For many of us who grew up in California, the American writer Joan Didion was a heroine even though, or because, she was a Goldwater Republican, she was in love with John Wayne, she thought Jim Morrison was sexy because he was a bad boy, she hated hippie culture, she hated the Beats, she hated ’70s feminism, she idolized strong men in her fiction, she dismissed J. D. Salinger and Woody Allen when both were at the height of their popularity, she was the snob and the anti-snob. In short, she was fearlessly opinionated.
