A writer whose fame is fourfold—as novelist, essayist, journalist, and screenwriter—Joan Didion was born in 1934 in California, where her family had lived for five generations. After graduation from the University of California at Berkeley, she spent a few years in New York City, working as a feature editor for the fashion magazine Vogue. She gained wide notice in the 1960s and 1970s with the publication of the essay collections Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968) and The White Album (1979) and the novels River Run (1963), Play It as It Lays (1971), and A Book of Common Prayer (1977). Salvador (1983), her book-length essay based on a visit to war-torn El Salvador, and Miami (1987), a study of Cuban exiles in Florida, also received close attention. With her late husband, John Gregory Dunne, Didion coauthored a number of screenplays, notably for A Star Is Born (1976), True Confessions (1981), and Up Close and Personal (1996). Her latest books are Where I Was From (2003), an assessment of her native California; The Year of Magical Thinking (2005), an examination of Didion’s reactions to Dunne’s sudden death; and Blue Nights (2011), an emotional memoir about the death of their adult daughter after an extended illness.
In this audiobook excerpt from Slouching Towards Bethlehem recorded in 2012, actor Diane Keaton reads one of Didion’s best-loved essays. “The Santa Ana” expresses with vivid intensity the effects of a weather phenomenon peculiar to Southern California.
Download the transcript.
Listen to “The Santa Ana,” and respond to the following questions.