Research Catalog

Title

Joan Didion : what she means / Hilton Als.

Author

Als, Hilton

Publication

• New York, NY : DelMonico Books ; Los Angeles, CA : Hammer Museum, 2022
• ©2022

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

• Didion, Joan
• Philbin, Ann
• Butler, Cornelia H.
• Hammer Museum, host institution, issuing body.

Description

127 pages : illustrations (some color), facsimiles, maps (some color), portraits; 33 cm

Summary

In 'Joan Didion: What She Means', the writer and curator Hilton Als creates a mosaic that explores Didion's life and work and the feeling each generates in her admirers, detractors and critics. Arranged chronologically, the book highlights Didion's fascination with the two coasts that made her. As a Westerner transplanted to New York, Didion was able to look at her native land, its mores and fixed rules of behavior, with the loving and critical eyes of a daughter who got out and went back. (Didion and her late husband moved from New York to Los Angeles in 1964, where they worked as highly successful screenwriters, producing scripts for 1971's The Panic in Needle Park and 1976's A Star Is Born, among other works, before returning to New York 20 years later.) And from her New York perch, Didion was able to observe the political scene more closely, writing trenchant pieces about Clinton, El Salvador and most searingly the Central Park Five. The book includes 50 artists ranging from Brice Marden and Ed Ruscha to Betye Saar, Vija Clemins and many others, with works in all mediums including painting, ephemera, photography, sculpture, video and film. Also included are three previously uncollected texts by Didion: "In Praise of Unhung Wreaths and Love" (1969); a much-excerpted 1975 commencement address at UC Riverside; and "The Year of Hoping for Stage Magic" (2007).

Alternative Title

What she means

Subject

• Didion, Joan > Exhibitions
• Didion, Joan 1934-2021
• Didion, Joan > Interviews
• Biography as a literary form > Exhibitions
• Women authors, American > 20th century > Exhibitions
• Women authors, American > 21st century > Exhibitions
• Screenwriters > United States > Exhibitions
• Romanciers américains > 20e siècle > Entretiens
• BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY > Literary
• LITERARY COLLECTIONS > General
• LITERARY CRITICISM > General
• Novelists, American > 20th century > Interviews

Genre/Form

• Biographies.
• Autobiographies.

Note

• Published on the occasion of an exhibition at the Hammer Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California, October 9, 2022-January 8, 2023.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references.

Contents

Director's foreword / Ann Philbin -- Acknowledgments / Connie Butler and Hilton Als -- Would it have been better to turn away? Joan Didion and the art of observation / Hilton Als -- Holy water : Sacramento-Berkeley, 1934-56 ; Plates -- Goodbye to all that : New York, 1956-63 ; Plates -- In praise of unhung wreaths and love / Joan Didion -- The white album : California, 1964-88 ; Plates -- Planting a tree is not a way of life / Joan Didion -- Sentimental journeys : New York-Miami-Honolulu-San Salvador, 1988-2021 ; Plates -- The year of hoping for stage magic / Joan Didion.

Call Number

PS3554.I33

ISBN

• 9781636810577
• 1636810578

LCCN

2022939223

OCLC

• 1344292758
• on1344292758
• SCSB-14406738

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries