“Blue Nights” Enhanced Ebook Now Available

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Joan Didion’s publisher Knopf released a new edition of Blue Nights earlier this month. It’s an ebook which has been supplemented with video content made by Didion’s nephew, the actor and director Griffin Dunne. He filmed the writer reading chapters 1, 2 and 7 aloud. In October 2011, we posted the videos here on Joan-Didion.info. According to the [...]

Video of New York “Blue Nights” Event Released

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On Monday, November 21, Joan Didion participated in a public talk with the writer Sloane Crosley at the New York Public Library. A video of the event has been released, and is embedded here.  

Video of Los Angeles “Blue Nights” Event Released

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On Wednesday, November 16, Joan Didion engaged in a conversation with David L. Ulin, a book critic at the Los Angeles Times. In addition to Blue Nights, the pair discussed some of Didion’s other non-fiction work. Didion also answered questions from the audience. The Los Angeles Library Foundation has released a video of the event, [...]

“Blue Nights” is Now Available

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Joan Didion’s new memoir, Blue Nights, has been released. Click this sponsored link to visit Amazon.com and order your copy today.

Griffin Dunne Makes Short “Blue Nights” Film

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Griffin Dunne, the nephew of Joan Didion and himself an accomplished director, has made a short film of Didion reading aloud from her new memoir, Blue Nights. Dunne describes it as “an audiobook for the eyes.” Visual interest is added by an array of family photographs which are cut together to illustrate Didion’s lines as [...]

“Blue Nights” is a Work of Dignity, “Vanity Fair” Says

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Christopher Hitchens briefly reviews Joan Didion’s upcoming memoir in the October issue of Vanity Fair. “Didion, here slightly syncopating in the Bob Dylan manner, has striven with intense dignity and courage in Blue Nights to deepen and extend the effect of The Year of Magical Thinking,” he notes. Hitchens reads this work as a testament to [...]

Vanessa Redgrave to Narrate “Blue Nights” Audiobook

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The crisp, distinctive voice of Vanessa Redgrave, star of stage and screen, will be heard on the audiobook recording of Blue Nights. Close followers of Joan Didion’s work will recall that Redgrave was the actress cast to play the role of Didion in The Year of Magical Thinking: The Play when it opened on Broadway in March, 2007. [...]

Some “Blue Nights” Book Tour Details Released

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Vintage Books has provided Joan-Didion.info with the particulars of Joan Didion’s upcoming book tour promoting Blue Nights. In turn, we have added the information to our Readings and Events page. The full details of some events are not yet available, so we recommend that readers bookmark the page and check back for the latest updates. Didion will appear at [...]

Film of Norman Mailer’s “The Deer Park” in Development

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In the 1980s, Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne were commissioned by the producer Elliott Krastner to write the screenplay for an adaptation of Norman Mailer’s novel, The Deer Park. In a caprice of the Hollywood system, the film never made it into production. However, The Daily reports that Cassian Elwes, Krastner’s stepson, recently inherited [...]

Didion Receives Honorary Degree from Yale

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Yale University awarded Joan Didion an honorary Doctor of Letters degree at commencement on Monday. Richard Levine, the president of the university, conferred the honor. He praised Didion’s influence on two generations of writers and the high standard her work continues to set for American prose. “In unflinching prose, you explore themes of love and [...]