Joan Didion - Academy of Achievement

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As an undergraduate at Berkeley, she won an essay contest sponsored by Vogue magazine and was offered a job in the New York office of the magazine's publisher, Condé Nast. In New York, she met her husband, the novelist John Gregory Dunne. The couple moved to Los Angeles, where they enjoyed a unique partnership as Hollywood's most sought-after screenwriting team. The Hollywood scene and the California counterculture provide the backdrop for her novels of the 1970s: Play It As it Lays and A Book of Common Prayer. Her reflections on the turbulent era appeared in her bestselling essay collections, Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album. She won a devoted audience and the profound admiration of her peers with her immaculate prose and penetrating eye for the revelatory detail. In the 1980s, she broadened her range with provocative explorations of hemispheric politics in the book-length essays Miami and Salvador. In Where I Was From, she explores her memories of childhood in the Sacramento delta, and how history and experience have altered her view of her native region. Her memoirs, The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights, unflinchingly describe her response to her husband's sudden death and the fatal illness of their only child. From the depths of grief, Joan Didion has risen to the height of her powers and turned unbearable experience into transcendent art."/> <link rel="canonical" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/joan-didion/"/> <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US"/> <meta property="og:type" content="article"/> <meta property="og:title" content="Joan Didion - Academy of Achievement"/> <meta property="og:description" content="<p class="inputTextFirst">Since the 1960s, Joan Didion has been one of America's finest novelists and most acute social observers. As an undergraduate at Berkeley, she won an essay contest sponsored by <i>Vogue </i>magazine and was offered a job in the New York office of the magazine's publisher, Condé Nast. In New York, she met her husband, the novelist John Gregory Dunne.</p> <p class="inputText">The couple moved to Los Angeles, where they enjoyed a unique partnership as Hollywood's most sought-after screenwriting team. The Hollywood scene and the California counterculture provide the backdrop for her novels of the 1970s: <i>Play It As it Lays</i> and <i>A Book of Common Prayer</i>. Her reflections on the turbulent era appeared in her bestselling essay collections, <i>Slouching Towards Bethlehem</i> and <i>The White Album</i>. She won a devoted audience and the profound admiration of her peers with her immaculate prose and penetrating eye for the revelatory detail. In the 1980s, she broadened her range with provocative explorations of hemispheric politics in the book-length essays <i>Miami</i> and <i>Salvador</i>. In <i>Where I Was From</i>, she explores her memories of childhood in the Sacramento delta, and how history and experience have altered her view of her native region.</p> <p class="inputText">Her memoirs, <i>The Year of Magical Thinking</i> and <i>Blue Nights</i>, unflinchingly describe her response to her husband's sudden death and the fatal illness of their only child. From the depths of grief, Joan Didion has risen to the height of her powers and turned unbearable experience into transcendent art.</p>"/> <meta property="og:url" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/joan-didion/"/> <meta property="og:site_name" content="Academy of Achievement"/> <meta property="og:image" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20180928054325im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/didion-2-Feature-Image-2800x1120.jpg"/> <meta property="og:image:width" content="2800"/> <meta property="og:image:height" content="1120"/> <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary"/> <meta name="twitter:description" content="<p class="inputTextFirst">Since the 1960s, Joan Didion has been one of America's finest novelists and most acute social observers. As an undergraduate at Berkeley, she won an essay contest sponsored by <i>Vogue </i>magazine and was offered a job in the New York office of the magazine's publisher, Condé Nast. In New York, she met her husband, the novelist John Gregory Dunne.</p> <p class="inputText">The couple moved to Los Angeles, where they enjoyed a unique partnership as Hollywood's most sought-after screenwriting team. The Hollywood scene and the California counterculture provide the backdrop for her novels of the 1970s: <i>Play It As it Lays</i> and <i>A Book of Common Prayer</i>. Her reflections on the turbulent era appeared in her bestselling essay collections, <i>Slouching Towards Bethlehem</i> and <i>The White Album</i>. She won a devoted audience and the profound admiration of her peers with her immaculate prose and penetrating eye for the revelatory detail. In the 1980s, she broadened her range with provocative explorations of hemispheric politics in the book-length essays <i>Miami</i> and <i>Salvador</i>. In <i>Where I Was From</i>, she explores her memories of childhood in the Sacramento delta, and how history and experience have altered her view of her native region.</p> <p class="inputText">Her memoirs, <i>The Year of Magical Thinking</i> and <i>Blue Nights</i>, unflinchingly describe her response to her husband's sudden death and the fatal illness of their only child. From the depths of grief, Joan Didion has risen to the height of her powers and turned unbearable experience into transcendent art.</p>"/> <meta name="twitter:title" content="Joan Didion - Academy of Achievement"/> <meta name="twitter:image" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20180928054325im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/didion-2-Feature-Image-2800x1120.jpg"/> <script type="application/ld+json">{"@context":"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20180928054325\/http:\/\/schema.org","@type":"WebSite","@id":"#website","url":"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20180928054325\/http:\/\/www.achievement.org\/","name":"Academy of Achievement","alternateName":"A museum of living history","potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20180928054325\/http:\/\/www.achievement.org\/search\/{search_term_string}","query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}</script> <script 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container"> <div class="feature-area__text-inner text-white"> <h2 class="serif-8 feature-area__text-subhead back"><a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever">All achievers</a></h2> <h1 class="serif-1 entry-title feature-area__text-headline">Joan Didion</h1> <h5 class="sans-6 feature-area__blurb">Novelist and Essayist</h5> </div> </figcaption> </div> </div> </figure> </header> </div>  <nav class="in-page-nav row fixedsticky"> <ul class="nav text-xs-center clearfix" role="tablist"> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link active" data-toggle="tab" href="#biography" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Biography">Biography</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#profile" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Profile">Profile</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#interview" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Interview">Interview</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#gallery" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Gallery">Gallery</a> </li> </ul> </nav> <article class="post-2259 achiever type-achiever status-publish has-post-thumbnail hentry careers-author careers-novelist"> <div class="entry-content container clearfix">  <div class="tab-content"> <div class="tab-pane fade in active" id="biography" role="tabpanel"> <section class="achiever--biography"> <div class="row"> <header class="editorial-article__header col-md-8 col-md-offset-2 text-xs-center"> <i class="icon-icon_bio text-brand-primary"></i> <h3 class="serif-3 quote-marks">When you write, you're always revealing a difficult part of yourself.</h3> </header> </div> <div class="row"> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar clearfix"> <h2 class="serif-3 p-b-1">National Book Award</h2> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Birth</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> December 5, 1934 </dd> </div> </aside> <article class="editorial-article col-md-8"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><p>Joan Didion was born in Sacramento, California. Didion spent most of her childhood in Sacramento, except for several years during World War II, when she traveled across the county with her mother and brother to be near her father, who served in a succession of posts as an officer in the Army Air Corps. Her family had deep roots in the West; family tales of pioneer days informed her first novel, as well as her later memoir, <i>Where I Was From</i>.</p> <figure id="attachment_3169" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-3169 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180928054325im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-011.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-3169 size-full lazyload" alt="April 1967: Writer Joan Didion stands at the panhandle of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco with a group of hippies during the writing of her article <i>Slouching Towards Bethlehem</i>. In the era of New Journalism, Joan Didion combined close observation with emotional detachment. (© Ted Streshinsky/CORBIS)" width="2280" height="1524" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20180928054325im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-011.jpg 2280w, /web/20180928054325im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-011-380x254.jpg 380w, /web/20180928054325im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-011-760x508.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180928054325/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-011.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">April 1967: Writer Joan Didion stands at the panhandle of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, California with a group of hippies during the writing of her prize-winning article <i>Slouching Towards Bethlehem</i>. In the era of New Journalism, Joan Didion combined close observation with emotional detachment. (© Ted Streshinsky/CORBIS)</figcaption></figure><p class="inputtext">By her own account, Didion was a shy, bookish child, although she also pushed herself to overcome her shyness through acting and public speaking. In her final year at the University of California, Berkeley, she won an essay contest sponsored by <i>Vogue</i> magazine. The first prize was a job in the magazine’s New York office. Didion remained at <i>Vogue</i> for two years, progressing from research assistant to contributing writer. At the same time, she published articles in other magazines and wrote her first novel, <i>Run River</i> (1963). Although the novel sold poorly, it attracted favorable reviews, and she was offered a contract to write a second book.</p> <figure id="attachment_3162" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-3162 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180928054325im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-004.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-3162 size-full lazyload" alt="At home in Malibu, Quintana Roo Dunne and her parents, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion, in 1976. (Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)" width="2280" height="1533" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20180928054325im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-004.jpg 2280w, /web/20180928054325im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-004-380x256.jpg 380w, /web/20180928054325im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-004-760x511.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180928054325/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-004.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">At home in Malibu, Quintana Roo Dunne and her parents, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion, in 1976. In 2003, Quintana fell gravely ill. Shortly after returning from a visit to their comatose child in the hospital, her husband suffered a fatal heart attack. Joan Didion wrote an emotional account of her grief in <em>The Year of Magical Thinking</em>.