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Here are a few of the Joans I know The girl who arrives at Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York feeling uneasy about her dress The woman who rubs an ice cube against her lower back in a hotel room with a broken air-conditioning unit The journalist who turns down acid offered to her by an interviewee When I think of Joan Didion, I think of a packing list for a reporting trip that included bourbon and two skirts And then the story of her husband reading her own book to her, cover to cover, as a birthday gift   Of course, I don’t know Joan Didion at all She renders these images from her life so vividly, but then with sleight of hand she manages to obscure herself What is Joan Didion like at a party? Does she move her hands as she speaks? Is she reserved? Funny? How did she act as a wife, as a mom?   There’s a tendency to adopt a lofty tone when addressing Didion’s career Presenting her with the National Humanities Medal in 2012, Barack Obama called her ‘one of the most celebrated writers of her generation … one of our sharpest, most respected observers of American politics and culture’ Then, to lighten the mood, the President added, ‘I’m surprised she hasn’t already gotten this award’ His joke was greeted with muffled laughter   Most of Didion’s writing is not autobiographical She’s written five novels and nine screenplays; her political journalism has covered American involvement in El Salvador, Cuban exiles in Miami, the Bush and Clinton administrations The spectre of her great celebrity, however, derives from her personal writing But since there is no tell-all autobiography in her oeuvre, no David Copperfield-esque narrative to detail specific motivations for specific events, her readers are left to parse out a timeline for themselves They have a few particular books from which to cull   Didion’s most recent books, Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights, recount her grief and loss following the deaths of her husband and daughter They are arguably her most revealing works But the classic fan-favourites are Slouching