From left: Susan Sontag, Barbara Epstein, Elizabeth Hardwick and Joan Didion. Photo: Todd Eberle, NY, 1999.

In a blog post on the Times website, Timothy Egan wrote yesterday about those who find success relatively late in life. At one time, he coveted the ‘wunderkind’, the young genius who produces brilliant work early on in their career, like F. Scott Fitzgerald or Vincent van Gogh. But now, perhaps through necessity, he finds inspiration in the late bloomer, “somebody who kicks around in frustration and misdirection for decades before going on a brilliant late-innings streak.”

In politics, Egan points to Ted Kennedy as one who started out as a tempestuous youth, but later became a “master of the Senate”, one who’s “legislative creativity” only increased with age. Hillary Clinton also looks to Egan to be set to follow this route, a better politician and diplomat now than the “policy-making 40-something who had trouble controlling her temper, or getting the results she wanted.”

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Similarly, some writers take a little time to get going. “For every J.D. Salinger, who published “The Catcher in the Rye” when he was 32, there is a Mark Twain, who brought out “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” at 49,” Egan writes. Though Ernest Hemingway wrote “The Sun Also Rises” when he was just 27, Norman Maclean only settled down to write his masterpiece, “A River Runs Through It”, when he was 74. These writers would appear to hold with Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker piece, which claimed that for feats requiring knowledge of craft, and constant experimenting to get it right, age may actually be a benefit.

… [S]ometimes genius is anything but rarefied; sometimes it’s just the thing that emerges after twenty years of working at your kitchen table.

There is still another, even rarer category of writer: the great early genius who later dazzles readers with a glorious second act. Susan Sontag wrote “In America” in 1999; Elisabeth Hardwick’s celebrated biography, “Herman Melville”, was published in 2000. Joan Didion is another such individual: seemingly immune to senescence, her late style bears little resemblance to her early work, and yet continues to impress readers with its intelligence and honesty. As Egan puts it:

Nobody was a better American essayist in the 1970s and 80s than Joan Didion. But the writerly sprint culminating in her late-years memoir “The Year of Magical Thinking” was breathtaking. She finished the book just days after her 70th birthday.

Of course, the “second-act ace” can be found in other realms outside literature. Vanessa Redgrave will reportedly star in “Driving Miss Daisy”, the play by Alfred Uhry, this October at the John Golden Theatre on Broadway. This comes just a few weeks after confiding in a radio interview that she wished to take a break from work to enable her to “take time to think, to read, to garden with my daughter and be with my grandchildren more and, you know, take stock.”

But, as every second-act ace must surely know, you don’t get a third.

Vanessa Redgrave, the Academy Award-winning actress, recently gave an interview to BBC Radio 4 in which she spoke about the death of three members of her immediate family in the last year and a half.

In March of last year, Redgrave’s daughter, the actress Natasha Richardson, died following a skiing accident. She was 45. Then, in April of this year, Redgrave’s brother Corin died at age 70. Less than a month later their younger sister Lynn also died aged 67. Both Corin and Lynn were well regarded actors in their own right; indeed, Lynn was nominated for an Academy Award for Georgy Girl and Corin garnered a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Play in 1999 for his portrayal of Boss Whalen in Tennessee Williams’s Not About Nightingales.

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The death of Natasha came soon after Vanessa Redgrave had played the part of Joan Didion in an adaptation of Didion’s The Year Of Magical Thinking, performing first on Broadway and then at London’s National Theatre.

In the BBC interview with Jenni Murray, she spoke about the similarity between the subject-matter of the play and her own circumstances:

Everybody who came to see that play said they realised we all go through these extraordinary experiences of walking into another country that we never imagined and couldn’t imagine – the country of having lost the member of the family whom we just adore.

It’s a very strange country and it does strange things to your mind but among those strange things is the wonderful thing that you realise how important it is to be very, very grateful for the love you’ve had and all the wonderful things to remember. And things like that don’t end.

