Joan Didion, American journalist and author, dies at age 87

Sian Cain and Edward Helmore in The Guardian:

Known for her pioneering blend of the personal and the political in her journalism and essays, Didion became a household name with her writing on US society.

As a standout female figure in the male-dominated “new journalism” movement alongside Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote and Gay Talese, Didion cast her precise, coolly detached eye over both American society and her own life in writing that was collected in books including Slouching Towards Bethlehem, her journey through the promise and dissolution of California’s 60s counterculture, and The White Album, which began in typically economic style, with: “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”

“We have kind of evolved into a society where grieving is totally hidden. It doesn’t take place in our family. It takes place not at all,” she told the Associated Press in 2005 after publishing The Year of Magical Thinking, an account of losing her husband John Gregory Dunne.

More here.