102 Magical Thinker transcript (Joan Didion)

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Alice: [00:00:00] This is famous and gravy biographies from a different point of view. To participate in our opening quiz, email us at hello@famousandgravy.com. Now here's the quiz to reveal today's dead celebrity.

Michael: This person died 2021, age 87 as a teenager. She typed out chapters from Hemingway novels to see how they worked.

She was deeply influenced by hemmingway's handling of dialogue and silence. Joseph Conrad was another formative influence.

Friend: Well, it must

be a writer.

Nora Ephron. Oh my God, I'm trying to Agatha Christie.

Michael: Not Agatha Christie. Good guess. All right. Her attraction to trouble spots, disintegrating personalities and incipient chaos came natural.

Friend: Oh, the the mom, Debbie Reynolds, Susan Sontag, not Susan Sontag, but you are in the right ballpark. She came to prominence with a series of incisive searching feature articles in Life Magazine and the Saturday evening Post [00:01:00] that explored the fraying edges of post-war American life.

Uh, my brain is like.

Stuck.

I feel like I should know who this is, but I don't know who this is.

Jackie Collins,

Michael: not Jackie Collins, who, I don't know if she's alive or dead, but I've thought about her for the show. I need to verify her current status. Alright. Her early essays include Slouching Towards Bethlehem, 1968 and the White Album 1979.

Friend: Oh, Joan Didion. It's gotta be Joan Didion. Why do I wanna say Joan Didion? But I,

Michael: today's dead celebrity is Joan Didion. What? Are

Archival: you kidding me? But you are to go to a dinner party with you. You, there's no one who's more interesting to be there than you. You'll express your opinions. You'll tell people what you think.

Well, that's, you've never had a problem telling people what you think. No, but that's because you asked me. Of course I do. I'm fit mixed of you. That's right. There's also this. You don't look like a killer. No, I don't. You don't? Mm-hmm. But [00:02:00] when you put pen to paper, watch out. Yes. Well. To some extent. I mean, it's not hostile, it's more in sorrow, usually.

Uh, it's sorrow. Yeah. I mean more because you feel compelled to say what you think and that's what it's about. Yes.

Michael: Welcome to Famous and. I'm Michael Osborne,

Alice: and my name is Alice Florence. Or,

Michael: and on this show, we choose a famous figure who died in the 21st century, and we take a totally different approach to their biography. What didn't we know? What could we not see clearly? And what does a celebrity's life story teach us about ourselves today?

Joan Diddy died 2021, age 87. I am thrilled today to be joined by Alice. She is a podcast critic and managing editor of Podcast Review, which is an online magazine posting, interviews, lists, and reviews of podcasts. And I would say above all else, [00:03:00] you are a student of spoken word content. I am curious to know, do you see yourself and Joe Dundy?

Alice: That's a fascinating question. Firstly, I'm thrilled to be here. This has been a long time coming. Is there a connection? Well, I think for me, I got into audio because I was studying English literature and one of the things that I listen to all the time was essays from Joe Did, and I think there is so much to be.

Uh, enjoyed as a textual experience, but certainly hearing them is no small thing. It's, it's a really impressive way that she commands language and it translates really well into audio as well.

Michael: Was she the voice on these essays that you would read?

Alice: No. There's actually one audio actor who does a lot of audio books in this kind of genre and category.

She does some of the audio books for people like Rachel Kushner and, and things like that. So I became very familiar with this one. Audiobook narrator and what's been really nice about leaving university now and working in criticism is that I get so much inspiration from the fact that [00:04:00] she works across different mediums.

She was a novelist. She also was really passionate about criticism. I really enjoy how both she and Hemingway and all these other kind of people coming out of modernism and going into the kind of postmodern new journalistic. Impulse have this crossover between journalism and fiction and high literary writing.

I find that so fascinating.

Michael: We're gonna step on too much of this if we don't get going. So let's just dive in.

Alice: I am so ready.

Michael: Category one, grading the first line of their obituary. Joan Didion. Whose Morden dispatches on California culture and the chaos of the 1960s established her as a leading exponent of the new journalism and whose novels play it as it lays.

And a book of common prayer proclaimed the arrival of a tough terse, distinctive voice in American fiction died on Thursday at her home in Manhattan. She was 87. Alice, your reactions?

Alice: I might be biased here, but I do think that it doesn't really [00:05:00] get much better than this, to be honest.

Michael: Oh, interesting.

Alice: Well, a long life and a sort of rock and roll life, despite the fact that maybe in her own view, she didn't consider herself to be a rock and roll figure.

More like somebody who was around rock stars or was in proximity to famous people.

Michael: Yeah.

Alice: But. If anything, I think certain adjectives here, tough T, it certainly paints a picture of somebody who, when you compare that to her physical image, very different. It's not what you would expect. And I think if you kind of zoned out a little bit and didn't really know who this person was, the picture that is painted here is antithetical to maybe who she actually was in real life, which I kind of also.

Enjoy. The sort of juxtaposition is interesting.

Michael: I totally agree. I mean, I do feel like tough, tch distinctive gets at a certain fiery quality morant dispatches. I had to look up the word morant. Me too. It's a having or showing sharp or critical quality biting. That's a great word. I love that this showed up in Joan Didion.

First line and then leading. Exponent. Exponent. I had to look this one up [00:06:00] too. A person who believes in promotes the truth or benefits of an idea or theory, that's the definition. That's like also totally perfect. It's completely accurate. Mm-hmm. So your reaction is like you mostly love it more than exponent, tough, terse, distinctive voice.

Like all these things are like really working for you. Is that? Is that accurate?

Alice: Absolutely. If I had any, I gave a nine out of 10. If I had any criticism for it, I would say that it is a bit of a jumble of words to an extent, but this is the New York Times we're talking about, and they do prefer a little bit of a jumble in their first line, so I forgive them.

Michael: Okay, so I had one reaction. Let me say this. I knew who Joan Didion was. I had not read her deeply until getting ready for this episode. So. What I have read now is the White album. Mm-hmm. Slouching Towards Bethlehem, and I had read Year of Magical Thinking in the past. None of those books are brought up here, and that actually sort of surprised me.

I would've said if there's one book you might know her for, I probably would've gone with the Year of [00:07:00] Magical Thinking. And I feel like that's a book that has come up in conversations about. Loss and grief. I went to Good Reads. There are the most reviews for your magical thinking as number one. Two is slouching towards Beth Lam.

Three is the white album, and four is play it as it lays. So they characterize it well. Morton Dispatches on California culture and the chaos of the 1960s. Perfect. She shaped our view of the 1960s and I love that they pointed to new journalism too. I wanna talk about that more in a second, but like. Are these the two books you would draw attention to?

Alice: It's such an interesting way of trying to figure out this problem of exactly what Joan Didion was all about, because she did write across so many different mediums. I mean, as you mentioned, she was also a screenwriter.

