Joan Didion
At 50, 'New York Review of Books' celebrates the longevity of a magazine, and a mission
The Review, which celebrated its 50th anniversary last night at Town Hall, found its niche almost immediately, and has been largely immune to the shifts in the business of cultural production and criticism, enduring for five decades and retaining its spot as the elite platform for probing, diverse cultural criticism and argument, right to the present day. More
Getting personal: Joan Didion at the New York Public Library
Didion steered the conversation warmly but firmly, charming the room with a few select intimacies while remaining, on the whole, guarded. Her husband, she said, had compared her freelance writing to being "nibbled to death by ducks." She drinks bourbon when she self-edits, though has lately moved more to white wine. She hates the word memoir, too "soft." She will order take-out Chinese for Thanksgiving. There's no catharsis in writing about her life. More
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