AP: Joan Didion, peerless prose stylist, dies at 87
Joan Didion, the revered author and essayist whose precise social and personal commentary in such classics as “The White Album” and “The Year of Magical Thinking” made her a uniquely clear-eyed critic of turbulent times, has died. She was 87.
Didion’s publisher Penguin Random House announced the author’s death on Thursday. She died from complications from Parkinson’s disease, the company said.
“Didion was one of the country’s most trenchant writers and astute observers. Her best-selling works of fiction, commentary, and memoir have received numerous honors and are considered modern classics,” Penguin Random House said in a statement.
Breaking News: Joan Didion has died at age 87. Her sharp dispatches on California and tough, terse novels forged a distinct new voice in American writing. https://t.co/Y7Yiv18CS9 pic.twitter.com/flsrs0cChn
— The New York Times (@nytimes) December 23, 2021
For half a century, Joan Didion, who died on Thursday, was the grand diagnostician of American disorder in essays of strong, unmistakable cadence. She wrote her first story at age 5, after her mother told her to stop whining and to write down her thoughts.https://t.co/2vf0igpboO
— The New York Times (@nytimes) December 23, 2021
How many of us first experienced the dizzyingly romantic idea of actually living in NYC through Joan Didion’s poignant essay about needing, for her sanity, to leave it? pic.twitter.com/2PZpCHvToZ
— Michael Barbaro (@mikiebarb) December 23, 2021
Very few writers now or in the past could take a picture like Joan Didion. To have a depth that more than stands up to the surface is extraordinary. pic.twitter.com/XyVKcZspmA
— Thomas Chatterton Williams (@thomaschattwill) December 23, 2021
