In a 1939 essay, the critic Philip Rahv argued that there have been two main types in American literature: the solemn and semi-clerical, which he associates with Henry James, and the exuberant, ...

Joan Didion, pictured during her L.A. days, was an unabashed fan of Old Hollywood, author Alissa Wilkinson writes in her new book about the famously reserved essayist and author. (Henry Clarke / Condé ...

Didion’s writing was the first to truly enchant me, cloaking me with deep sensations and waves of warmth and second-hand ...

The revered journalist and writer died at her home in New York City. Revered journalist and author Joan Didion died Thursday at her home in New York City due to complications from Parkinson's disease, ...

In her 1976 essay, “Why I Write,” Joan Didion described herself as the kind of writer “whose most absorbed and passionate hours are spent arranging words on pieces of paper.” Had she been an ordered ...

‘This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend,” a cynical editor remarks toward the end of “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” co-starring one of multitalented novelist and ...

A new book by Alissa Wilkinson argues that the iconic writer’s imagination and signature style were profoundly shaped by Hollywood. By Charles Finch Charles Finch is the author, most recently, of ...

Joan Didion, the sharp-eyed and cool-headed journalist, essayist and novelist who chronicled the social upheavals of the 1960s, the cultural landscape of California and the inner struggles of grief, ...

In November 1999, writer Joan Didion started seeing Roger MacKinnon, a New York psychiatrist, on the recommendation of the psychiatrist who was treating her daughter Quintana for borderline ...

If Joan Didion had an overarching preoccupation as a journalist and novelist, it was to find interstices where truth and myth blend into each other. In many of the essays that were collected in the ...