Joan Didion, R.I.P.
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Her credo was that real Americans can only fall from grace, and any journey in the other direction is simply wrong.
NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE W hen I wandered into a bookstore in Palm Beach, Fla., a few weeks ago, I found a collection of modern Christmas short stories. It included an entry by Joan Didion. “That’s funny,” I thought. “I didn’t know she celebrates such things.” And, sure enough, the story ends in tears. I wasn’t surprised when Didion celebrated this Christmas early in her own, rather morbid way: She succumbed to Parkinson’s disease on Thursday in her Manhattan apartment.
That news came as a shock to no one else, either. Didion was 87 years old and wispy. She’d been effectively retired since 2011, when she …
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