She was not yet recognizable as Joan Didion, icon.
She had also been a guest lecturer before, most notably at Yale a year prior. In 1973, Tom Wolfe included Didion in his anthology The New Journalism, which solidified her place alongside Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, Gay Talese, George Plimpton, and other practitioners of an experience-driven, subjective brand of reporting (even if she always insisted the best journalists knew to stand outside the story). By then, she was successful, having published two novels ( Run River and Play It as It Lays) and a very highly regarded book of essays ( Slouching Towards Bethlehem), along with scores of articles, reviews, and columns. In the spring of 1975, 40-year-old Joan Didion was both the “Regents’ Lecturer” at UC Berkeley, her alma mater, and kind of a nervous wreck. Her final book, the essay collection Let Me Tell You What I Mean, was released in January 2021 the following essay was first published that month.
Editor’s note: The writer Joan Didion died on December 23, 2021, at the age of 87.
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