Her collection of essays,
Slouching Towards Bethlehem, appeared in 1968, followed in 1970 by the novel
Play It As It Lays, her first large commercial success, and another bestselling novel,
A Book of Common Prayer, in 1977. Her husband, himself the author of four books,
Delano,
The Studio,
Vegas, and
True Confessions, as well as numerous magazine articles, collaborated with her on several projects, including a column in the
Saturday Evening Post, the screenplays for three films--
The Panic in Needle Park,
Such Good Friends, and
Play It As It Lays --the early drafts of the script for
A Star Is Born, and a screen treatment of "The Todd Dossier," with Collier Young.
Dunne and Didion moved to Los Angeles in 1964 and now reside in a home on the beach at Trancas, California, with their daughter Quintana Dunne, born in 1966. Didion has taught at UCLA, and her works in progress include Fairytales, a nonfiction work about California, and Angel Visits, a novel set in Hawaii.
Didion's novels reverberate with a sense of loss, disorder, anxiety, and destruction on both a personal and cultural scale. "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world." These lines and the Yeats poem from which they come hold a special fascination for Joan Didion which is reflected in her fictional work.
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