</figcaption></figure><p class="inputtext">In 1964, Didion married John Gregory Dunne, an aspiring novelist who was writing for <i>Time</i> magazine. The couple moved to Los Angeles with the intention of staying six months, and ended up making their home there for the next 20 years. The pair adopted a baby girl they named Quintana Roo, after the state on the eastern coast of Mexico.</p> <p class="inputtext">The atmosphere of California in the 1960s provided Didion and Dunne with ample opportunities for writing in the personal mode that was becoming known as the New Journalism, also associated with the writers Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe, Hunter Thompson and Gay Talese. Didion’s essays on the ’60s counterculture were collected in the volume <i>Slouching Towards Bethlehem</i> (1968). Published to critical acclaim, the book is one of the signature works of the decade. Didion’s second novel, <i>Play It As it Lays</i> (1970), set among aimless souls adrift at the edges of the film industry, captured a mood of anomie and alienation that crept over the film colony at the decade’s close.</p> <figure id="attachment_3165" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-3165 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180928054325im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-007.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-3165 size-full lazyload" alt="Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, partners in life and literature, at home in New York City, 2000. (© Richard Schulman/CORBIS)" width="2280" height="1801" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20180928054325im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-007.jpg 2280w, /web/20180928054325im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-007-380x300.jpg 380w, /web/20180928054325im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-007-760x600.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180928054325/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-007.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, partners in life and literature, at home in New York City, 2000. (Corbis)</figcaption></figure><p class="inputtext">Working in collaboration for the first time, Didion and Dunne wrote the screenplay for the film <i>Panic in Needle Park</i> (1971). Set among homeless drug addicts in New York City, the film introduced film audiences to the actor Al Pacino. Their work on the film was much admired, and the pair would become one of Hollywood’s most sought-after screenwriting teams, a lucrative sideline to their journalism and fiction. Among the many screenplays they wrote together, the best known are screenplays for the film adaptation of <i>Play It As it Lays</i> (1972); the 1976 remake of <i>A Star Is Born, </i>featuring Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson; the film version of Dunne’s novel <i>True Confessions</i> (1981); and <i>Up Close and Personal</i> (1996) with Robert Redford.</p> <figure id="attachment_3163" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-3163 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180928054325im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-005.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-3163 size-full lazyload" alt="Joan Didion in her New York apartment, 2003. (© Neville Elder/Corbis)" width="2280" height="1533" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20180928054325im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-005.jpg 2280w, /web/20180928054325im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-005-380x256.jpg 380w, /web/20180928054325im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-005-760x511.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180928054325/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-005.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">2003: Joan Didion in her New York apartment. A sense of anxiety or dread permeates much of her work. (Corbis)</figcaption></figure> <p class="inputtext">Didion published a second volume of essays, <i>The White Album</i>, in 1979. She had won a national reputation as an intensely acute social observer and prose stylist; her voice was admired for its gemlike precision and elegance. In the 1980s, Didion’s interest turned to the state of her country’s relations with its southern neighbors, examined in two book-length essays, <i>Salvador</i> (1983) and <i>Miami</i> (1987). Travels in Central America and the Pacific also provided the background for novels of political intrigue, including <i>A Book of Common Prayer</i> (1977), <i>Democracy</i> (1984) and <i>The Last Thing He Wanted</i> (1996).</p> <figure id="attachment_51785" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-51785 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180928054325im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-ET-06Academy_943-DIDION-2006-SUMMIT-LOS-ANGELES.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-51785 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="1520" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20180928054325im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-ET-06Academy_943-DIDION-2006-SUMMIT-LOS-ANGELES.jpg 2280w, /web/20180928054325im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-ET-06Academy_943-DIDION-2006-SUMMIT-LOS-ANGELES-380x253.jpg 380w, /web/20180928054325im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-ET-06Academy_943-DIDION-2006-SUMMIT-LOS-ANGELES-760x507.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-ET-06Academy_943-DIDION-2006-SUMMIT-LOS-ANGELES.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Cultural icon, novelist, and essayist Joan Didion addressing the Academy delegates and members at a symposium session during the Academy of Achievement’s 2006 International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles, California.</figcaption></figure><p class="inputtext">Over the years, Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne often found themselves in the position of explaining New York to Californians, and California to New Yorkers. In the mid-1980s, the couple moved back to New York City. Many of Didion’s observations of the city appear in her essay collection <i>After Henry</i> (1992). Years of Didion’s essays on American politics and government were collected in the volume <i>Political Fictions </i>(2001). Her thoughts turned back to California in <i>Where I Was From</i> (2003), a wide-ranging volume of reflections on California’s past and present. Her first seven books of nonfiction have been collected in a single volume, <i>We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live</i>.</p> <figure id="attachment_17264" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-17264 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180928054325im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_1165.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-17264 size-full lazyload" alt="American Academy of Achievement Awards Council member Justice Anthony M. Kennedy presents the Golden Plate Award to Joan Didion at the 2006 International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles." width="2280" height="1824" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20180928054325im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_1165.jpg 2280w, /web/20180928054325im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_1165-380x304.jpg 380w, /web/20180928054325im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_1165-760x608.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180928054325/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_1165.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">American Academy of Achievement Awards Council member Justice Anthony M. Kennedy presents the Golden Plate Award to author Joan Didion at the 2006 International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles, California.</figcaption></figure><p class="inputtext">In late 2003, Didion’s daughter, Quintana, fell gravely ill. Shortly after returning from a visit to their comatose child in the hospital, her husband, John Gregory Dunne, suffered a fatal heart attack. Joan Didion wrote a searing account of her journey through grief in <i>The Year of Magical Thinking</i>. At the time she finished the book, her daughter appeared to be recovering from her illness, but by the time the book was published, Quintana had died. <i>The Year of Magical Thinking</i> was published to widespread acclaim and received the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2005. Didion continued to document her heart-wrenching loss in the 2011 memoir <i>Blue Nights</i>, which directly addressed the death of her daughter, among wide-ranging observations on childhood, motherhood, grief, mortality and the aging process.</p></body></html> <div class="clearfix"> </div> </article> </div> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane fade" id="profile" role="tabpanel"> <section class="clearfix"> <header class="editorial-article__header"> <figure class="text-xs-center"> <img class="inductee-badge" src="/web/20180928054325im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/inducted-badge@2x.png" alt="Inducted Badge" width="120" height="120"/> <figcaption class="serif-3 text-brand-primary"> Inducted in 2006 </figcaption> </figure> </header> <div class="row"> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar"> <dl class="clearfix m-b-0"> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Career</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> <div><a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.author">Author</a></div> <div><a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.novelist">Novelist</a></div> </dd> </div> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Birth</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> December 5, 1934 </dd> </div> </dl> </aside> <article class="col-md-8 editorial-article clearfix"> <p class="inputTextFirst">Since the 1960s, Joan Didion has been one of America’s finest novelists and most acute social observers. As an undergraduate at Berkeley, she won an essay contest sponsored by <i>Vogue </i>magazine and was offered a job in the New York office of the magazine’s publisher, Condé Nast. In New York, she met her husband, the novelist John Gregory Dunne.</p> <p class="inputText">The couple moved to Los Angeles, where they enjoyed a unique partnership as Hollywood’s most sought-after screenwriting team. The Hollywood scene and the California counterculture provide the backdrop for her novels of the 1970s: <i>Play It As it Lays</i> and <i>A Book of Common Prayer</i>. Her reflections on the turbulent era appeared in her bestselling essay collections, <i>Slouching Towards Bethlehem</i> and <i>The White Album</i>. She won a devoted audience and the profound admiration of her peers with her immaculate prose and penetrating eye for the revelatory detail. In the 1980s, she broadened her range with provocative explorations of hemispheric politics in the book-length essays <i>Miami</i> and <i>Salvador</i>. In <i>Where I Was From</i>, she explores her memories of childhood in the Sacramento delta, and how history and experience have altered her view of her native region.</p> <p class="inputText">Her memoirs, <i>The Year of Magical Thinking</i> and <i>Blue Nights</i>, unflinchingly describe her response to her husband’s sudden death and the fatal illness of their only child. From the depths of grief, Joan Didion has risen to the height of her powers and turned unbearable experience into transcendent art.</p> </article> </div> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane fade" id="interview" role="tabpanel"> <section class="clearfix"> <div class="col-md-12 interview-feature-video"> <figure> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180928054325if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/mdvQ7O_75Y8?