Michael: Yeah,

Alice: her first love was fiction, but I think what we actually know her for is her journalism.

I studied play as it lays in my master's program. Oh, okay. And one of the things, yeah, so I've written a little bit about it and one of [00:08:00] the things that was really. Interesting about the way that my professor interpreted it is that she was like, this is not a particularly great work of fiction.

Michael: Hmm.

Alice: But it is a seminal work of fiction in the sense of it is a very stylistic novel.

I don't think people would disagree with that. I think the general consensus is it's not a, a masterpiece, but it's a, it's a, it's a very nice novel, but it's definitely not her best work. I think when you read something like Slouching s Bethlehem, you are confronted by the fact that she is at the front of her field here.

Whereas I don't get that sense when she's writing fiction.

Michael: My primary association with her is in new journalism and is as a nonfiction writer. I think she's done other things as you pointed to, but what I feel like she's remembered for is memoirs and essays and as a kind of interpreter of culture, which happens in fiction of course.

But I was a little surprised that they didn't call out those books and instead just use general description. New journalism is a term I didn't know until we did the Tom Wolf episode some time ago. So I went [00:09:00] and I looked at Tom Wolf's obituary. They don't mention new journalism. I looked at Hunter s Thompson and Norman Mailer, same thing.

Mm-hmm. I looked up, uh, gai. Who's also associated and he's not dead good for him. So I don't know, I kind of mm-hmm. Lingered on that for a second. I think I'm gonna go eight out of 10, and maybe this is just my own bias, but I feel like Year of magical thinking, especially, there's something really important to me about that book that the people I've talked.

Who have gone through the process of losing somebody close to them and the confusing insanity that surrounds grief, that book holds a special place and does a thing that a lot of other books do not. And I wanted it called out and I feel like it's maybe more important than these works of fiction that they draw attention to.

So I'm giving it an eight out of 10.

Alice: I respect that. I don't know anybody whose life has been changed by. Play it as it lays, but I can think of many, many people who would cite Year of magical Thinking as one of the. Most [00:10:00] important books I've ever read. So yeah, I think that's, I respect that as a take.

Michael: Let's get into category two. Five things I Love about You here, Allison and I will develop a list of five things that offer a different angle on who this person was and how they lived. If it's okay, I'm gonna lead.

Alice: Yes.

Michael: Okay. I wrote fragmented narrative.

Alice: Mm-hmm.

Michael: This kind of came up a little when we did the Kurt Vonnegut episode.

One of the things I loved about Vonnegut was this phrase unstuck in time because it aligns with human experience. We are always unstuck in time. We're usually thinking about the past or the future. Very rarely the present. And there's something about the way the mind works that is fragmented. And Joan Didion's.

Essays are often written in these sort of fragmented scenes that kind of skip around. Mm-hmm. But you find structure within them. They're structured, meaning out of disarray, it's nonlinear and sort of elliptical, but it feels like inner dialogue and it mirrors human experience and I love that [00:11:00] style. I think there's something so masterful about her ability to tell a story in fragments.

Archival: I find more faded and cracked photographs. Than I ever again want to see. I find many engraved invitations to the weddings of people who are no longer married. I find mass cards from the funerals of people whose faces I no longer remember. In theory, these mementos serve to bring back the moment. In fact, they only served to make clear how inadequately.

I appreciated the moment when it was here. Oh, inadequately. I appreciated the moment when it was here is something else that I could never afford to see.

Alice: Absolutely. This is one of the things I love about her is that she has opinions about writing and she isn't afraid to actually write by exemplifying those opinions.

Michael: Hell yeah.

Alice: I do think that, I read books now and I, I feel like I'm suffering because I'm being given too much information and I'm being led to [00:12:00] places that aren't strictly necessary. It dulls my experience a bit, and what Didion was so fantastic at is giving us just enough information and it's up to us to reorientate ourselves, and so it's a thrilling experience.

Michael: Totally, and it credits the reader economy and sparseness. I'll give you a micro moment and you can extrapolate the global emotion out of that, like you're inviting the reader to use their imagination. I can't tell you actually how much fun I had. Reading her in the lead up to this episode. I wasn't exactly a fan before.

I'm absolutely a fan now. She's fabulous.

Alice: Well, I think she's also re readable. You can go back to her and return to her. I think I've read Slouching towards Bethlehem maybe four or five times. But if you asked me to kind of pull out something, I'd probably struggle with Diddy and I feel like I am really enjoying the experience of reading her in the moment.

Michael: Yeah,

Alice: but it's something like, then I go on with my life and then six months later or a year later, I return to the same essay and read it again. Like I've, I think I've read her essay on [00:13:00] self-respect every year for the last seven, eight years. And every time I get something else out of it or, or some sort of.

Reflection on my own life, and it's not necessarily about relatability. She more like draws out interesting facts and interesting discourses about our time and about our human condition through very specific references. Mm-hmm. Whether that's the environment of California or a specific group of people, or a politician or something like that.

And she just. Like goes into it and goes into enough detail that you suddenly find yourself reflecting on something. Reflecting on the condition of relationships or whatever it is.

Michael: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that this relates to Morden, perhaps.

Alice: Yes, completely. Alright, so what do you got for thing number two?

For thing number two? Goodness. There's so many things about her, but I really love that she was influenced by Hemingway. I think people often hold up Hemingway as being this sort of exemplary, masculine figure, right? And I think that's true to an extent, but as you know, we've talked about before, I think you can definitely [00:14:00] complicate that.

I watched an amazing Ken Burns documentary, you a Ken Burns fan.

Michael: I am, I, I was not a diehard fan until I watched his Vietnam series, but yes, is the, is the short answer.

Alice: I mean, his war documentaries are obviously great, but I really recommend his five part series on Hemingway because it reveals so much about this person who really influenced Didion in a way that I don't think is really discussed even on English courses.

You know, towards the end of his life he was, you know, a lot more gender queer than maybe we would previously have thought of. And I think that I've heard this.

Michael: Yeah.

Alice: Yeah. And it's just so interesting to think when we think of somebody as being influenced by Hemingway, we have a really, like a tough TSE picture of what that influence means, but

Michael: yeah, a sort of conventional masculinity in some sense.

Alice: Exactly, yeah. And so we think, oh, Joan Didion was a masculine writer, or she was a woman working in a masculine space. But I think it's always more complicated than that.

Michael: Yeah, I don't read her that way. There is, and you turned me onto that, oh, what's it called? Super Context Podcast. Super context. Yeah. They [00:15:00] had some interesting dialogue about how she is read through the lens of a woman writer, and I don't know where I'm going with this.

I'm not sure I even have the vocabulary or acumen to speak to it, but I don't see her writing as gendered in either direction. It's not. A useful framework with which to interpret her. Do you know what I mean? Completely. Even though I think that she is a woman working in a male dominated industry, I think to say, you need to understand the perspective of a woman through this lens or something actually misses the point of her incisiveness or even to, to.