She also spoke about how the presence of death had impacted her own mind:

There’s a lot of denial and magical thinking that comes with death but the great thing is that if you are thinking about the children and grand children you’re also thinking a lot more deeply than perhaps you were before. I certainly realised what a gift Natasha was to everyone, certainly to me as her mum. Her boys have a wonderful father and that’s what she would most wish for.

Redgrave went on to explain that she is currently taking a break from work, opting instead to “take time to think, to read, to garden with my daughter and be with my grandchildren more and, you know, take stock.”

Play interview with Vanessa Redgrave and Jenni Murray on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour: Vanessa Redgrave Speaks About Personal Loss

Joan Didion talks with Today show host Katie Couric about the death of her husband and daughter, as recounted in her book The Year of Magical Thinking. (2005)

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Norris Church Mailer, Norman Mailer’s wife of 33 years, has named “The Year of Magical Thinking” as one of her five favorite memoirs of all time. Her list was compiled for The Wall Street Journal‘s “Five Best” series, where she writes:

In “The Year of Magical Thinking,” Joan Didion shows she is the stuff of which our pioneer grandmothers were made: delicate lace crocheted out of steel thread. She relates the story of visiting her comatose daughter in the ICU only to come home and have her husband drop dead while she’s fixing dinner. In the telling, Didion seems so fragile that you worry she’s going to keel over at any minute, yet somehow she manages to prop up everyone around her. She’s the one who takes care of things: the phone calls, the autopsy, the cremation, the memorial service. At the same time, in what is for her a perfectly rational state of mind, she refuses to throw away her husband’s shoes because he will need them when he comes back. Through a lifetime of self-discipline as a writer, she is able to step away from her own strong mind and observe what she is doing; at the same time, she is powerless to control what is happening. If we haven’t all yet been where she was—the emergency room, the funeral home—we will be eventually, and she shows us that it’s OK to go a little mad when you need to. Madness sometimes is only sanity stretching its legs before it tackles another stint of work.

Norris Church Mailer’s own memoir, entitled “A Ticket to the Circus: A Memoir“, was published by Random House this year. In it she writes about the life she shared with Norman, which ended when he died of acute renal failure in 2007. Her other favorite memoirs include “Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir” by Christopher Buckley and “Unto the Sons” by Gay Talese.

Didion will be 75 on the 5th of December. Happy birthday Joan from the staff of this site, and on behalf of our wonderful readers!

Vanessa Redgrave will reprise her starring role from the 2007 Broadway play “The Year of Magical Thinking” at a performance on Monday to benefit programs run by United Nations charities.

The play is based on Joan Didion‘s 2005 memoir chronicling the deaths of her daughter and husband. When Redgrave performs Monday at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, it will be the first time she has played the role since the death of her own daughter, actress Natasha Richardson, in March.

“The message of this play is so important to me that I want to make sure that it can be heard by as wide an audience as possible,” Redgrave said in a statement. “This is an experience we all go through, young and old alike. It would be wonderful to see the Cathedral filled with both those whose lives are fully ahead of them, as well as those who know fully what that road is like.”

Source.

YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING – Debut October 10, 2009, Saturday at 21:30 at Teatro Bibi Ferreira. Season: Fridays and Saturdays at 21:30 and Sundays at 19 hours, until 1 November 2009.

Author: Joan Didion. Direction: Caio de Andrade. Cast: Imara Reis. Translation: Erica de Almeida Rego Migon and Ursula de Almeida Rego Migon. Set and costume design: Célia Alves. Soundtrack: Caio de Andrade. Lighting: Hiram Ravache. Photographer: Jefferson Martins. Design: Emmanuel Della Nina. Production Manager: Luque Daltrozo. Director: Daltrozo Produções Ltda. Indication group: 14 years. Tickets: £ 40.00 (Fridays and Sundays) and $ 60.00 (Saturday) – half price for students and seniors. Indication group: 14 years. Duration: 60 minutes.

TEATRO BIBI FERREIRA – Avenida Brigadeiro Luís Antônio, 931 – Bela Vista. Phone: (11) 3105-3129. Conveniado Parking: $ 7.00. Capacity: 300 seats. Box office: From Tuesday to Sunday from 14.30. Accepts cash, check and cards Visanet. Join Fast: 4003-1212 www.ingressorapido.com.br Air Conditioning. Access for disabled people. www.teatrobibiferreira.com.br

Teatro Sérgio Cardoso – Sala Paschoal Charlemagne. Reestréia November 13, at 21h30 (Fridays at 21h30 on Saturdays at 21h, Sunday, at 19 hours, tickets, $ 20.00 and $ 10.00 a half). Rua Rui Barbosa, 153. Bela Vista. Tel: 3288 0136. Close to subways and San Joaquin Brig. Accessibility for people with special needs. Box Office: Wednesday to Sunday from 15h to 19h (advance sales). Sale through the site entrance fast: www.ingressorapido.com.br. Capacity – 144 seats. Season – Fridays at 21h30, Saturdays at 21 pm and Sunday at 19 hours. Tickets – $ 20.00 and $ 10.00 (half). Cards – Visa. Until December 20.

Burt Britton has auctioned off some of his vast collection of celebrity self-portraits, including those of writers Joan Didion and John Updike.

The Daily Beast has the full story:

Working at the famed Strand bookstore in New York for a decade, and later owning Books & Company on Madison Avenue, Britton befriended many of the writers and artists whose portraits he gathered. And his collection reads like a who’s who of Manhattan during a bygone era: Brassaï, David Hockney, Allen Ginsberg, and Tom Wolfe all sketched for him. In 1976, Britton published a book from the drawings,Self-Portrait: Book People Picture Themselves, which has since gone out of print, leaving the auction the only place to see Paul Newman’s cheeky interpretation of himself in his later years.

Many of the portraits were drawn during the height of the scribbler’s fame and show how their life and work were intertwined. Photographer André Kertész drew his eye as a lens and claimed, “I am the camera!” Where the Wild Things Are author and illustrator Maurice Sendak sketched himself as one of his Wild Things, hands crossed over a furry stomach, six years after his book hit the shelves.

Writers weren’t short on creativity either. The blind Argentine novelist Jorge Luis Borges sketched his drawing using one finger guided by his free hand. True to form, Joan Didion created her portrait, inscribing a sheet of lined paper with faults, including, “Too thin. Astigmatic. Has no visual sense of self,” and her thumbprint.

On most of the ink or pencil drawings, an autograph, typically the prized possession for any other collector, is merely an afterthought to the rare glimpse of an artist’s self-expression. Britton himself has been somewhat reclusive, and a self-portrait of the collector was nowhere to be found in the book or auction, which may only represent a quarter of his vast—and enviable—trove. It’s only fitting that the quiet man among the book stacks was able to draw out intimate details from artists used to hiding behind their own work.

Click here to see a gallery of some of the self-portraits.

On Thursday, September 10th, Dominick Dunne’s funeral took place at a Mass at St. Vincent Ferrer Church in Manhattan. Hundreds attended from the worlds of society and culture, including Richard Gere, Julianna Margulies, Liev Schreiber, and Diane von Furstenberg.

Joan Didion was, of course, also in attendance. She spoke of Dunne ultimately as family-orientated and brave, according to the Huffington Post:

…Even though she acknowledged that he and his late brother, her husband, novelist and screenwriter John Gregory Dunne, frequently had periods of disagreement.

“I came to see the very clear pleasure he took at seeing a celebrity,” Didion said. “He wasn’t ashamed when people spoke to him on the street and was never afraid to share the moment.”

She also spoke of him as a trusted confidant, as recorded on the NYTimes.com blog ‘Media Decoder’. “…he was the first person she called when Didion’s husband died, in part because he knew tragedy in all of its dimensions.”

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