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How Joan Didion broke free The chronicler of American counterculture was tormented by neuroses – until she learned to turn them to her advantage. Joan Didion – the author of three memoirs, two political travelogues, five novels, and now, with Let Me Tell You What I Mean, seven collections of essays – was born in northern California, in 1934. Her upbringing was somewhat fraught. Her father drank and suffered breakdowns, her mother intoned the dirge-like motto, “what difference does it make?”, and Sacramento County unfolded its annual cycle of fire, flooding, wind and drought. Mea...

the book critic Michiko Kakutani declared in The New York Times in 1979. Born in Sacramento to a family that proudly traced its heritage to 19th century settlers, Didion has become inseparable from California and the West. Plenty of readers continue to take Kakutani’s claim at face value, even though Didion has resided in New York City for decades. Didion’s novels and nonfiction, and her chic brand of California cool, are still lauded as an alternative to the masculine myth of the frontier. Didion, who is 86, hasn’t published a book of new work in nearly a decade. Her latest,