“Didion reminds me of when I’m really dark and the way that I think about the world.” MORE Phoebe Bridgers in July 2018, at the crocodile in Seattle. Photo by David Lee/CC 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons Among a certain set, Joan Didion stands as California’s purest homegrown literary voice. But Didion left the state long ago and her most seminal works are decades old. Zocalo commentator Joe Mathews says it’s time for a successor, and he thinks he’s found her in singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers. The 26-year-old Pasadena native has literary and personal styles that evoke Didion, but she speaks to a much different California than the one Didion wrote about. Mathews is eager to hear what she has to say: