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High life

The joylessness of Joan Didion

5 February 2022

9:00 AM

5 February 2022

9:00 AM

Gstaad

 

Joan Didion, who died last December, took herself extremely seriously. American writers tend to do that, especially those whose books are unreadable, the kind who win prizes and get reviewed by the Bagel Times. Pretension aside, however, Didion was a hell of a writer, a stylist who modelled her prose on Papa Hemingway’s.

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