Joan Didion's name recognition as an American writer is such that her frequent byline in the New York Review of Books reads simply “Joan Didion's most recent book is Slouching Toward Bethlehem (1968), a study in the new journalism of the 1960s, remains the single best “period piece” on the California counterculture of that era. Play It As It Lays, her second novel, set in 1960s Los Angeles, was nominated for a National Book Award in 1971. Didion has written five other novels and her essays have been collected four times as books. She also has collaborated with writer/husband John Gregory Dunne to write numerous screenplays for Hollywood feature films.

If Joan Didion persists as something of an enigma to rea

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First published 24 January 2002

Citation: Comer, Krista. "Joan Didion". The Literary Encyclopedia. 24 January 2002.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4940, accessed 9 February 2010.]