Describe her as feminine or masculine as actually not doing much work. The lineage with Hemingway is more on what we're already speaking to the sort of like sparseness and like say only what you need and very well edited micro moments that speak to the global,

Alice: I dunno if you know this, but apparently the way that she would write every day is she would start by sitting down.

She had a pretty regular schedule, like a kind of nine to four writing schedule. Yeah, yeah. She was

Michael: regimented. Yeah,

Alice: she would sit down and she would [00:16:00] type out everything that she'd written the previous day and then start writing at the end. Isn't that crazy?

Michael: That's perfect. That leads me to my thing number three.

My thing number three, I love about her is her idiosyncratic habits and rituals. So

Alice: she was neurotic. Absolutely. She was neurotic.

Michael: She's freaking crazy and I absolutely love it. So there is this thing that was in the quiz that she typed. Out Hemingway to see how it worked. Like she's actually like transcribing to understand the mechanics of language.

Archival: I taught myself how to type by typing out Hemingway sentences over and over again looking for just how they worked. Yeah. 'cause they were so, they appeared to be so simple. Yeah. But you would come away from a string of them with this overwhelming. Feeling of, you know, what was going on. It was a withholding, there was withheld information in these sentences and there had, it had to do with a rhythm.

I mean, I can't exactly explain it, but You got it. I, yeah. Mm-hmm.

Michael: There is a kind of like muscle memory thing she does [00:17:00] where she's warming up her fingers to write out the thing that she wrote before, just to sort of ramp up the mind. I love that habit. I read somewhere she did five cigarettes a day. Five cigarettes?

Yeah. Just five. Just five. Just five. Mm-hmm. What a like. That's crazy. I'm I, I'm a former smoker and I don't know how anybody does that. I love this thing about she, she lived off practically Coca-Cola and salted almonds for breakfast. Oh,

Alice: you know what? At a bar, a diet Coke and some salted almonds. That sounds pretty good.

That sounds pretty, that sounds pretty good.

Michael: My favorite one though, and this came up in the documentary that her nephew, Griffin Dunn, directed and put together when she was stuck with a manuscript, she would put it in the freezer. Literally put it in the freezer. I think that like that is like, I'm frozen, I'm stuck.

I'm gonna let it freeze and I'm gonna thaw it. These idiosyncratic habits, I think that they're important. I believe so strongly in daily rituals and the more I have quirky, weird little things that I do in my day that speak to the creative [00:18:00] process and that put me in touch with my own creativity, I think those things really matter.

That's my thing. Number three that I love about Joan Didion.

Alice: I think it's just marvelous. I think, yeah, I,

Michael: it totally paints a picture of a certain kind of person too. It is neurotic, but it's also, it's important. And I guess that's my point. You know, I, I think we all try to be way too normal these days.

Right. Way too normal. And you know, it's like, it's almost like permission for weirdness.

Alice: Something I've noticed about like people my own age is that we will cause play, so to speak, as people who have these idiosyncrasies. Like we will put on clothes in the style of, to dress up as, but in our own lives, we are so hell bent on micromanaging our own chaos.

Yeah. We just, we just wanna be normal and we just wanna be, you know, healthy and perfect and whatever. And I just think there is a line between when your personality is moving into an unhealthy space. But I really think that. Something like drinking a Diet Coke and eating almonds for breakfast. Sure. That could be disordered 100%.

And I can recognize that. Especially because of my background. And it makes it to

Michael: a problem. Yeah, exactly. And

Alice: but it, the [00:19:00] thing is, is like human beings aren't perfect. And I think for a writer, you recognize that in yourself first. Yeah. I mean, again, this comes up in her essay on self-respect. I, I really recommend people reading it, but I think you, that's a great essay.

Michael: This is like Vogue in the early sixties. This was almost a big break kind of essay. Right. Completely. Completely. Well, okay. So wonderful. Do you have a thing number four?

Alice: Yes. Okay. I love that. She was also can be considered as a travel writer, a writer of vignettes and dispatches. This is something that I don't.

Here talked about as much, especially because she was such a California quote unquote writer, but she traveled to all these different places and wrote really compelling essays. She went into the politics of a place she went into, you know, even just local politics and understanding the, the way in which a, a place is constructed and, and the problems within it.

And the. Especially the contradictions and the ironies and things like that.

Michael: I had something really similar to this. I actually said a bubble popper in terms of how she captures a sense of place. [00:20:00] This was, I think it's very true in slashing towards Bethlehem when she writes about hate Ashbury in 1967 or writing about Hollywood, she builds a world and then dismantles it.

I really love when she writes about California, she has this quote, the apparent ease of California life is an illusion, and those who believe the illusion to be real live here. In only the most temporary way. When I lived in California in Palo Alto, my wife and I used to make this joke like, 'cause Palo Alto, the weather is unbelievable.

And we're like, what's the forecast today? And we'd say, perfect with a 20% chance of transcendence. I think that what a great travel writer does is set the scene so that. They're almost like invoking a preexisting mythology, but then pierce through it and say, that's not really real. Here's what's even more real.

And she had an extraordinary talent at

Alice: that. You're completely right. It almost feels like she writes about California as an ecosystem.

Michael: Yes. Yeah, because

Alice: she has to incorporate the nature and the wind system and the way that the water flows and the hostile [00:21:00] environment that California is, you know? Mm-hmm.

The, the fault lines, the. Obviously the most recent fires being awful and And this constant threat of almost annihilation.

Michael: Yeah. The environmental destruction and the way it looms. And that stands in sharp contrast to this image of it as a sort of Eden.

Alice: It's just a really interesting place.

Michael: It is. And if you're gonna live there, you have to read Didion.

Alice: Yes, absolutely.

Michael: Okay, awesome. Well, I'm gonna give my thing. Number five, great stories happen to those who can tell them. She has a kind of foresight. I mentioned a second ago some of the essays in sloshing towards Bethlehem, the darker side of Hate Ashbury. I mean, that scene of like seeing a five-year-old on acid and what does that mean?

There was like, she understood the significance of, of how misguided it all was.

Archival: What was it like to be a journalist in the room when you saw the little kid on acid? Well, it was. Let me tell you, it was gold. The long and the short of it is you live for the, for moments like [00:22:00] that. If you're, if you, if you're doing a piece, good or bad.

Michael: Her writing on the Central Park five, she identified something way ahead of time. It's almost like a true crime story. I also love that, uh, Harrison Ford and some of the movie directors of the 1970s were hanging around her house before they had hit it. It's so cool. Like she's, she is in very cool company.

I love, I just love the fact that Harrison Floyd worked on our house as a carpenter before Star Wars came along.

Archival: I was a carpenter to do a renovation expansion of their home in Malibu overlooking the ocean, and I spent a couple of months there in their house every day, first thing in the morning. Last thing I think I became their carpenter for the same reason I became their friend, is that I was, uh.