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0&end=1831&version=3" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Didion-Joan-2006-Upscale-1-of-2.00_16_14_13.Still008-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Didion-Joan-2006-Upscale-1-of-2.00_16_14_13.Still008-760x428.jpg"></div> <div class="video-tag sans-4"> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> <div class="video-tag__text">Watch full interview</div> </div> </div> </figure> </div> <header class="col-md-12 text-xs-center m-b-2"> <i class="icon-icon_bio text-brand-primary"></i> </header> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar"> <h2 class="serif-3 achiever--biography-subtitle">National Book Award</h2> <div class="sans-2">Los Angeles, California</div> <div class="sans-2">June 3, 2006</div> </aside> <article class="editorial-article col-md-8">   <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p class="inputtextfirst"><b>You were working at <i>Vogue</i> magazine when you wrote your first novel. Did you always see yourself as a novelist?</b></p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180928054325if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZLlP1mXmaBY?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Didion-Joan-2006-Upscale-1-of-2.00_09_36_19.Still002-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Didion-Joan-2006-Upscale-1-of-2.00_09_36_19.Still002-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/keys-to-success/perseverance/">Perseverance</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="inputtext">I did see myself as a novelist, even though I was having trouble finishing this first novel. After it was published, it was only read by about ten people, but they happened to be ten people who gave it to ten other people and eventually — you know, not only was it not a commercial success, it wasn’t by any means, I don’t think, a success on its own terms. I didn’t know how to do it, and it ended up, because I didn’t know how to do it — I wanted to have a shattered narrative, but I didn’t have a clue how to do that, and so it was confusing. So the publisher pressed me to straighten out the chronology, so it became just a simple novel with a flashback, which wasn’t my intention at all. But anyway, enough people read it so that I was offered a contract for a second novel.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><figure id="attachment_3160" style="width: 1972px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-3160 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180928054325im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-002.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-3160 size-full lazyload" alt="Joan Didion, a young journalist in the 1960s. (Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)" width="1972" height="3000" data-sizes="(max-width: 1972px) 100vw, 1972px" data-srcset="/web/20180928054325im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-002.jpg 1972w, /web/20180928054325im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-002-250x380.jpg 250w, /web/20180928054325im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-002-500x760.jpg 500w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180928054325/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-002.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Joan Didion, a young journalist who perfected narrative storytelling and creative literary techniques, in the 1960s.</figcaption></figure><p><strong>What was the first novel called?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: Well, that was another thing. It was called <em>Run River</em>, but that was the publisher’s title. I said, “What does it mean?” He said, “It means life goes on,” and I said, “That’s not what the book is about.”</p> <p><strong>And what was the second book?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: The second was <em>Play It As It Lays</em>.</p> <p><strong>You’ve said that one of your intentions in that work was to write a novel that moved so fast that it would be over before you noticed it, so fast that it would scarcely exist on the page.</strong></p></body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180928054325if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/8DkuIptayY0?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0&end=84&version=3" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Didion-Joan-2006-Upscale-1-of-2.00_14_21_19.Still007-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Didion-Joan-2006-Upscale-1-of-2.00_14_21_19.Still007-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/keys-to-success/vision/">Vision</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="inputtext">Joan Didion: I just wanted to write a fast novel. You always have a vision of what kind of object a piece of fiction is going to be, or anything that you’re making. In that case, it was going to exist in a white space. It was going to exist between the paragraphs. Some of the chapters are only three or four lines long in that book, and I found a way to speed it up. I had started it — just because I didn’t know how else to start it — I started it with two or three characters (who) have short first-person statements, and then it goes into a “close third” for what appears to be the rest of the book, but as the book comes to an end and starts gaining momentum, you can pick up a lot of momentum by going back to this device from the beginning. This sounds so technical. You go back to that first person and shorter and shorter bursts, and it really gives you a lot of speed. So I was sort of thrilled with that.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><figure id="attachment_3161" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-3161 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180928054325im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-003.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-3161 size-full lazyload" alt="Joan Didion hits the L.A. freeways in a white Stingray in 1970, the year of her L.A. novel Play It As It Lays. (Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)" width="2280" height="1585" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20180928054325im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-003.jpg 2280w, /web/20180928054325im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-003-380x264.jpg 380w, /web/20180928054325im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-003-760x528.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180928054325/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-003.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Joan Didion hits the L.A. freeways in a white Stingray in 1970, the year of her L.A. novel <em>Play It As It Lays</em>. (Time Life)</figcaption></figure><p class="inputtext"><b>It was a fairly revolutionary structure, wasn’t it, to employ both third- and first-person narrators that way?</b></p> <p class="inputtext">Joan Didion: There is nothing you can’t do, it turns out.</p> <p class="inputtext"><b>Faulkner, in <i>As I Lay Dying</i>, used all these different first-person narrators, but you mixed that up even further by having first and third-person narrators. When you say you wanted the book to move fast, do you mean you want the reader to kind of gobble it up?</b></p> <p class="inputtext">Joan Didion: I always want everything read in one sitting. If they can’t read it in one sitting, you’re going to lose the rhythm of it. You’re going to lose the shape of it. I myself love to read those Victorian novels which go on and on, and you don’t read them in one sitting. You might read one over the course of a summer, but that isn’t what I want to write.</p> <p class="inputtext"><b>To this day, your books are fairly short, for the most part. Did a publisher ever give you any trouble about that?</b></p> <p class="inputtext">Joan Didion: No. Publishers now, it turns out, like short books. They didn’t used to like short books, but they are now convinced that that’s what people want.</p> <p class="inputtext"><b>I would imagine that it’s harder to write a short book because every word has to be so exact. Isn’t it easier to write long?</b></p> <p class="inputtext">Joan Didion: It might be for some people, but it wouldn’t be for me because I would lose interest as it kind of meandered on.</p> <figure id="attachment_3170" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-3170 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180928054325im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-012.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-3170 size-full lazyload" alt="Author John Gregory Dunne (1932 - 2003). He and Joan Didion were married for almost 40 years and collaborated on half a dozen screenplays. (© Michael Brennan/CORBIS)" width="2280" height="3466" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20180928054325im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-012.jpg 2280w, /web/20180928054325im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-012-250x380.jpg 250w, /web/20180928054325im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-012-500x760.jpg 500w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180928054325/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-012.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">John Gregory Dunne and his wife, Joan, were married for almost 40 years and collaborated on many screenplays.</figcaption></figure><p class="inputtext"><b>Could you tell us about how you met John Gregory Dunne and how you came to work together as a team?</b></p></body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180928054325if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/QvBkH326cKA?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0&end=105&version=3" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Didion-Joan-2006-Upscale-1-of-2.00_25_27_07.Still010-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Didion-Joan-2006-Upscale-1-of-2.00_25_27_07.Still010-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="inputtext">Joan Didion: We were friends for a long time before we decided to get married. I met him, he was working for <i>Time</i>. He was writing foreign news for <i>Time</i>, and he was just someone I liked and he made me laugh, and we would occasionally have lunch. We had friends in common. Then, for some reason — I don’t remember exactly why — but one night we had dinner. He said he was going to drive to Hartford the next day — he was from Hartford — did I want to come up, and I said sure. So I went up to Hartford, where his family lived, and I was so taken with this entire family that we started seeing each other in a more serious light. Really, at that time, he was, as I said, working for <i>Time</i>. I had published one novel. Neither one of us was very well established, and we went to California and started supporting ourselves by writing pieces. So that required one or the other of us — me to read his pieces, him to read my pieces. So we began to trust each other as first reader.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><p><strong>At what point did you and your husband first collaborate on something together?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: We didn’t collaborate until we wrote a screenplay, which I think was 1969. We did <em>Panic in Needle Park</em>. That’s all we ever collaborated on was screenplays.</p> <p><strong>Did that change the balance of how you worked together as editors?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: No, because it was a totally different activity.</p> <figure id="attachment_17263" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-17263 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180928054325im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_1091.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-17263 size-full lazyload" alt="Academy of Achievement Awards Council member and singer/activist Naomi Judd with Joan Didion at a reception prior to the Banquet of the Golden Plate during the 2006 International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles." width="2280" height="1824" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20180928054325im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_1091.jpg 2280w, /web/20180928054325im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_1091-380x304.jpg 380w, /web/20180928054325im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_1091-760x608.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180928054325/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_1091.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Academy of Achievement Awards Council member and singer/activist Naomi Judd with Joan Didion at a reception prior to the Banquet of the Golden Plate during the 2006 International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles, CA.</figcaption></figure><p><strong>And also because you were dealing with a studio? As in <em>A Star is Born</em>?