believed to be the most sophisticated and compelling city in the world. Yet it was a place where groceries were delivered, she wrote, “as if in Jakarta, by young men with pushcarts.” She wrote about the graft and corruption endemic to the city, where it had historically taken ten years to construct a new public school and 20 to 30 years to build a

“Has anything replaced it?” “Work hard.” She laughed. “That seems to be your all-purpose solution.” “I think we have to find another code,” she said. I asked what that code might involve. “I have no idea.” Joan was silent a few moments, staring at her hands in her lap. She said it would have to include “acceptance of what is.” She thought a moment

Joan said “Yeah, there are some people I can talk to. But not in the exact same way. Not all day long.” She gave a laugh. “I mean, it was not like just talking to somebody at dinner…it was an ongoing conversation.” Not all married couples have that kind of connection, I said. She nodded, saying she believes marriage is a decision, not a matter of

John wandered into the room, wearing a blue bathrobe. “I got the Saturday jits,” he said. “I got anxiety crawling over me. Do you have any coke?” She went to the kitchen to get him a Coca Cola. “Joan never writes about a place that’s not hot,” he said. “The day she writes about a Boston winter will be the day it’s all over.”

“Well, yes,” she said, “but the place strikes me as sweet, it smells like flowers. It is a pink environment and it makes me feel good. All other climates strike me as hostile.”

exclusionary

Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki,

Caitlin Flanagan, who never met Joan, wrote in The Atlantic in 2012 that Joan was a neglectful mother, who worked constantly and “left Quintana alone with a variety of sitters—two teenage boys who happened to live next door, a woman who ‘saw death’ in Joan Didion’s aura, and whatever hotel sitter was on duty many, many times...She balanced ill

Over time, Susanna said, “I learned to read her gestures and expressions, studying her as if she were a rune of magical and mysterious significance. Which of course she was.”