Out of my depth, didn't know where I was going, how I got there. I always felt that everyone there was smarter than I was and more cultured than I [00:23:00] was. But I was always made to feel welcome and comfortable.

Michael: I. There's an adage out there, great stories happen to those that can tell them. That's the kind of quality that has a kind of positive feedback loop around it that can guide careers if you are a storyteller

Alice: completely.

I think there's also, it's, it is very interesting to kind of strike a, a, a bit of a difference between, you know, the set that she was hanging around with at home versus some of her. Reporting assignments. This was something else that the excellent episode of Super Contact points out that she was almost a little bit staged in a, in a way or conservative with a small c to a certain extent.

Michael: Mm-hmm.

Alice: I dunno if you've ever read the Prime of Miss Jean Brody.

Michael: I have not. Uh,

Alice: so it's, it's a famous Scottish novel, but basically Ms. Jean Brody collects a set of sort of wayward girls. I should have

Michael: said earlier, you're Scottish. I'm not sure what I am. I'm

Alice: Scottish. Okay. Anyway, sorry.

Michael: Yeah,

Alice: they won't be able to work it out.

But in this novel, it's a school mistress who collects a set of sort of wayward girls. She calls them her Brody set. And I often think [00:24:00] about that in relation to Didion because it does feel like she's almost collecting, kind of wayward people around her without ever really descending into that herself.

Like she's very careful about what she reveals about herself.

Michael: What I feel like you're getting at is a little bit her powers of observation, which are extraordinary, and that she knows how to get the right level of proximate to make conclusions without. Becoming too involved in, she's got boundaries.

Alice: Self-respect. She probably, it's self respect. It's self respect.

Michael: Yeah. No, and I, I mean, it's an interesting question about her, you know, where did that self-assuredness come from? Mm-hmm. There's a real confidence and maybe that has a relationship to neurosis.

Alice: Well, I sometimes, I wonder if it's her. She has a kind of.

When you read, I think it's the white album. She has a real rejection towards like psychotherapy. Well, I mean, sometimes I wonder if a certain level of that self-respect or that self-assuredness comes from a lack of introspection. Like, I'm not willing to, you know, I can criticize her to an extent because I, I think that when you come from maybe like a recovery background or something like that, you are constantly self-analyzing and, and, and looking in words and, and trying [00:25:00] to understand why you do certain things.

And I think for her to sort of sit there and. Drink her diet Coke and her five cigarettes and her almonds.

Archival: Yeah.

Alice: And say that she has self-respect. I think that comes from either, either she's transcended all laws of nature, or perhaps she's slightly obstinate in her own understanding of herself, and that's fine.

I don't think, I think that this is maybe why so many people think that she's a masculine writer, because a lot of women's fiction is about that. Looking within ourselves to understanding the relationship that we have with our. Internal and external experience, and she's more, she does write, I mean, my number five for transparency was that I loved that she would write about her, her migraine.

So you know, she's not somebody who's unwilling to turn the lens on herself,

Michael: but you're right that there is a sort of boundary around mm-hmm. Self inspection and in a way that I find surprising and refreshing on some level completely. Okay. Let's recap. So number one, I said fragmented narrative number two.

You said a Hemingway, Ritz, yes. [00:26:00] Hemingway. Number three, her idiosyncratic habits and rituals. Number four, travel writer. I amended that with bubble popper. And then number five, great stories happen to those who can tell them. And we had a bit of an exchange about her introspective qualities. Awesome list.

Let's take a break. I. Category three. One love. In this category, Alice and I will each choose one word or phrase that characterizes this person's loving relationships. First, we will review the family life data. So Joan did in had one marriage to John Gregory Dunn. He was also a novelist, screenwriter, and journalist.

They got married in 1964. Joan was about. 29. Their marriage lasted nearly 40 years until John's sudden death In 2003, they were known as a writing couple, and his death is detailed in the year of magical thanking and her experience with grief. There is one adopted daughter in 1966, they adopted Quintana at birth.

Quintana passed away in 2005 at the age of 39 [00:27:00] when Joan was 70. So the theme of grief is really present in her latter years. One thing worth knowing is that this is one of those marriages and family lives that people have written books about, like the inside of their relationship. 'cause I think there was a perception of like, finish each other's sentences and real harmony of personalities within the marriage.

And then I think other people have looked at closer and seen, you know, real points of contention. And she's got an essay in the White album where she talks about being in Hawaii on the verge of. Divorce. What's really interesting is she says in the documentary of Griffin Dunn, John edited that essay where they're talking about being on the verge of divorce, which is like such a, there's, there's something.

So I don't know, kind of intimate and disconnected about that.

Archival: I had better tell you where I am and why. I am sitting in a high ceilinged room in the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Honolulu. My husband is here and our daughter, age [00:28:00] three, we are here on this island in the middle of the Pacific in lieu of filing for divorce.

Did he read that? He edited that. He edited. We thought generally that you, you used your material, you wrote what you had, and that was what I happened to have at the moment.

Michael: All right, so what did you go with for One Love Here, I'm dying. Well, I

Alice: found this to be the most intimidating category because you were like, oh, it's gonna be some metaphor or something like that.

I, I was like, I can't do that. I'm afraid. Nothing really springs to mind. I was inspired by a line that Hilton Owls, who is. A critic that very often writes introductions for didion's work. Okay. I was inspired by a line that they wrote where they described Didion as a carver of writing in the granite of this specific, I thought that was a, a very astute line.

So I, and because I feel like so much of her work is, especially her later work is, is about almost like memorialization.

Michael: Yeah.

Alice: I decided to say that she is a memorial [00:29:00] carver.

Michael: Oh nice. Alice. Yes. No, you roasted the occasion with this category, Memorial Carver. That is really well put. I love this imagery of granite.

I love its association with the Sierra Nevadas and California, and I love it like hurt solid foundation ness. And I certainly love the idea. You know, people use this metaphor a lot of, like you see the thing in the marble. Or in the granite and you carve around it. Memorial captures both the grief, but also her ability to establish place like there's a memorialization of time and of space.

I think that's perfect.

Alice: I think sometimes when you write, you're writing almost like you're building a tomb for somebody.

Michael: Huh.

Alice: It's where they will be contained forever, at least in your own understanding of them. And also when you write about someone, you fix them in time.

Michael: Mm-hmm. Jesus. That's great, Alice.

All right. Memorial Carver. Uh, alright, I'll, I'll go tell you the mort. It's interesting 'cause mine in some ways stands in contrast, but has some similarities. So I was listening to [00:30:00] this. Alan Watts meditation the other day, and he was talking about how he was kind of pushing on the question of what makes you, you, and we are not our bodies, we are our process.

And the metaphor he uses, like imagine you're walking by a river and you see a whirlpool. We recognize that. Whirlpool as a feature, but at any given moment, the water molecules are never the same water molecules. So it's almost like life is more like a process than a noun. So I liked that. And I'm gonna do something adjacent to a Whirlpool.

