two coasts that made her. As a Westerner transplanted to New York, Didion was able to look at her native land, its mores and fixed rules of behavior, with the loving and critical eyes of a daughter who got out and went back. (Didion and her late husband moved from New York to Los Angeles in 1964, where they worked as highly successful screenwriters, producing scripts for 1971's The Panic in Needle Park and 1976's A Star Is Born, among other works, before returning to New York 20 years later.) And from her New York perch, Didion was able to observe the political scene more closely, writing trenchant pieces about Clinton, El Salvador and most searingly the Central Park Five. The book includes more than 50 artists ranging from Brice Marden and Ed Ruscha to Betye Saar, Vija Clemins and many others, with works in all mediums including painting, ephemera, photography, sculpture, video and film. Also included are three previously uncollected texts by Didion: “In Praise of Unhung Wreaths and Love” (1969); a much-excerpted 1975 commencement address at UC Riverside; and “The Year of Hoping for Stage Magic” (2007).
In Joan Didion: What She Means, the writer and curator Hilton Als creates a mosaic that explores Didion's life and work and the feeling each generates in her admirers, detractors and critics.
Arranged chronologically, the book highlights Didion's fascination with the two coasts that made her. As a Westerner transplanted to New York, Didion was able to look at her native land, its mores and fixed rules of behavior, with the loving and critical eyes of a daughter who got out and went back. (Didion and her late husband moved from New York to Los Angeles in 1964, where they worked as highly successful screenwriters, producing scripts for 1971's The Panic in Needle Park and 1976's A Star Is Born, among other works, before returning to New York 20 years later.) And from her New York perch, Didion was able to observe the political scene more closely, writing trenchant pieces about Clinton, El Salvador and most searingly the Central Park Five. The book includes more than 50 artists ranging from Brice Marden and Ed Ruscha to Betye Saar, Vija Clemins and many others, with works in all mediums including painting, ephemera, photography, sculpture, video and film. Also included are three previously uncollected texts by Didion: “In Praise of Unhung Wreaths and Love” (1969); a much-excerpted 1975 commencement address at UC Riverside; and “The Year of Hoping for Stage Magic” (2007).
128 pages, Hardcover
Published November 8, 2022
7 people are currently reading
437 people want to read
About the author
Joan Didion
103 books17.4k followersJoan Didion was an American writer and journalist. She is considered one of the pioneers of New Journalism along with Gay Talese, Hunter S. Thompson, and Tom Wolfe.
Didion's career began in the 1950s after she won an essay contest sponsored by Vogue magazine. Over the course of her career, Didion wrote essays for many magazines, including The Saturday Evening Post, Life, Esquire, The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker. Her writing during the 1960s through the late 1970s engaged audiences in the realities of the counterculture of the 1960s, the Hollywood lifestyle, and the history and culture of California. Didion's political writing in the 1980s and 1990s often concentrated on the subtext of political rhetoric and the United States's foreign policy in Latin America. In 1991, she wrote the earliest mainstream media article to suggest the Central Park Five had been wrongfully convicted. In 2005, Didion won the National Book Award for Nonfiction and was a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for The Year of Magical Thinking, a memoir of the year following the death of her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne. She later adapted the book into a play that premiered on Broadway in 2007. In 2013, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal by president Barack Obama. Didion was profiled in the Netflix documentary The Center Will Not Hold, directed by her nephew Griffin Dunne, in 2017.
Didion's career began in the 1950s after she won an essay contest sponsored by Vogue magazine. Over the course of her career, Didion wrote essays for many magazines, including The Saturday Evening Post, Life, Esquire, The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker. Her writing during the 1960s through the late 1970s engaged audiences in the realities of the counterculture of the 1960s, the Hollywood lifestyle, and the history and culture of California. Didion's political writing in the 1980s and 1990s often concentrated on the subtext of political rhetoric and the United States's foreign policy in Latin America. In 1991, she wrote the earliest mainstream media article to suggest the Central Park Five had been wrongfully convicted. In 2005, Didion won the National Book Award for Nonfiction and was a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for The Year of Magical Thinking, a memoir of the year following the death of her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne. She later adapted the book into a play that premiered on Broadway in 2007. In 2013, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal by president Barack Obama. Didion was profiled in the Netflix documentary The Center Will Not Hold, directed by her nephew Griffin Dunne, in 2017.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
January 20, 2023
Traveling/vacationing for a bit in Southern California, so, when in Rome.
