Joan Didion, the celebrated prose stylist, novelist and screenwriter who chronicled American culture and consciousness with cool detachment, humor and a brittle awareness of disorder, then turned her lens on herself in books that plumbed the depths of personal tragedies, died Thursday morning at 87.
Didion died at home in New York due to complications from Parkinson’s disease, according to her publisher, Alfred A. Knopf.
Didion and Dunne during an interview at their Malibu home in December 1977, after the publication of her bestselling novel “A Book of Common Prayer.â€
(Associated Press)
The author bridged the worlds of Hollywood, journalism and literature in a career that arced most brilliantly in the realms of social criticism and memoir.
Advertisement
Her essays explored an eccentric array of subjects — shopping malls, John Wayne, sojourns in Hawaii and havoc in Haight-Ashbury — in a style that was edgy, restrained and elegant.
Actress Vanessa Redgrave, right, who played Didion in the Broadway adaptation of “The Year of Magical Thinking,†holds the author’s hand on opening night in 2007.
(Stuart Ramson / Associated Press)
Didion and Dunne pose with a stack of their books in 1987.
(Patrick Downs / Los Angeles Times)
Didion reads to her daughter, Quintana, then 2, in 1968.
(Cal Montney / Los Angeles Times)
Didion in Golden Gate Park in 1967.
(Ted Streshinsky / Getty Images)
Didion prepares to appear in a short promotional film for David Halberstam’s final book, “The Coldest Winter,†in 2007.
(Kathy Willens / Associated Press)
Advertisement
Didion visits Alcatraz prison, which was closed in 1963.
(Ted Streshinsky / Getty Images)
Didion is helped from the stage after receiving a National Humanities Medal from President Obama in 2012.
(Pete Marovich / Getty Images)
Didion stands next to a face-painted hippie at a concert in Golden Gate Park.
(Ted Streshinsky / Getty Images)
Daughter Quintana with Didion and Dunne at her graduation in 1984 from what was then Westlake School for Girls.
(Courtesy of Joan Didion)
Didion poses in 1977.
(Associated Press)
Didion in March 2007 at the Booth Theater in New York, where an adaptation of “The Year of Magical Thinking†was staged.
The award-winning Los Angeles Times’ photo staff works across Southern California, the state, the nation and the world to bring readers images that inform and inspire daily. A complete list of the Visual Journalism staff can be found on the Newsroom Directory. Recent galleries can be seen on our photography page.