I'm gonna go with standing wave. Mm-hmm. Here's where I took this. So a standing wave. The physics of it are, it's shaped by equal and opposing forces. One part of the wave is higher than the other. It's like a whirlpool. It's a feature. You can see I, I think Joan is a little bit above John. I think that there's a bit of a disparity in terms of astuteness and quality.

I think that it looks sort of like a stable feature from the outside looking in, but there's. Unbelievable amounts of motion [00:31:00] just under the surface. So people see this strong marriage power couple, but inside their strife and a bit of an arrangement of sorts. I think it's also rhythmic, but restless. I see a certain restlessness in Joan Didion, and maybe the key thing is when John dies, the wave collapses, the standing wave disappears when the current stops.

And so it's almost like the whole thing was sustained by, I don't know, collaboration, stress. And just a quick coda, her first book is called Run River. Apparently she did not care for that title, but I was looking for a river metaphor, so standing wave, that was my one love.

Alice: I think that's excellent. I mean, so often we think about ourselves now as being just a series of individuals and we are at, I think especially, you know, younger people are so kind of apprehensive towards.

The idea of artistic collaboration or relying on somebody

Michael: mm-hmm.

Alice: As being amused. I think we're very suspicious of that because it's gone wrong on so many levels, especially in terms of power dynamics. You know, you think about Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath.

Michael: Yeah. You just think that's a

Alice: [00:32:00] horrible creative relationship.

Yeah. And yet you could definitely say that they inspired each other, like a lot of their work came out of that relationship. But we would call it, you know, in today's parlance, very toxic.

Michael: Right.

Alice: And so I think thinking about. Didian and, and Gregory Dun, you're just sort of like, you wanna be like, Ooh, was it bad?

No. Well, I mean, the

Michael: question is how do you sustain? But I don't think it, no, I mean, I think that that if you're gonna be creative partners, there is a little bit of a question of how do you sustain conflict, right? And what does healthy sustained conflict look like? And that is the inside of. Most healthy marriages.

It's never serene, it's never peace. There's always strife. There's always disagreement. I mean, he was apparently prone to rage. He did not sound like an easy character. He sounded he was a gossip and he is a personality and he is sort of, he's an interesting guy in his own right, but I do think a lot of her's success stems from their creative partnership.

There is something about the standing wave idea. I hope that gets at that like sustained conflict and, and maybe even respectful

Alice: conflict. Absolutely. [00:33:00]

Michael: Yeah. Cool. That was fun. Good metaphors. All right, let's go on to category four, net worth in this category. We will each write down our numbers ahead of time and we will talk a little bit about our reasoning.

We'll then look up the net worth number in real time to see who's closest. And finally, we'll place this person on the famous eng gravy net worth leaderboard. I did not think too much about this. I figured, okay, she's a successful writer for all of her career. She is in Hollywood, and it sounds like doing pretty well.

I also wanted her to have more money than Tom Wolf wine. So I looked at Tom Wolf's net worth and it was 20 million, and so I wanted to go a little bit above that, but not way above that. So how'd you think through this category, Alice?

Alice: So I have. As when I'm asked questions, ridiculous questions like these.

Michael: Mm-hmm.

Alice: I have certain milestones that help me like rationalize certain things. Yeah. So I think that the Great Gatsby is like 64,000 words. So when I think about word counts, I think, you know, 64,000, that's the Great Gatsby. Okay. With net worth, I think about [00:34:00] Dan Brown. Okay. And Dan Brown I think is worth.

Upwards of 200 million. Gotta

Michael: be. I mean those books have been turned into movies. Exactly. Yeah.

Alice: Now Didion's interesting because she obviously did write on some movies and I know just because I was looking at her IMDB page that she, I think she was a writer on both of the A Star Is Born movies. Yeah. It

Michael: wasn't clear on the crediting of that.

So there's a reimagining of the 1970s version of A Star Is Born 'cause it, it actually predates that, but they update it. Into a rock and roll context with Chris Christofferson and uh, Barbara Streisand. But she is also credited on the Lady Gaga Bradley Cooper version.

Alice: Exactly.

Michael: Yeah. And I wondered if there wasn't some kickback there.

Alice: I don't know. I've kind of, I started off at a much lower number and this is actually what I would consider to be an elevated number.

Michael: Okay. So enough tension. Let's reveal Alice Florence, or wrote down at $10 million. Yeah, sorry. $10 million American dollars.

Alice: Michael Osborne wrote down a wiping. $22 million.

Michael: I had to be more than Tom Wolf. The actual net worth for Joan [00:35:00] Didion, $5 million. You're closer. I suck at this category. All right. She was,

Alice: that's so that was my original guess, Michael. Then you were like. Oh, he, she's gotta be worth more than Tom Wolf. And I freaked out, but then I forgot the very important fact that Tom Wolf is a man.

So of course he has more money than her.

Michael: I should have factored in the patriarchy. Alright, so I'm gonna place Joan did in the, I actually really

Alice: liked Tom Wolf. I do too.

Michael: So that places Joan Didion in the bottom 90th percentile of Famous and Gravy, but she is in proud company. So 5 million also shares with Yogi Berra, Fred Willard.

Paul Rubins and Oliver Sachs. That's Peewee Herman and Oliver Sachs. Wow. I'm going to say one more thing to just justify my ego. She was doing Celine advertisements late in life and I kind of thought there might be a nice paycheck from that.

Alice: You think people get FA paid in the fashion industry.

Michael: Clearly you're more well informed by this than [00:36:00] I'm, which is why you got a lot closer to the number and like estimate.

Well, let me say, I just wanted her to have more. Uh, but I'm sure I wanted to have more too. 5 million. God, I gotta get better at this category. I need to work on it. All right. Category five, little Lebowski, urban Achievers. They're the little

Archival: Lebowski, urban achievers. So yeah, the achievers,

Michael: yes. And proud. We are of

Archival: all of them

Michael: in this category, we each choose a trophy and award, a cameo and impersonation or some other form of a hat tip that shows a different side of this person.

This was hard. Agreed. What do you have here?

Alice: I have a, as I mentioned earlier. Rachel Kushner, an essayist. A novelist. I don't love her novels, but I think she writes incredibly good essays. I highly recommend reading her collections. But I was reading one shortly after I had been reading Didion and I realized that she makes reference Didion in one of her essays and I wanted to read it 'cause I think it's fascinating.

This isn't a direct quote, this is my summation. So in the last collection of Krishna's essays, she marks didion's error in calling Jim Morrison's trousers Vinyl, when it was obvious, even [00:37:00] for a. Berkeley Debutante. That's a quote that they were actually, black leather records are made out of vinyl. Kushner moans, not Morrison's pants.

