1A: Joan Didion

Joan Didion in Conversation with Sloane Crosley

from The New York Public Library on FORA.tv

If you have time, and I hope you do, check out some of these links re: Joan Didion.  They may help you with "On Morality."

15 Great Essays by Joan Didion

Didion on Why I Write

You can find an interview with Didion at The Art of Fiction, no. 71, Paris Review, Fall-Winter 1978.

You can find an interview with Didion at The Art of Nonfiction No.1 Paris Review, Spring 2006

"Joan Didion: Writer" by Sheila Heti, The Believer, undated.

“I Was No Longer Afraid to Die. I Was Now Afraid Not to Die.” The secret subject of Joan Didion’s work has always been her troubled daughter. Her wrenching new memoir tells us why" by Boris Kachka, New York magazine, Oct 16, 2011 

"Notes on a Voice: Joan Didion" by Robert Butler, from Intelligent Life, Summer 2011

The New York Times Joan Didion Times Topic page.

"The Autumn of Joan Didion" by Caitlin Flanagan, The Atlantic, December 20, 2011

The Unclosed Circle by Sarah Kerr, New York Review of Books, April 26, 2007. A review of Didion's We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction

"At least some of the time, the world appears to me as a painting by Hieronymus Bosch," Didion declares in "On Morality." This triptych, above, known as "The Garden of Earthly Delights," is the most famous of Bosch's painting, the Dutch artist who lived from 1450-1516. What does the painting show, from left to right? What does this painting tell us about Didion's state of mind within her essay? Learn more about Bosch at this site dedicated to him.