“Didion was one of the boys, clearly, in the sense that men had noticed her writing and wanted to publish her. But she also couldn’t quite fit into their regime.”

On Joan Didion.

On Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, screenwriters.

Didion’s genius is that she understands what it is to be a girl on the cusp of womanhood, in that fragile, fleeting, emotional time that she explored in a way no one else ever has. Didion is, depending on the reader’s point of view, either an extraordinarily introspective or an extraordinarily narcissistic writer. As such, she is very much like her readers themselves.