Wow. She seems to think that it was a deliberate obstinacy rather than an error of recall that made Didion call them black vinyl pants three times in the White album. Strange. I think considering Kushner says only a few lines later that she prefers her memories fragile and impermanent. She likes them delicate.

Likes them prone. All right, but for some reason, she can't get over the fact that Joan Didian can't remember or can't realize that Jim Morrison or leather pants,

Michael: I'm speechless. I don't know how to respond to this. What does this mean to you?

Alice: Well, again, coming back to this idea that maybe she was a little bit prissy to a certain extent, and you know, the people that she was hanging out with weren't her people.

I wonder if there's a certain level of what Kushner is accusing her of is. Creating a deliberate separation through language. I agree with Kushner that Didion almost certainly knew that they were black leather and that this particular detail is something that she [00:38:00] chose to change. Didion is trying to kind of distance herself from people who run in these circles.

'cause she's not that person. You know, she sticks to her five cigarettes and her almonds and she doesn't stray past that. And yeah, I just thought it was, it was something that I've thought about for a long time, that little reference, because. Yeah, I think, I think Didion was a little bit prissy, and I kind of like her for that.

Michael: Okay, so for my little leki, I love her ancestral connection to the Donner party. So her mother's ancestors, the corn walls had gone west in 1846 on an ill-fated troupe of settlers known as the Donner Party. Everybody knows the story. They get stranded in the Sierras and they become cannibals. The Cornwalls split from the group at Nevada's Humboldt sink.

To head North and it's a decision that may have said their lives to the rest of the Donner party ate each other up in the Sierra Nevada. Here's why. I love it. Thank you. We spoke about it earlier, the mythology of California. I love that Joan Didion has deep roots that her family [00:39:00] just missed. One of the most famous moments of cannibalism, certainly in American history.

And that there is this like idea of going west until we run out of land, that I feel like part of the reason she has authority in speaking to the California mythology is that I think it informed her. Culture and upbringing in childhood in Sacramento, and I think gives her an unparalleled lens. I mean, she, there's some things in her writing about how she will establish the narrative and then dispel it, and she even comes to recognize it operating in herself.

Alice: I think that speaks to a certain level of authenticity that I thought we'd got rid of in the postmodern era. But here we are.

Michael: Here we are. Okay, good. One. Category, six words to live by. In this category, we each choose a quote. These are either words that came out of this person's mouth or was said about them.

This was hard because there's way too much to work with. You know, we haven't even mentioned the phrase, what is the famous phrase? In the white album, we [00:40:00] tell stories in order to live.

Alice: We tell stories in order to live.

Michael: Yeah. It's interesting how that one gets interpreted, misinterpreted. It's sort of amazing that we've gone this far into the episode without making reference to it because it's so associated with her

Alice: completely.

Michael: Yeah. I

Alice: feel like the discourse on that has kind of not exhausted. I don't think that good literature can ever be exhausted, but I think there's so many really interesting interpretations out there. Part of what she writes is about trying to understand like the shifting phantasmagoria.

Michael: Yeah. Love life. I love that phrase.

Yeah. It's.

Alice: So interesting and almost she's kind of critiquing her own approach. She's saying that, you know what, what I'm trying to do is almost impossible.

Michael: I mean, I think what, what I take from it, there's almost always some narrative operating that we're not aware of that, that we have to have in order to Yeah, dilute ourselves into a sense of security.

That what she does as a bubble popper, to use my words, is sort of pierce that narrative and it all falls apart, but then something has to be reassembled. I mean that's, that's how I interpret that. I don't think either of us went that [00:41:00] with direction, with words to live by. So what, what do you have here?

Alice: Well, I've referenced it so much that I had to take a self respect line out of on. Exactly.

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Alice: To do without self-respect. On the other hand, is to be an unwilling audience of one to an interminable documentary that deals one's failings, both real and imagined with fresh footage spliced in for every screening.

It's a complicated quote, which is, I didn't realize quite how hard it was to read out loud.

Michael: All right. Makes sense of that. I'm not sure I get it.

Alice: Something that I think about a lot is the way in which we're constantly trying to curate our lives.

Michael: Yeah.

Alice: Whether that's through social media or as writers, or there's constant need to sort of define who we are through reflecting on our own failings, reflecting on our own issues.

There's this really famous. Uh, I dunno if you're familiar with Jemiah, Joe Kirk. She is an actress who, she was really famously on this TV show with Lena Dunham called Girls. Oh, sure. Yeah. She was Jessa, I think. Okay, okay. I

Michael: do, I do actually remember who that is.

Alice: And she was once asked if she had any advice [00:42:00] for women who were self-conscious and she said, I think you're all thinking about yourselves a little bit too much.

Michael: Hmm.

Alice: And I really do think that that is essentially what Joan Didion is saying at length in this, in this essay. She's basically saying that if you have self-respect, you do not entertain an audience for your own failings. I think what we, we are all so obsessed these days with like being 1% better than we were yesterday or this kind of self-help narrative and, and thinking about, you know, oh, I got up at eight today.

I should get up tomorrow at seven because otherwise I'm, you know, gonna fail as a person or whatever. Right. And I think what Joan Dine is saying is like. Stop being so myopic about your own bullshit. Hmm. And actually go out there and, and, and live your life and, and, and live authentically to who you are and what.

The rules of your own life dictate

Michael: when you are speaking a little bit about this process of like excessive introspection. Sometimes I feel like my ego is constantly drafting my autobiography, writing pages and tearing it up, right? And like, I think I, the better version of me is the outward looking one that's not obsessed with that process.

I. Actually [00:43:00] also chose something from that essay. And the line I have is the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life is the source from which self-respect springs. I like the accept responsibility thing. I feel like part of the problem of being obsessed with your own self narrative or your own autobiography is that you're actually.

Taken away and distracted from your own behavior and your own decisions and your own choices, and that accepting your side of the street is how you build up integrity and it's how you arrive at self respect. I love that we both are drawing from that essay and the. Backstory of it. It's really interesting.

Joan Didion's in college and she sends off this like application to Vogue, which winds up being the springboard for her whole career. This particular essay did stand apart from the kinds of things Vogue was writing at the time in 1963.

Alice: Do you think people can still have those kind of careers [00:44:00] where they, I mean, this is something I hear so much Yeah.

Is people hold up. Joan Didion is almost like a Carrie Bradshaw in the sense of like, people just can't believe that you could make a career off of. Writing essays. I,

Michael: I, I don't know. I don't think so, only because we do so much more watching and listening than we do reading. I don't know if that's gonna change or not, but I do think the spirit of getting the opportunity to flex.

Your muscles. If you have young talent at a place that has institutional structure and a clear editorial vision, I'd like to say in the abstract that's still possible. Yes. Whether or not you can specifically get a launch from a magazine and go into essay writing, and then nonfiction, screenwriting, and fiction.