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: You’re always dealing with somebody else. Yes.</p></body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180928054325if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/RdlQFGegvjY?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0&end=103&version=3" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Didion-Joan-2006-Upscale-1-of-2.00_11_01_25.Still004-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Didion-Joan-2006-Upscale-1-of-2.00_11_01_25.Still004-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="inputtext">We did <i>A Star Is Born</i> in 1972 or ‘3, yeah. That movie was actually John’s idea, because it was conceived as a rock-and-roll remake of <i>A Star Is Born</i>. The names that came to mind were not necessarily the names who were going to be in it, but it was just two faces. It was Carly Simon and James Taylor, and Warner Brothers picked this up right away because they had a lot of music, so they got the idea. They had Warner Brothers music. So it was very easy to set up a contract, and Warner Brothers set up so we could do the research. We went out on tour with bands that summer and then wrote the screenplay, which we had a lot of fun doing because it was totally research. It was fun. You’d find yourself in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, on a summer night with a really bad English metal band — you know, I mean just hopeless — and being really thrilled. Then it got to be heavy weather on that picture because the question of casting came up, and it turned out to be a lot of other personalities involved.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><figure id="attachment_17259" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-17259 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180928054325im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/wp-joan-didion-portrait.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-17259 size-full lazyload" alt="January 2007: Joan Didion in her New York City apartment. She has adapted her book The Year of Magical Thinking and turned it into a one-woman play starring Vanessa Redgrave. (Aristide Economopoulos/Corbis/Getty)" width="2280" height="2902" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20180928054325im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/wp-joan-didion-portrait.jpg 2280w, /web/20180928054325im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/wp-joan-didion-portrait-299x380.jpg 299w, /web/20180928054325im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/wp-joan-didion-portrait-597x760.jpg 597w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180928054325/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/wp-joan-didion-portrait.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">January 2007: Joan Didion in her New York City apartment. She has adapted her book <em>The Year of Magical Thinking</em> and transformed it into a one-woman play starring Vanessa Redgrave. (Aristide Economopoulos/Corbis/Getty)</figcaption></figure><p><strong>As writers, you don’t have that much control in movies.</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: You don’t on a movie, no. Never.</p> <p><strong>There are so many different aspects of California life in that era that come up in your writings. One that stands out is the Manson murders and how they jolted the town from its previous state of self-satisfaction or complacency. Could you tell us about that?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: What struck me about the Manson murders was how at the moment they happened, it seemed as if they were inevitable. It seemed as if we had been moving toward that moment for about a year.</p></body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180928054325if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/zF5cwPRuz80?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Didion-Joan-2006-Upscale-1-of-2.00_07_42_09.Still001-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Didion-Joan-2006-Upscale-1-of-2.00_07_42_09.Still001-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="inputtext">There were a lot of rumors about stuff, a lot of stuff going on around town, which you would kind of hear about on the edges of your mind and not want to know any more about. After the fact, it was kind of amazing to see how many lives had intersected with the Manson Family’s. I can remember we had a babysitter from Nayarit then, and she was very frightened on the night of the murders, or the afternoon when we heard about the murders, and I assured her, “Don’t worry. It has nothing to do with us,” but it did. It had to do with everyone. Then later I was interviewing Linda Kasabian, who was the wheel person — she wasn’t the “wheel man,” she was the “wheel person” — for the LaBianca murder. I can’t remember. Maybe also for Tate. But anyway, the night they did the LaBianca murder, they were driving along Franklin Avenue looking for a place to hit, and that’s where we lived, and we had French windows open, lights blazing all along on the street.</p> </div> </div>     <aside class="collapse" id="full-interview">    <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>Too close to home. Wasn’t there almost a sense that if this can happen to these people, anything can happen to anyone?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: Yes. There was a kind of conflicting sense that a lot of people had that they had somehow done it to themselves, that it had to do with too much sex, drugs and rock and roll.</p> <p><strong>So the swinging ’60s in Hollywood turned out to be a darker period than we like to remember?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: Yeah. Well, it was much darker than it was anyplace else, I think. It didn’t seem very dark in San Francisco, and in New York, it just kind of seemed like another version of New York. This was pretty specific.</p> <p><strong>We’d like to turn to your book <em>The Year of Magical Thinking</em>. When did you start writing it? Was it right after your husband’s death?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: No. John died in December 2003. I started writing it in October 2004. In between, Quintana had been in the hospital the whole time, so I really was not thinking about writing anything. Then I had to do a piece about the campaign that year. So I did the conventions. Then I realized I didn’t feel like doing the book I was under contract to do, and at some point, I had started making these notes. So I decided to do that. They weren’t notes for a book. They were just notes. Everybody who undergoes a death and finds themselves grieving is obsessed with — or maybe overly focused on — the idea that they can’t display self-pity, they have to be strong. Actually there are a lot of reasons why you are going to feel sorry for yourself, but that’s your first concern.</p> <p><strong>When did you first see yourself as a writer?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: When I was about five, because I started writing things down. I mean, I didn’t see myself as a professional writer, obviously. I had no concept of that. I didn’t see myself as a writer until after I had published.</p> <p><strong>Did you ever consider any other career path?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: At one point, I made a decision. When I was in my early 20s, I was writing a first novel at night. I was working for <em>Vogue</em> during the day, and I was bored with working for <em>Vogue</em>, and I was having trouble with the novel, and I was living in one dark room, and I was tired of living this way, and so I decided to become an oceanographer. So I went out to the Scripps Institute to try to find out how to implement this, and, of course, I learned that I was so lacking in basic science that I would have to go back to the seventh grade and start over. So I didn’t do that.</p> <p><strong>Why oceanography?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: I’ve always been fascinated with marine geography and how deep things are. I was spellbound by the tsunami, for example, I mean by the actual maps. There is just something about the unseen bottom of the sea that has always fascinated me, how deep is it.</p> <p><strong>So you decided you really didn’t want to go back to seventh-grade science?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: Right. I was not going. It was an unpractical plan.</p> <p><strong>Going back further, you were obviously drawn to the written word. What did you like to read as a kid?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: I just read everything I could get my hands on. I taught myself to read or my mother taught me. Who knows how I learned to read? It was before I went to school, so I would go to the library and just take things off the shelf. My mother had to sign a piece of paper saying I could take adult books.</p> <p><strong>That was nice of her. Are there particular books that you remember really enjoying?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: I read so ravenously that I would read through whole categories. I was crazy about reading biographies, because it told how you got from the helpless place I was to being Katherine Cornell, say.</p> <p><strong>A lot of the people we’ve interviewed for this project read biographies as children.</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: I think biographies are very urgent to children. I don’t find myself reading biography with the same urgency now.</p> <p><strong>Do you think it gave you a vision of what could be accomplished?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: It was a “how to.” How to do this.</p> <p><strong>What fiction did you like?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: I liked Hemingway. Those sentences just knocked me out. In fact, I taught myself to type by typing out the beginning of <em>Farewell to Arms</em> and a couple of short stories. I was just trying to learn how to type, but you get those rhythms in your head.</p> <p><strong>That’s interesting, because conciseness and the power of spare language is something that’s often associated with your work as well.</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: The thing about Hemingway sentences is that they are really loaded. Every comma and absence of a comma makes a huge difference, and it’s really been deliberated. This is also true of Norman Mailer. We sometimes don’t realize what a great stylist he is. One place you notice it is in <em>The Executioner’s Song</em>, where he was using a deliberately reduced language, and in another place you notice it is the changes he made in <em>The Deer Park</em>, which I think appear in <em>Advertisements For Myself</em>. He calls it totally rewriting it. Well, it was totally rewriting it in terms of its effect, but he was actually doing very little. He was breaking up the sentences.</p> <p><strong>It’s like a crucible, paring things down to their essence. Is that what appealed to you about these writers?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: Yes. It always seems to me that anything extra detracts from the point.</p> <p><strong>How did you do at school? You said you learned to read before you started school. Was school boring?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: It was boring. I didn’t go to school for a few years. I went to kindergarten, and I went to first grade, but then it was World War II, and my father was in the Army Air Corps. He didn’t leave the country, because he was over-age, but we were following him from place to place. So sometimes I went to school, and sometimes I didn’t, until about the fourth grade, I guess. So there were certain things I missed, like subtraction, and I still have trouble subtracting.</p> <p><strong>You moved on to multiplication before subtraction.</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: Shakily, yes.</p> <p><strong>In your book <em>Where I Was From</em>, you say at one point you lived with your mother and brother, all in one room, in the house of another family.</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: Yep, we did. There was no place to live during World War II around Army bases or airfields because suddenly there was this huge influx into the town, and there was just no place to live. I remember when we got to Fort Lewis, which was the first place we went, I can remember my mother going in every single day to the Army housing office, which was in town, to see if there was a room that day, and meanwhile, we were living in a hotel with a shared bathroom. It was in sort of a nice part of town. I don’t think it was a bad hotel, but it was a period of American life when hotels rooms didn’t necessarily come with bathrooms. So my mother, I remember her emptying an entire bottle of pine-scented disinfectant into the bathtub every time she gave us a bath.</p> <p><strong>You were living at one point with a fundamentalist preacher and his family who ate a lot of peach ice cream.</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: Sit on the porch and eat peach ice cream every night, yeah.</p> <p><strong>Each from their own quart carton.</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: Yes. They were big too. The daughters had a full set of <em>Gone With the Wind</em> paper dolls. I remember that. Not much else.</p> <p><strong>What effect do you think all that moving around and displacement had on your personality and on your sense of the importance of place?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: think it had an enormous influence. It made me feel perpetually like an outsider. It very rapidly punctured the idea that I was smarter than other people. I had been put ahead in California schools and then, because then I hadn’t gone to school for a couple of years, I was immediately put back. So I was kind of the dumb new girl in the class, and that had a certain effect. As far as my sense of place, I idealized Sacramento during those years. I was just yearning to get home.</p> <p><strong>How old were you when you stopped moving around?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: I was nine or ten when we stopped moving around. I think we came back to Sacramento in 1943 or early ’44. My father went to Detroit, and we didn’t go to Detroit with him. He went to Detroit to settle out defense contracts. They were trying to settle out the World War I contracts, so they could begin to settle out the World War II contracts. He was working on that, and then he came back when the war ended. But I think mother just couldn’t face looking for another room in Detroit.</p> <p><strong>So for at least a while there, she was a single mom?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: Yes. We lived with her mother.</p> <p><strong>Moving around as you did must have made it very difficult socially in school.</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: It did, and I was sort of a shy child to begin with. It didn’t improve that situation.</p> <p><strong>Were you able to connect with any teachers? Were there any teachers that recognized your gifts?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: No, not at that time. Not during that grammar school period. When I got back to Sacramento and sort of caught up, there were teachers who were very helpful. I remember a high school English teacher, and I remember another high school English teacher who wasn’t mine, but I knew her because she was an actress, and I was doing little theater. Sacramento had a repertory theater, and I was playing children because I was small. I was old enough to go downtown by myself. I could go to the rehearsals at night and still look like a tiny child. So that was a perfect set-up. She always had the lead in these plays that I would play the child in, and so I became very fond of her.</p> <p><strong>How did you land a job at <em>Vogue</em>?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: <em>Vogue</em> used to have a contest for college seniors called the <em>Prix de Paris</em>, and my mother had pointed it out to me when we were living in Colorado Springs during the war, and we were snowbound, and we were looking through <em>Vogue</em>. We had all these little entertainments, and she pointed it out to me as something I could win when I got old enough. So lo and behold, I entered it, and I did win it. So the prize at that time was a job.</p> <p><strong>A full-time job? Doing what?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: Well, for the first year, I think all I did was read old <em>Vogues</em>. I read through World War II in <em>Vogue</em>. It was kind of interesting and heartbreaking, because there was a piece in 1941, not long before December 7th, by a commentator of note named John Vandercook. It was about Pearl Harbor, and he kept talking about it as our one fortress in the vast Pacific. I sat there reading it with tears running down my face. And then I started writing merchandising copy and then promotional copy and then finally editorial copy. I was in the feature department.</p> <p><strong>Did you see yourself with a career in magazine writing at that point?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: I was doing pieces for other magazines too, and I knew I could do pieces for magazines, but I was trying to write a novel at night. I did not see a career for myself on the staff of a magazine, because I had no interest in the politics involved. I had no interest in dressing right and doing all of the things that you had to do if you were on a career track.</p> <p><strong>Did <em>Vogue</em> have a dress code?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: Dress code? You had to wear a hat in the office at that time. In fact, the nurse assured me that the reason I had a cold was because I wasn’t wearing my hat in the office. She said you lose 90 percent of your body heat in your head. There was a great metaphor in what she was saying. Of course, the reason I was sick and not happy is because I wasn’t wearing my hat in the office, I wasn’t playing the game.</p> <p><strong>When you were working at <em>Vogue</em> in the ’60s, did you already see yourself as an independent essayist?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: I was writing pieces that I just sent out. I really didn’t have any control over them.</p> <p><strong>You and your husband came out to Los Angeles, initially, for a period of months and ended up staying for many years.</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: We came out for six months. John had taken a six-month leave of absence from <em>Time</em>, and we stayed about 24 years.</p> <p><strong>What made you stay?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: We were crazy about it. We just loved it. I didn’t even notice that six months had slipped into a year. John must have noticed because he must have told them he was going to be gone another six months. It was a very liberating place to live after a period of living in New York. It was just easier to do everything, like take your clothes to the laundry.</p> <p><strong>Did you feel more at home out here in Los Angeles?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: Yeah, I did. And also there weren’t a lot of people talking to me at all times about their advances. We were totally in another climate.</p> <p><strong>Did he give up his job at <em>Time</em>?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: He left <em>Time</em> after either two or two-and-a-half years. He got a letter from the managing editor saying either come back or — or it might be time to quit. Basically, he had just been hanging on, sort of stringing this along because he wanted to stay on the health plan, but we converted the health plan and moved on.</p> <p><strong>What finally prompted you to leave Los Angeles?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: I don’t know. John was between books. He was sort of restless. Our daughter was at Barnard. We were living in Brentwood Park in a house we had moved to when she was in the seventh grade, so she could go to school in town. Suddenly it seemed as if there was no particular reason to stay. We had a small apartment in New York, and we were spending a lot of time in this small apartment, and it seemed kind of silly to be supporting this house and dog and growing lemons which got FedExed to us in New York and meanwhile living uncomfortably in this small apartment. It wasn’t adding up.</p> <p><strong>Did it feel right to go back to New York?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: No. I was quite desolate for about a year. We moved in April of ’88, and in June, I had to come back to Los Angeles. I was doing a piece on the campaign, and I came out on Jesse Jackson’s plane just before the California primary in June. The plane landed in LAX, and we got on a bus to go to a rally in South Central, and I was just in tears the whole way. I just said I couldn’t even deal with the rally because it was so beautiful. Los Angeles was so beautiful, and I had given it up. It took me a while to get sorted out. I’ve still got boxes that haven’t been unpacked.</p> <p><strong>Returning to your book <em>The Year of Magical Thinking</em>, you’ve written that in our society, grief is sort of frowned upon.</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: Right. It’s a sense that you get over it, that it’s a progressive thing. You have this few days before the funeral, and then it’s time to move on, start the healing process.</p> <p><strong>It doesn’t work that way, does it?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: No.</p> <p><strong>Sometimes, a year after someone’s death is when it really kicks in.</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: Sometimes it kicks in at a year, or at odd times. It keeps kicking in is what I’ve found, for no particular reason. Suddenly, it will hit you one day when you thought you were perfectly beyond it.</p> <p><strong>Had you seen yourself as someone who, generally speaking, did not indulge in magical thinking?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: Right. I had. But in fact, I realized later that I had thought magically all along, because John had a heart condition which I persisted in thinking had been fixed, even though he was not under that misapprehension.</p> <p><strong>So, from comments he made, you think he knew that this would be how he would go?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: Yes, a sense. It’s hard to take seriously the idea that you can’t control something. There’s nowhere to go with that idea. It’s not useful. So I tended to reject it.</p> <p><strong>Maybe that’s why people tend to blame themselves in some way for the death of a parent, for instance. If they had only come to the hospital an hour earlier.</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: Yeah. All children think that. If I had eaten, if I had not opened the window when they told me not to. Most of us have felt that, all children do.</p> <p><strong>Sometimes it’s easier to feel guilt than to feel lack of control. Isn’t it?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: Yeah. It’s a grandiose reaction. You are claiming you could really control this, but you failed.</p> <p><strong>What did writing the book do for you?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: It organized it. It gave it a shape. It showed me what I thought about it. It enabled me to grieve, actually.</p> <p><strong>Was it very difficult to write this book, especially, without his advice, or his editorial eye?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: It was less difficult than the first piece I did after he died, which was on the campaign that year. That was very difficult. This book, for some reason, I thought it was as if he <em>had</em> read it because he was so much a part of it.</p> <p><strong>Do you feel that? Do you feel a sense that John as an editor is still with you?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: I certainly did with that book. I don’t know about all the time.</p> <p><strong>It sounds like, for you, writing is, in large part, editing.</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: It happens in the course of writing. I can’t go on if it’s not pretty much the way that it should be. Towards the beginning of a book, I will go back to page one every day and rewrite. I’ll start out the day with some marked-up pages that I have marked up the night before, and by the time you get to page, maybe, 270, you are not going back to page 1 necessarily anymore, but you’re going back to page 158 and starting over from there.</p> <p><strong>When one reads your prose, it feels like you just sat down and wrote it that way the first time, because it’s so spare, and because the language is so powerful, but from what you are describing, there are actually a number of drafts.</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: Endless drafts.