Well written biography of the life of Joan Didion. There was so much I learned that I had not known before. I will recommend this to all fans of Joan Didion. Won via Goodreads Giveaway.

What do you call a Frankenstein's-monster patchwork of quotations from an array of other people's books and magazine articles, stitched together with appallingly bad, faux-novelistic prose? Well, if you're Tracy Daugherty, you call it "a literary biography." The few individuals the author managed to interview first-hand for this book include such critically important sources as the people who bought Didion's Brentwood house (they found it somewhat rundown) and a "former [movie] studio executive"...

I originally passed on reading this, because I was, after so many years, kind of Joaned-out, and also people said there was nothing much new in it, which is indeed true -- if you've made a habit of deeply reading and knowing what there is to know about Joan Didion, there are very few fresh revelations here.But I did read the book, and it took forever. (Kind of funny how a book about a writer known for her spareness and conciseness can manage to weigh in at 500-plus pages -- and very dense pages

Staggeringly bad, like something you'd read in Vanity Fair. Daugherty didn't have Didion's cooperation - but Didion is a singular stylist who has written plenty of memoirs, and Daugherty was able to consult her drafts in the Bancroft Library. That should have been enough to produce something more substantial than this. Daugherty is not resourceful or imaginative in his choice of filler (if you find Dominick Dunne's spat with Frank Sinatra and taste in bachelor pad decor matters of compelling int...

I'm not 100% sure why I read this book, which is a fair description of how I felt while I was reading it. I ploughed through it because I borrowed it from the library, and there were holds on it. Maybe I would have enjoyed it more if I had picked it up when the mood struck me.As many reviewers have pointed out, Joan Didion did not participate in the writing of this biography, nor did any of her close friends or family. The biographer's materials are chiefly Joan Didion's published writing and in...

Trying very hard to get a review written.

The author Joan Didion has always seemed to be fragile. Physically fragile, emotionally fragile, and, probably, literary fragile. Her writing seemed to careen between "precious" and "tough" - often in the same book or magazine article. Married to the author John Gregory Dunne, they were the parents of an adopted daughter they rather fancifully named "Quintana Roo", after their favorite place in Mexico. Didion lost both husband and daughter in the mid-2000's and wrote about the searing experience...

I couldn't finish this book. It was just way too much information for me. I wanted more of Didion's life and less about the technicalities of writing.

While I was reading this biography of Joan Didion, Donald Trump spoke at a news conference after the recent election and complained that his poll observers at one location were required to stand so far away from the counting process that they had to use binoculars to monitor it. And so I imagined Tracy Daugherty researching Didion at a distance because she chose not to cooperate in his project. The story of her life is here, nevertheless, all the moments of the life pointed out minus some of the...

This book made me buy a giant pair of sunglasses and a vintage dress from Hawaii. And then I got a migraine. The transformation is complete. Plus, JOAN DIDION WEARS UGGS--I feel vindicated.This book exposed some of my expectations of the biography genre. I expect interesting details about a person's life, insight into their work and public persona, and historical background of their life and times woven together with it all. I would say that this book delivered for the most part, but also had so...

Joan's worldview: The Cosmos of Me The molecular composition of the universeand on earth every mountain and forest too the granular deserts and ocean shores stretching unexceptional, all exist only as I allow them to be I am outside the common restraints of mortal menGod is locked away in a Book the gaping sky is merely constructed to serve as one, two, three seconds of optical diversion the sun I permit its existence in order to frame me out in silhouette. Mourn myself only, always, forget Nero...

Every hour devoted to this write-around was another hour stolen from the time I have left to revisit all the writing that made me a Didion acolyte in the first place.

I cannot say enough compliments about this biography by Tracy Daugherty. It is Outstanding and should be a model for other biographers. Joan is a product of the various eras and places where she has lived. Tracy includes all of that covering events of sixties and seventies and current and life in NYC and in Los Angeles. He tells her story with objectivity and it is stark. She was a mixed bag and mostly admired. It is also about her husbands family - the Dunnes and her daughter with a bizarre nam...

2.5 Skip the bio. Read all of Joan's work instead. You will end up with the same amount of info about Ms. Didion and skip spending weeks reading 500+ pages of great quotes from her work intermixed with filler.

I stopped reading this about 400 pages in. I wanted this to be something that it wasn't- a biography written by Walter Isaacson with Didion's cooperation. Instead, this was a biography not authorized by Didion and a regurgitation of quotes from her novels, interviews, etc. Don't waste your time.

New RepublicGod, this looks good.

Early on, Daugherty notes that this will be a literary biography. (Also mentions he doesn’t do “dishy” biographies.) I’m fine with both those things. But–reader be warned–he wasn’t kidding about the literary part. While a very fine biography, it’s clear that the distance from the subject hurt the end result. Daugherty interprets and theorizes about her work vs. her life almost frantically from afar, perhaps making up for the fact that Didion (and her close friends, supposedly) did not cooperate

Not a reader of Didion, I was nonetheless taken with this book, which is a history of California, of Hollywood, of political and international events. It's a look at how one makes a living as a writer. It is an inside look at publishing - books, journalism, screenplays. I was reminded of news events from the late 1950's onward and I got behind-the-scenes looks at how the news is told to us.

A fine biography of one of my favourite writers. Very good on both the literary world of early 1960s NYC and the landscape and culture of two very different Californias--- the "Inland Empire" around Sacramento and the Hollywood of the 1970s. If I have a criticism, it's only that Daughtery needed to spend more time on Didion's developing prose style and on a "literary" analysis of her novels.

I had some problems with this book. For one thing it is very long, too long I believe. For another, though the author has obviously made a deep dive into the life and times of Joan Didion, it is also obvious that he, in some way, wanted to become Didion, for he emulates her style of writing throughout. Didion is known for her starkly minimalist prose and for the repetition of words and phrases to emphasize the disordered and alienated society she lived in. She became a well-known and revered soc...