Is another matter. I just don't think the media environment supports that. But I do think that if somebody who was born with Joan Didion's talents were born today, I'd like to think that there's still a pathway to fame and glory or, or at least, you know. Yes, I would

Alice: hope so. It's [00:45:00] interesting 'cause I think the fact that writing has almost become this, like it is much more democratized now.

You know, everybody can kind of write and, and, and cultivate their own audience. Yeah. Which is great and, and fantastic. But it does, I think it means that a lot of writing now, and I kind of alluded to this before, I, I think people are. They're not developing their own manifestos. You know, when I think about writers like Hemingway or Gertrude Stein or Didion, I feel like they have a.

Very clear belief in what good writing is.

Michael: Yeah. And I see that actually as being, I mean, another, I don't know, adjacent idea to self-respect is self-love and, and I, mm-hmm. I do think that one of the problems of the modern media. Ecosystem and that democratization of content, or however you want to put it, is that we feel drawn towards creating something that grabs attention before we nurture our own talents in solitude and in moments of reflection.

And I feel like we need to. Figure out a way to create those, to use an overused [00:46:00] phrase, safe spaces for that kind of nurturing of talent. Her success is a slow build until slashing towards Bethlehem, which I think really kind of catapults her to a new level of renowned so that Tom Wolfe is writing about her and books around new journalism and so forth.

All right. Let's go to category seven, man in the mirror. This is fairly simple category. Did this person like their reflection? Yes or no? This is not about beauty, but rather a question of self-confidence versus self-judgment. She's slight. She's very slight, and the almond's, diet Coke thing has me wondering, but she's also.

Beautiful and confident. So I don't know. I was all over the place here. What did you, you, you leave?

Alice: Well, I can chitchat on this because I am actually a former anorexic, so I can talk about this very specifically. I, I am not in her head. I don't know her, but certainly I think that she complicates, I think what we understand to be what somebody who would control their weight.

Would do, you know, which is be a very definitive writer and, and be very clear about her beliefs about herself. We were just talking about on self-respect, which is [00:47:00] an incredible work where she clearly really knows herself and yet it's clear that she has certain disordered eating patterns and certain disordered perceptions about herself.

And I think this comes down to truly so, so that is

Michael: clear to you? I wasn't, you know, I, oh, for sure. Okay. Absolutely.

Alice: For me it comes down to some sort of disordered eating things are, are socially,

Michael: mm-hmm.

Alice: Kind of conditioned that I, I don't get that from her. I get this as almost like a sense of like, it comes, it's just one of her neuroticism Uhhuh and that is a different kind of eating disorder.

And again, I, I'm not gonna say that phrase with a capital and a capital D, like, I'm not gonna diagnose her. But certainly when I see her, I go, oh, she's got a body like I used to have, and she eats almonds for breakfast and diet coke. Like that's.

Michael: That's disordered there. There's a relationship with body and nutrition and consumption.

Totally. That like, huh, what's up? Your mind goes that way

Alice: completely. And I think it would be difficult to interact with her work without acknowledging that, but at the same time, I don't think it's the most important thing about her work.

Michael: No, not at all. [00:48:00] But you know, the question is more about self-reflection and, which is interesting the way it's coming up here.

I actually ended up coming down on the side of, yes, she did like her reflection, but it's more about. I think what I'm mapping on here is her confidence as a writer, and it's that simple. Yeah. Because beyond that, I, this category's always a little bit dangerous in how we speculate, but it feels like especially dangerous here.

I think so. Did you go yes or no? Did you make a call? I'm gonna make you make

Alice: a call. I said I, I said that I was, she was neutral. Okay. Well, you can't do that. That's yes or no. I think that you can. Have disordered eating patterns without being va. I also think you can have disordered eating patterns without being neurotic about what your body looks like or what you look like in the mirror, which is something that people don't really talk about too much.

I think it is just the same as any other kind of addiction or or coping mechanism. So my response to that is I actually think she probably did really like herself. We can try and pathologize it, recognize certain things about myself in her, but. Fundamentally, I guess, do we give a shit? I don't [00:49:00] knows. It's hard to say.

Don't,

Michael: but we gotta do this category on famous and grade, so I, I know exactly. Yeah. So, so

Alice: I think she was. I think positive in general.

Michael: Excellent. That is an outstanding answer and thank you for speaking to it. I think it's a really important distinction. You're drawing. It brings awareness to it. Okay.

Category eight, coffee cocktail or cannabis. This is where we ask which one would we most wanna do with our dead celebrity. Yeah, I got my answer.

Alice: Me too. Me too. This is one of the first ones I answered.

Michael: Well,

Alice: it's all right. Where

Michael: did you go?

Alice: I, I wanna drink, I wanna have a cocktail and a cigarette at 2:00 PM Yeah.

Wednesday. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Made off gym time. That is the,

Michael: yeah.

Alice: What about you?

Michael: Well, I actually also went cocktail. I like the idea of a bourbon drink. She seems like a great drinker. Here's where I went with it though. More specifically, I have an intuition, and I don't know where this is coming from, but that there's a sense of humor in there somewhere.

It is rare that you meet somebody with this kind of intellect and incisiveness who doesn't laugh, and [00:50:00] if you watch her interviews every now and then, there is laughter. It's not much, she's not a like barrel of laughs. But I also think that I, I feel like you could draw that out in her. I almost went smoking a joint for the same reason.

'cause that one is more. I can just imagine the giggles and I kind of want to get her into that giggle zone. There's not a lot of humor in her writing overall. Mm. And, and yet I have, uh, a suspicion that there is a sense of humor that can be drawn out. And if there's something I kind of want, want to draw out in her, it's that.

So

Alice: I love that idea. Yeah. I think she'd be great at a dinner party. I know that's one of those things that people say all the time, but I think she would be. Great. I want her Tony Bourdain. Yeah. At my, not my dinner party. Right.

Michael: I totally agree. All right. That brings us to the final category, category nine, the van der beak.

This category is named after James Vander Beak, who famously said in varsity blues, I don't want your life In that varsity blue scene, James makes a judgment that he does not want a certain kind of life based on just a few characteristics. [00:51:00] So here Alice and I will form a rebuttal to anyone skeptical of how Joan Didion lived.

I like to start this with a counter argument and the obvious one is the grief. I think we haven't really talked about it. Losing her daughter. The worst thing imaginable is losing a child and losing John. I mean, I think that the, not just that. He died before her. He died when Quintana was in the hospital and then she's sort of outta the hospital.

And then the circumstances of her death and what was behind it, I mean, are sort of their own story, but having to grapple with that kind of grief and even, I wonder if it wasn't in her head that she had to do it sort of publicly because of who she was and what she did, that it was sort of like. There was almost an imposition to write about the grief process.

Mm-hmm. I, I, I feel like that took root in her somewhere, so that sucks and I don't want that. What else goes into the counter argument? I don't know. There's actually quite a bit [00:52:00] more here to like. I guess this is where I just begin to flip it around the year. I mentioned this at the top of the episode, the year of magical thinking.