</p> <p><strong>Has the computer helped you a lot?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: I didn’t like it when I first began using it. Where it’s helped me a lot is in nonfiction which is a kind of different process. You’ve got research, you’ve got your notes, You can block out what you want to work on for the next 10 pages and put it in another file, and then you can kind of carve it into shape. When you’re writing fiction, you don’t have notes necessarily. You don’t carve it, it’s not like a piece of sculpture, it’s more like water color.</p> <p><strong>When you’re writing fiction, do you know how it’s going to turn out?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: Sometimes I do. I don’t know how it’s going to get there, but I know how it’s going to end. For example, in <em>The Last Thing He Wanted</em>, which was my last novel, I knew that the end required a double set-up, but I didn’t know what the set-up would be until I got there.</p> <p><strong>So what did you end up doing there?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: This book had so complicated a plot that I had to write it in about three months in order to keep the plot in my mind. It’s too complicated to explain, but basically she gets set up, and he gets set up. The way she is set up is she is supposed to have killed him. She apparently kills him. Now, actually, she doesn’t kill him. Someone else kills him. A sniper kills him, but she is targeted as the alleged assassin because some Sandinista literature will be discovered in her hotel room. It was a double set-up.</p> <p><strong>Do you carve out certain hours of the day that are devoted to writing, or is it sort of as the mood strikes you?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: I work every day. Sometimes I don’t accomplish anything every day, but if I don’t work every day, I get depressed and get afraid to start again. So I do something every day.</p> <p><strong>Seven days a week?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: Yeah. Obviously, today I’m not doing something, and tomorrow I’m not doing something because I’m flying. So it will take me about three days this week to get to working again.</p> <p><strong>So you feel like if you stay away from it for very long, you won’t feel confident enough to go back. Even today?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: Even more so now, because I know I’ll lose the impetus to do it.</p> <p><strong>We interviewed John Updike, and he said when he sees his books in the bookstore, he always feels like he got away with something. It’s astonishing that someone of his stature would still have that insecurity.</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: It’s not an occupation that attracts really secure people. I’ve never really examined it, but I suppose it’s a kind of secret activity which you can undertake on your own. In fact, you need to undertake it on your own. It doesn’t increase your socialization.</p> <p><strong>You have said that you write to find out how you feel.</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: And what you think.</p> <p><strong>When commentators look at your work, they sometimes group you with the so-called “New Journalists” — Tom Wolfe and so on. In your nonfiction, you’ve always been present as a character, as a protagonist in a way. </strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: I had a strong feeling that it was necessary, that there was no reason to trust the reporter unless you knew where the reporter was. And if you didn’t know where the reporter was standing, then I really objected to the notion of objectivity, <em>soi disant</em> objectivity, because it didn’t seem to me very real. The reporter is always standing someplace. I don’t mean that he is biased, you just want to know where he’s standing, so that you can triangulate different reports from different people against each other.</p> <p><strong>It’s paradoxical. You’ve described yourself as being soft-spoken, yet in your writing, you are very outspoken.</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: That’s another sneaky part of it. It’s a place where I can be someone other than my exact face to the world.</p> <p><strong>So there’s a difference between how you are in the world and your writing?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: I think there is less of a difference now, but there certainly <em>was</em> a difference.</p> <p><strong>It was very generous of you to share your experience with grief and magical thinking, because it’s something that most people don’t admit to.</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: The whole thing was such a surprise to me, I felt like, “You’ve got to tell somebody this.” It was a didactic impulse.</p> <p><strong>Since writing <em>The Year of Magical Thinking</em>, what lies ahead for you?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: Well, I have just done a theatrical adaptation of that book. It won’t be produced until the spring of 2007.</p> <p><strong>You have a very great actress for the play, Vanessa Redgrave. Was she your choice?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: She was all of our choices. I mean, the three of us: me, the producer, and the director. There was no disagreement.</p> <p><strong>Once again, you’re revealing a very intimate part of yourself. Is that difficult, or did it feel like the right thing to do?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: It never feels difficult to me. When you write, you’re always revealing a difficult part of yourself. It may not be a part of yourself that looks as difficult — there are parts that look more difficult — but in fact, they are all difficult, and you get kind of used to doing that. It is sort of the nature of the thing.</p> <p><strong>Way back in <em>Slouching Towards Bethlehem</em>, you wrote that a writer is always selling somebody out.</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: I meant that in a different way than most people read it. If you are doing a piece about somebody, even if you admire them tremendously and express that in the piece, express that admiration, if they’re not used to being written about — this doesn’t hold true of public figures — but if they’re civilians, they’re not used to seeing themselves through other people’s eyes. So you will always see them from a slightly different angle than they see themselves, and they feel a little betrayed by that.</p> <p><strong>Was there ever any self-consciousness on your part with regard to family? You describe your mother as being very opinionated and having some very set views. In light of your own outspokenness as an author, was that ever difficult?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: Not as an author, because they weren’t a part of that, but I used to have stage fright when I spoke in public. Sometimes it would come, and sometimes it wouldn’t come, and only about two years ago, I suddenly realized that the only two instances when I had had such stage fright that I had been throwing up all day before the event, both of them involved the presence of both of my parents.</p> <p><strong>You’ve written so much about dark chapters in our country’s history. What is the state of the American Dream today, as you see it?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: I don’t know. I hardly ever think about it. I don’t really think in those abstract terms.</p> <p><strong>Is democracy viable, do you think, the way the government operates?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: It’s certainly not working the way it’s being operated right now. It’s being dismantled. Not only democracy, but the entire apparatus. Partly, that’s ideological, and partly I think it was just a way of some people enriching themselves.</p> <p><strong>The title of your book <em>Political Fictions</em> says a great deal, but you’ve written about the sense of received wisdom, that people kind of swallow what they want to swallow. Do you think it’s possible for a U.S. leader to tell the truth? Do people want to hear it?</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: I don’t know. Isn’t it odd? It’s hard to know whether it matters to large numbers of Americans. That’s the really discouraging thing. If we could quiet down and maybe not communicate for a period of time, everything might cool off and people wouldn’t jump into these reflexive polarized positions.</p> <p><strong>Thank you for the interview. We really appreciate it.</strong></p> <p>Joan Didion: Thank you.</p> </div>  </aside>  <div class="read-more__toggle collapsed" data-toggle="collapse" data-target="#full-interview"><a href="#" class="sans-4 btn">Read full interview</a></div> </article> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane fade" id="gallery" role="tabpanel"> <section class="isotope-wrapper">  <header class="toolbar toolbar--gallery bg-white clearfix"> <div class="col-md-6"> <div class="serif-4">Joan Didion Gallery</div> </div> <div class="col-md-6 text-md-right isotope-toolbar"> <ul class="list-unstyled list-inline m-b-0 text-brand-primary sans-4"> <li class="list-inline-item" data-filter=".photo"><i class="icon-icon_camera"></i>17 photos</li> </ul> </div> </header> <div class="isotope-gallery isotope-box single-achiever__gallery clearfix"> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.52" title="Author John Gregory Dunne (1932 - 2003). He and Joan Didion were married for almost 40 years and collaborated on half a dozen screenplays. (© Michael Brennan/CORBIS)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - Author John Gregory Dunne (1932 - 2003). He and Joan Didion were married for almost 40 years and collaborated on half a dozen screenplays. (© Michael Brennan/CORBIS)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-012.jpg" data-image-caption="Author John Gregory Dunne (1932-2003). He and Joan Didion were married for almost 40 years and collaborated on half a dozen screenplays. (© Michael Brennan/CORBIS)" data-image-copyright="Writer John Gregory Dunne" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-012-250x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-012-500x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66842105263158" title="n the era of the New Journalism, Joan Didion combined close observation with emotional detachment. (© Ted Streshinsky/CORBIS)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - n the era of the New Journalism, Joan Didion combined close observation with emotional detachment. (© Ted Streshinsky/CORBIS)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-011.jpg" data-image-caption="In the era of New Journalism, Joan Didion combined close observation with emotional detachment. (© Ted Streshinsky/CORBIS)" data-image-copyright="Writer Didion At Hippie Happening" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-011-380x254.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-011-760x508.