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 heal

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So the point of my keeping a notebook has never been, nor is it now, to have an accurate factual record of what I have been doing or thinking.