The job it does for people who are going through grief. I don't, I don't think it helps you make sense. All it does is. As I understand it is help you see how there is a complete lack of sense to be had and that actually going crazy is part of the thing, and to give voice and bring somebody into that experience is like, it's such a service.

Mm-hmm. It's such a contribution. So I don't know. I mean, even as I, as I linger on the counter argument, it's almost like she was destined to do that. I mean, I, I, I feel like that book, it's almost like she was born to experience it and write it in some level.

Alice: I find it very hard to separate, do Didion from that sadness and from that grief.

Yeah. I, I, I think that my comprehension of hers certainly tied up in that.

Michael: Yeah.

Alice: I think also just finding your life partner can be, I mean, this is a crazy thing to admit, but when [00:53:00] I met my life partner, I suddenly started thinking about my own death in a way that I had never contemplated before because I didn't have any tangible idea of what the rest of my life would look like because I was just navigating it as a 20 something and just taking every day as it came and and whatnot.

And then when I met my partner, I was like. Oh my God. We're gonna be together when the end comes. And I think that's a really dramatic turn of events in your life where you suddenly start thinking, not in in days, but in decades.

Michael: Yeah. Well, what's interesting though is I think that gets back to the self-respect essay in a, in a, in a way that understanding life's responsibilities and your participation in.

The story and accepting responsibilities is the marker of self-respect. Mm-hmm. And accepting future grief and entanglements and shared destiny is self-love. That's self-respect and fundamental ways, and I feel like that's a journey of adulthood that we all have to go on or mm-hmm. Or we remain trapped in fear and not in motion.

And like if there's one thing I really love about Joan Didion is that she like [00:54:00] takes us through life in a way. She takes us through the mythologies, the stories we tell ourselves and why those need to be broken apart and reassembled. And that's how the human experience goes. My point about fragmented narrative, that's how it's gonna go down and how it's gonna feel for forevermore and grief is coming.

And let's go through that too. I'd love that she made it to 87. You know, I, I feel know, I feel like there's, there's something about the, and it's almost an argument for, for the Vander be for why I want her life. Mm-hmm. So I, I don't know how it draw a circle around all of that. 'cause I don't want it to sound corny, but taking us along for the whole human experience.

Like the service of that is thing number one. I would put on why I want this life. What are the other arguments, Alice? Why else would we want Joan Didion's life?

Alice: Well, the counter argument to, oh, she had a very sad life, is that she also had a very fun life and she had a life. Full of travel and different experiences.

I sometimes I think about like writers who are doing this kind of stuff today and I think of like Michael Lewis or somebody like that. Mm-hmm. Who's really kind of sitting on the edge of these pivotal moments in what we [00:55:00] consider to be like, you know, our. Era now. So, you know, crypto and tech and yeah, financial crashes and, and all these kinds of things.

But she was in it, in that period that will always be infamous for, and she basically constructed it as something that we hinted at before. She was instrumental in paving our understanding of that era in history. Now that we're looking back at it, you know, 60 years since the day. So I just find that to be.

Incredibly exciting thing and I think it, it speaks not only to a sense of talent, but also a sense of luck.

Archival: Yeah.

Alice: She was in the right place at the right time and just so happened like great people sometimes have greatness thrust upon them.

Michael: Yeah. Great stories happen to those who can tell 'em, this was my thing, number five, but you have to.

Alice: Like grab it. You have to be willing to participate. And I think she was absolutely willing to participate.

Michael: There is something about the vehicle of journalism and new journalism in her case that gave her a front row seat to a lot of pivotal and exciting moments throughout a very exciting [00:56:00] time with very interesting people.

She took advantage of the opportunity, right? Mm-hmm. And she rode the wave. Is there anything else you'd add to the, like, why you would want, why you should want this life?

Alice: I think the final thing I would say is it's just really refreshing to encounter somebody that was so kind of sure of their own convictions.

Michael: Yeah.

Alice: She wasn't afraid to question certain things, but I, I do think that she was just very content in herself, content in her talents and content in her methodologies of writing. And I, I like that. I like somebody who's declarative.

Michael: Uh, yeah. And self-assured. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Amen. Completely. Amen. I think that's great.

All right, so let's recap. So number one always said, taking us through the human experience over the course of a lifetime. Mm-hmm. That's a kind of an incredible number one, but we'll just link with it. Number two, uh, we said the job, the vehicle of new journalism and the opportunity to. Participate and to ride the wave of opportunity through some of the most fascinating moments of 20th and 21st century life.

And number three, self-assuredness. What a way to go through life [00:57:00] with confidence and in a declarative way. So with that, James VanDerBeek, I'm Joan Didion, and you want my life.

Before we get to the speed round, if you enjoyed this episode, if it cheered you up, if it made you think about things, then you've got your phone in your hand. Share it with a friend. Think of somebody in your life that could use a trip down the life of Joden, Didion, and all the lessons that we can draw from it.

Alright, speed round plugs for past shows. Alice, if people enjoyed the Joan Didion episode, is there anything in the famous and gravy archives that you think they might also enjoy?

Alice: Well, I, my personal favorite so far, I really love Paul Newman.

Michael: Really love. Oh, I love that you love the

Alice: Paulman episode. I just, I'm a huge Paul Newman fan.

Are you? Wow. He's just the epitome him and, um, so cool. Carrie Grant.

Michael: Mm-hmm.

Alice: Yeah. Incredible.

Michael: If you like John, have you done

Alice: Carrie Grant?

Michael: We haven't. [00:58:00] I'm not sure if he's too dead or not, but you're, I can tell he's

Alice: too dead. He's never a dead in my heart, that's for sure.

Michael: If he's kind of alive, we might talk about him.

I love that. Episode number 96, a ranch dresser. Paul Newman. Okay. I am gonna, I don't know if this is an easy way out or not, but it is sort of in a different category. The Tom Wolf episode. This is episode 52, electric Vanities. I mean, I, I think that there is this story of new journalism and I think the cross streams between fiction and nonfiction and how we.

Shine light on institutions and on our understanding of history kind of all comes together through this tradition of writers. So, uh, episode 52, electric Vanities, Tom Wolf. Here's a little teaser for the next episode of Famous and Gravy. An understated comic actor. He was especially adept at conveying life's tiny bedevil Bedevil.

I

Alice: feel like I'm being bedeviled here.

Michael: [00:59:00] Yeah, this is a Beveling experience. Famous and Gravy Listeners, we'd love hearing from you. If you wanna reach out with a comment question or to participate in our opening quiz, email us at hello@famousandgravy.com. In our show notes, we include all kinds of links, including to our website and our social channels.

Famous Eng Gravy is created and co-hosted by Amad Kipur and me, Michael Osborne. Thank you so much to Alice Flores or for guest hosting on this episode. It was produced by Ali Ola with original music by Kevin Str. Thanks and see you next.