Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

Joan Didion, ‘New Journalist’ Who Explored Culture and Chaos, Dies at 87

For a sliver, at least, of my midwesterner generation she made us citizens of California, or perhaps wish we were.

By the strength of her prose she took our adolescent Beach-Boy puppy-love and gave it an intoxicating depth and sense of physical, cultural and metaphoric place for us folks who had left home and were looking to plant roots somewhere.

I never ended up living in California, the spell lost its grip as my roots lodged and occupied me in the Pacific northwest, but there’s an aura to the south created by Didion (and Chandler and Stegner) that still retains its allure.