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.501976284585" title="Joan Didion in San Francisco, conducting research for her non-fiction book, Slouching Towards Bethlehem. (© Ted Streshinsky/CORBIS)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - Joan Didion in San Francisco, conducting research for her non-fiction book, Slouching Towards Bethlehem. (© Ted Streshinsky/CORBIS)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-010.jpg" data-image-caption="Joan Didion in San Francisco, conducting research for her nonfiction book "Slouching Towards Bethlehem." (© Ted Streshinsky/CORBIS)" data-image-copyright="Portrait of Joan Didion" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-010-253x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-010-506x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-ET-06Academy_943-DIDION-2006-SUMMIT-LOS-ANGELES.jpg" data-image-caption="Cultural icon, novelist and essayist Joan Didion addresses Academy delegates at a symposium during the American Academy of Achievement's 2006 International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles." data-image-copyright="wp-ET-06Academy_943-DIDION-2006-SUMMIT-LOS-ANGELES" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-ET-06Academy_943-DIDION-2006-SUMMIT-LOS-ANGELES-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-ET-06Academy_943-DIDION-2006-SUMMIT-LOS-ANGELES-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4785992217899" title="Joan Didion investigates a " happening" at san francisco's golden gate park in 1967. (© ted streshinsky corbis)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - Joan Didion investigates a " happening" at san francisco's golden gate park in 1967. (© ted streshinsky corbis)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-009.jpg" data-image-caption="Joan Didion investigates a "Happening" at San Francisco's Golden Gate Park in 1967. (© Ted Streshinsky/CORBIS)" data-image-copyright="Writer Didion At Hippie Happening" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-009-257x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-009-514x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.5139442231076" title="Joan Didion covered the rise and fall of the '60s counterculture in her books Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album. (© Ted Streshinsky/CORBIS)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - Joan Didion covered the rise and fall of the '60s counterculture in her books Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album. (© Ted Streshinsky/CORBIS)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-008.jpg" data-image-caption="Joan Didion covered the rise and fall of the '60s counterculture in her books "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" and "The White Album." (© Ted Streshinsky/CORBIS)" data-image-copyright="Joan Didion With Hippie at Concert" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-008-251x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-008-502x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.78947368421053" title="Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, partners in life and literature, at home in New York City, 2000. (© Richard Schulman/CORBIS)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, partners in life and literature, at home in New York City, 2000. (© Richard Schulman/CORBIS)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-007.jpg" data-image-caption="Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, partners in life and literature, at home in New York City, 2000. (© Richard Schulman/CORBIS)" data-image-copyright="Writers Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-007-380x300.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-007-760x600.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.3148788927336" title="Author Joan Didion in the year 2000. (© Christopher Felver/CORBIS)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - Author Joan Didion in the year 2000. (© Christopher Felver/CORBIS)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-006.jpg" data-image-caption="Author Joan Didion in the year 2000. (© Christopher Felver/CORBIS)" data-image-copyright="Writer Joan Didion" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-006-289x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-006-578x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.67236842105263" title="Joan Didion in her New York apartment, 2003. (© Neville Elder/Corbis)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - Joan Didion in her New York apartment, 2003. (© Neville Elder/Corbis)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-005.jpg" data-image-caption="Joan Didion in her New York apartment, 2003. (© Neville Elder/Corbis)" data-image-copyright="Portrait of Joan Didion" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-005-380x256.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-005-760x511.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.67236842105263" title="At home in Malibu, Quintana Roo Dunne and her parents, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion, in 1976. (Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - At home in Malibu, Quintana Roo Dunne and her parents, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion, in 1976. (Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-004.jpg" data-image-caption="At home in Malibu, Quintana Roo Dunne and her parents, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion, in 1976. (Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="Dunne, Didion, &amp; Daughter" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-004-380x256.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-004-760x511.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.69473684210526" title="Joan Didion hits the L.A. freeways in a white Stingray in 1970, the year of her L.A. novel Play It As It Lays. (Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - Joan Didion hits the L.A. freeways in a white Stingray in 1970, the year of her L.A. novel Play It As It Lays. (Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-003.jpg" data-image-caption="Joan Didion hits the L.A. freeways in a white Stingray in 1970, the year of her L.A. novel "Play It As It Lays." (Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="Joan Didion" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-003-380x264.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-003-760x528.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.52" title="Joan Didion, a young journalist in the 1960s. (Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - Joan Didion, a young journalist in the 1960s. (Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-002.jpg" data-image-caption="Joan Didion, a young journalist in the 1960s. (Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="Joan Didion" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-002-250x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/did0-002-500x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.2730318257956" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/wp-joan-didion-portrait.jpg" data-image-caption="January 2007: Joan Didion in her New York City apartment. She has adapted her book "The Year of Magical Thinking" and turned it into a one-woman play starring Vanessa Redgrave. (Aristide Economopoulos/Corbis/Getty)" data-image-copyright="USA - American Writer Joan Didion" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/wp-joan-didion-portrait-299x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/wp-joan-didion-portrait-597x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_942.jpg" data-image-caption="Award-winning novelist Joan Didion spoke movingly of her odyssey from the heights of success as a novelist and screenwriter to the depths of tragedy and personal loss so vividly expressed in her latest book "The Year of Magical Thinking" during a symposium session at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) during the 2006 International Achievement Summit. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="wp-06Academy_942" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_942-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_942-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.8" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_1091.jpg" data-image-caption="Naomi Judd and Joan Didion at a reception before the Banquet of the Golden Plate ceremonies during the 2006 International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="wp-06Academy_1091" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_1091-380x304.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_1091-760x608.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.8" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_1165.jpg" data-image-caption="Justice Anthony Kennedy presents the Golden Plate Award to Joan Didion at the 2006 International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="wp-06Academy_1165" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_1165-380x304.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_1165-760x608.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.0066225165563" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-GettyImages-515055162.jpg" data-image-caption="October 1972: American author and journalist Joan Didion at home in Malibu, California. (Photo by Henry Clarke/Conde Nast via Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="Portrait Of Joan Didion" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-GettyImages-515055162-378x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-GettyImages-515055162-755x760.jpg"></div>  </figure>    </div> </section> </div> </div> <div class="container"> <footer class="editorial-article__footer col-md-8 col-md-offset-4"> <div class="editorial-article__next-link sans-3"> <a href="#"><strong>What's next:</strong> <span class="editorial-article__next-link-title">profile</span></a> </div> <ul class="social list-unstyled list-inline ssk-group m-b-0"> <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-facebook" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Shared Achiever on Facebook"><i class="icon-icon_facebook-circle"></i></a></li> <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-twitter" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" 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Dell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ron-dennis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ron Dennis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/joan-didion/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Joan Didion</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/david-herbert-donald-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David Herbert Donald, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/david-doubilet/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David Doubilet</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/rita-dove/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Rita Dove</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sylvia-earle/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sylvia Earle, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/elbaradei/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mohamed ElBaradei</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/gertrude-elion/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Gertrude B. Elion, M.Sc.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/larry-j-ellison/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Larry J. Ellison</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/nora-ephron/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nora Ephron</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/julius-erving/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Julius Erving</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/tony-fadell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Tony Fadell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/paul-farmer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Paul Farmer, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/suzanne-farrell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Suzanne Farrell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sally-field/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sally Field</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lord-norman-foster/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lord Norman Foster</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/aretha-franklin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Aretha Franklin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/milton-friedman-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Milton Friedman, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carlos-fuentes/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Fuentes</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/athol-fugard/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Athol Fugard</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ernest-j-gaines/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ernest J. Gaines</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/william-h-gates-iii/"><span class="achiever-list-name">William H. Gates III</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frank-gehry/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank O. Gehry</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/murray-gell-mann-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Murray Gell-Mann, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carlos-ghosn/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Ghosn</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/vince-gill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Vince Gill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ruth-bader-ginsburg/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ruth Bader Ginsburg</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/louise-gluck/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Louise Glück</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/whoopi-goldberg/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Whoopi Goldberg</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jane-goodall/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Jane Goodall</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/doris-kearns-goodwin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Doris Kearns Goodwin, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/mikhail-s-gorbachev/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mikhail S. Gorbachev</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/nadine-gordimer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nadine Gordimer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/stephen-jay-gould/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen Jay Gould, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carol-greider-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carol Greider, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-grisham/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Grisham</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/dorothy-hamill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dorothy Hamill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/demis-hassabis-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Demis Hassabis, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lauryn-hill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lauryn Hill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sir-edmund-hillary/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Edmund Hillary</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/reid-hoffman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Reid Hoffman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/khaled-hosseini/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Khaled Hosseini, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ron-howard/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ron Howard</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-hume/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Hume</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/louis-ignarro-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Louis Ignarro, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/daniel-inouye/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Daniel K. Inouye</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jeremy-irons/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jeremy Irons</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-irving/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Irving</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/kazuo-ishiguro/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Kazuo Ishiguro</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sir-peter-jackson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Peter Jackson</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/donald-c-johanson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Donald C. Johanson, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frank-m-johnson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank M. Johnson, Jr.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/philip-johnson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Philip C. Johnson</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/chuck-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Chuck Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/james-earl-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James Earl Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/quincy-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Quincy Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/beverly-joubert/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Beverly Joubert</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/dereck-joubert/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dereck Joubert</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/paul-kagame/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Paul Kagame</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/thomas-keller-2/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Thomas Keller</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/anthony-m-kennedy/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony M. Kennedy</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/b-b-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">B.B. King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carole-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carole King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/coretta-scott-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Coretta Scott King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/henry-kissinger-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Henry A. Kissinger, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/willem-j-kolff/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Willem J. Kolff, M.D., Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/wendy-kopp/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wendy Kopp</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/henry-r-kravis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Henry R. Kravis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/nicholas-d-kristof/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nicholas D. Kristof</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/mike-krzyzewski/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mike Krzyzewski</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ray-kurzwell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ray Kurzweil</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/eric-lander-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Eric S. Lander, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/robert-s-langer-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert S. Langer, Sc.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/richard-leakey/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Richard E. Leakey</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/leon-lederman-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leon Lederman, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/robert-lefkowitz-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert J. Lefkowitz, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/congressman-john-r-lewis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Congressman John R. Lewis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/maya-lin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Maya Lin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/george-lucas/"><span class="achiever-list-name">George Lucas</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/norman-mailer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Norman Mailer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/peyton-manning/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peyton Manning</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/wynton-marsalis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wynton Marsalis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-c-mather-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John C. Mather, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/johnny-mathis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Johnny Mathis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ernst-mayr-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ernst Mayr, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/willie-mays/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Willie Mays</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frank-mccourt/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank McCourt</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/david-mccullough/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David McCullough</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/audra-mcdonald/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Audra McDonald</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/admiral-william-h-mcraven/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Admiral William H. McRaven, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/w-s-merwin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">W. S. Merwin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/james-a-michener/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James A. Michener</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/marvin-minsky-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Marvin Minsky, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/mario-j-molina-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mario J. Molina, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/n-scott-momaday-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">N. Scott Momaday, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/story-musgrave/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Story Musgrave, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ralph-nader/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ralph Nader</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/peggy-noonan/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peggy Noonan</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jessye-norman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jessye Norman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/tommy-norris/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lt. Thomas R. Norris, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/joyce-carol-oates/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Joyce Carol Oates</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/pierre-omidyar/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Pierre Omidyar</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jimmy-page/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jimmy Page</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/larry-page/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Larry Page</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/arnold-palmer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Arnold Palmer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/leon-panetta/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leon Panetta</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/rosa-parks/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Rosa Parks</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/suzan-lori-parks/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Suzan-Lori Parks</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/linus-pauling/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Linus C. Pauling, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/shimon-peres/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Shimon Peres</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/itzhak-perlman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Itzhak Perlman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/general-david-petraeus/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General David H. Petraeus, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sidney-poitier/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sidney Poitier</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/general-colin-l-powell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General Colin L. Powell, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/harold-prince/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Harold Prince</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/venki-ramakrishnan-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Venki Ramakrishnan, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lord-martin-rees/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lord Martin Rees</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lloyd-richards/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lloyd Richards</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180928054325/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sally-ride-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sally K. 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