This is a combo review of the book that accompanies the Hammer Museum's exhibit, "Joan Didion: What She Means," which I visited on 1/18/23, and also "Slouching Towards Los Angeles: Living and Writing by Joan Didion's Light." I don't have a lot to say about either except to note that the real work has begun, A.J. (After Joan), to pile on and elevate the legacy. Will she ever (rightfully) coexist with Hemingway and Faulkner or just remain an enduring American puzzle? It will take only time to sort it out; maybe, maybe not. Legions of acolytes (and, in the case of the essay collection here, pale imitators) fixate on her. Still, millions more have never heard of her, certainly never read her. Didion's detractors are many, too, eager now to reexamine issues of privilege and class in her work. (Bring it on. The work speaks for itself, even as it mystifies.)
As far as the Hammer exhibit goes -- curated by Hilton Als, who seems to be the designated driver of the Didion legacy -- I thought it achieved its goal nicely: It's not about Didion ephemera, it's about her relationship to place; it rightly endeavors to immerse the viewer in Didion's world, the way the world appeared to her at different times and situations. ("See it my way" etc.)
The essay book, which came out in 2020 before Didion died, is a nice thought -- and a harbinger, I think, of the kind of work that will emerge in an attempt to seal her legacy. Only a few of the writers in this book, however, really rise to the occasion/assignment. Best pieces are "Where I Am From" by Michelle Chihara, who actually took time to delve into Didion's role as a California landowner (by inheritance), which was much larger than Didion herself ever explained in her work; and "The Black Albums: How Joan Didion and the Beatles Went Noir Together" by Joe Donnelly.
This is a combo review of the book that accompanies the Hammer Museum's exhibit, "Joan Didion: What She Means," which I visited on 1/18/23, and also "Slouching Towards Los Angeles: Living and Writing by Joan Didion's Light." I don't have a lot to say about either except to note that the real work has begun, A.J. (After Joan), to pile on and elevate the legacy. Will she ever (rightfully) coexist with Hemingway and Faulkner or just remain an enduring American puzzle? It will take only time to sort it out; maybe, maybe not. Legions of acolytes (and, in the case of the essay collection here, pale imitators) fixate on her. Still, millions more have never heard of her, certainly never read her. Didion's detractors are many, too, eager now to reexamine issues of privilege and class in her work. (Bring it on. The work speaks for itself, even as it mystifies.)
As far as the Hammer exhibit goes -- curated by Hilton Als, who seems to be the designated driver of the Didion legacy -- I thought it achieved its goal nicely: It's not about Didion ephemera, it's about her relationship to place; it rightly endeavors to immerse the viewer in Didion's world, the way the world appeared to her at different times and situations. ("See it my way" etc.)
The essay book, which came out in 2020 before Didion died, is a nice thought -- and a harbinger, I think, of the kind of work that will emerge in an attempt to seal her legacy. Only a few of the writers in this book, however, really rise to the occasion/assignment. Best pieces are "Where I Am From" by Michelle Chihara, who actually took time to delve into Didion's role as a California landowner (by inheritance), which was much larger than Didion herself ever explained in her work; and "The Black Albums: How Joan Didion and the Beatles Went Noir Together" by Joe Donnelly.
Read
August 30, 2025[Planting a Tree is Not a Way of Life]
July 4, 2024
Saw this book in an art gallery shop, and since I occasionally get obsessed with Didion, I requested it from the library, not realizing it is basically the print version of a museum exhibit. Though I'm not sure the "exhibit in print" structure works as much more than a coffeetable book, it was interesting to reflect on art and influence and the life and writings of Didion in this manner. But i would have liked more of her writings.
January 21, 2023
Looking at this catalogue is no substitute for seeing the exhibition. Although the catalogue was thoughtfully laid out, I'm not sure that it made much sense to me. I don't feel any closer to understanding Didion as before, in fact, this may have taken me further away. There was only one piece by Ed Ruscha, his book about the Sunset Strip. And where was Lewis Baltz and John McLaughlin's work?
December 27, 2023
A quick read but Hilton Als essay, the republished Didion essays and associated visual art works are very memorable- reading her Christmas essay on the holiday was a high point for me. I saw the show at the Perez and would love to see again after reading the book
November 21, 2022
five star rating is really for the exhibit itself. the commencement speech is a real treat as well. hilton als really does love his white ladies.......
April 5, 2023
A beautiful tribute to a talented individual. Makes you want to revisit her ouvre.
January 17, 2024
A great catalogue of what was no doubt an amazing exhibition, but the Hilton Als essay was a mess, oddly. Some great excerpts and extracts from Didion however.
December 27, 2024
I love you Joan.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews