The Last Love Song (117 page)

“underwater narrative”: Didion,
Miami,
38.

“liquidity”: ibid., 31.

“cognitive dissonance”: ibid., 99.

“[I]n 1959”: ibid., 13.

“disposal problem”: ibid., 83.

“teeming, incomprehensible presence”: ibid., 55.

“healing process”: ibid., 202.

“That
la lucha
had become”: ibid., 20.

“social dynamic”: ibid., 47.

“women in Chanel”: ibid.

“most theatrical possible”: ibid.

“provisional,” “individuals,” and “affect events directly”: ibid., 13.

“largest CIA installation” and “who left Miami”: ibid., 93.

“As it happens”: Joan Didion,
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968), 157.

“You can't just leave a body”: ibid., 158.

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live”: Joan Didion,
The White Album
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979), 11.

“granddaughter of a geologist”: Didion,
Democracy,
18.

“write anything down”: ibid., 12.

“[c]olors, moisture, heat”: ibid., 16.

“The light at dawn”: ibid., 11.

“Call me the author”: ibid., 16.

“I began thinking”: ibid., 17.

“When novelists speak of unpredictability”: ibid., 215.

“In the spring of 1975”: ibid., 71.

“family in which the colonial impulse”: ibid., 26.

“various investigations into arms and currency”: ibid., 217.

“nothing in this situation”: ibid., 233.

“sudden sense of Inez”: ibid., 234.

“flotsam of some territorial imperative”: ibid., 228.

“When I started thinking about the novel”: Joan Didion, “Second Thoughts: Tyranny in the Tropics: Joan Didion on a Novel That Began with an Angel and Ended with Saigon,”
The Independent,
October 29, 1994; available at
independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/books-second-thoughts-tyranny-in-the-tropics-joan-didion-on-a-novel-that-began-with-an-angel-and-ended-with-saigon-1445563.html
.

“weeping”: Christopher Bollen, “Joan Didion,”
V Magazine
; available at
christopherbollen.com/portfolio/joan-didion.pdf
.

“[I]f man should continue”: Henry Adams,
The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma
(New York: Peter Smith, 1949), 309.

“What Adams really meant”: Timothy Parrish,
From the Civil War to the Apocalypse: Postmodern History and American Fiction
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2008), 194.

“must submit”: Adams,
The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma,
206.

“within the Democratic Party”: Michael Szalay,
Hip Figures: A Literary History of the Democratic Party
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012), 251.

“thinly veiled Jackie Kennedy” and “a left-leaning liberal”: ibid., 252. Szalay's remarks about Harry Victor use quotes from another literary critic, John McClure. I owe Szalay the insight about the Democratic Leadership Council.

“asshole”: Didion,
Democracy,
173.

Didion claimed: See, for example, Didion, “Second Thoughts.”

“Let me die”: Didion,
Democracy,
60.

“Let me just be in the ground”
: Joan Didion,
Blue Nights
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 49.

“After I finished my first novel”: Didion,
Democracy,
39.

“kept a copy”: ibid., 193.

“[D]espite an appearance of factuality” and subsequent quotes from McCarthy: Mary McCarthy, “Love and Death in the Pacific,”
New York Times Book Review,
April 22, 1984; available at
www.nytimes.com/books/00/03/26/specials/mccarthy-didion.html
.

“Miss McCarthy”: John Gregory Dunne, “Conrad's ‘Victory,'”
New York Times,
May 6, 1984; available at
www.nytimes.com/1984/05/06/books/l-conrad-s-victory-168073.html
.

“[J]argon ends”: V. S. Naipaul quoted in Joan Didion, “Without Regret or Hope,”
The New York Review of Books,
June 12, 1980; available at
www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1980/jun/12/without-regret-or-hope/
.

“The wisdom of the heart”: ibid.

“absolutely against regulations”: John Gregory Dunne,
Regards: The Selected Nonfiction of John Gregory Dunne
(New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2006), 394.

“the arteries to the pump are shot” and “In a way”:
True Confessions
movie dialogue cited in Richard Grenier, “Our Lady of Corruption,”
Commentary,
December 1, 1981; available at
commentarymagazine.com/article/our-lady-of-corruption/
.

a public slap from William F. Buckley, Jr.: ibid.

“Oddly enough”: John Gallagher,
Film Directors on Directing
(Los Angeles: ABC-CLIO, 1989), unpaginated.

“[He] has established a distinctive voice”: Michiko Kakutani, “How John Gregory Dunne Puts Himself into His Books,”
New York Times,
May 3, 1982; available at
www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/02/reviews/dunne-work.html
.

“I've always thought a novelist”: Dunne,
Regards,
384.

“What I mean is”: Dunne quoted in Kakutani, “How John Gregory Dunne Puts Himself into His Books.”

“the loss of public honor”: Paul Schrader, “Notes on Film Noir,” posted at
montevallotimetravel.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/notes-on-noir.doc
.

“Miss Didion's dust-jacket image”: Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, “Critic's Notebook: Pondering the Secrets Photographs Reveal,”
New York Times,
July 5, 1984; available at
www.nytimes.com/1984/07/05/arts/critic-s-notebook-pondering-the-secrets-photographs-reveal.html
.

“It just shows somebody”: ibid.

In his letter: John Gregory Dunne letter to Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, August 1, 1984, Lois Wallace Literary Agency Records, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

“history of an investigation” and “absurd daintiness”: Dunne,
Regards,
394–95.

CHAPTER 27

“In truth, she and I” and subsequent quotes from Connolly: Anna Connolly to the author, March 20, 2013.

“There were always open bars”: Tim Steele in conversation with the author, April 2, 2013.

“I knew a lot of privileged kids” and subsequent quotes from Matthew Specktor: Matthew Specktor to the author, June 6, 2013.

“socially vicious” and subsequent quotes from Greenfeld: Karl Taro Greenfeld,
Boy Alone: A Brother's Memoir
(New York: HarperCollins, 2009), 125, 134–35.

“Karl knew some of the same people”: Josh Greenfeld in conversation with the author, April 6, 2013.

Josh Greenfeld said: ibid.

“wishing for death”: Joan Didion,
Blue Nights
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 49.

“She was depressed”: ibid., 48.

“depths, shallows”: ibid., 47.

“borderline personality disorder”: ibid., 48.

“Borderline individuals”: Marsha Linehan quoted in Scott O. Lilienfeld and Hal Arkowitz, “Diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder Is Often Flawed,”
Scientific American,
January 4, 2012; available at
scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-truth-about-borderline&print=true
.

“I have not yet seen that case”: Didion,
Blue Nights,
47.

“
Let me just be in the ground
”: ibid., 49.

Susanna Moore wrote Quintana: Susanna Moore letter to Quintana Roo Dunne, November 17, 1982; Susanna Moore Papers, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

“I killed my girlfriend”: Brad Darrach, “An American Tragedy That Brought Death to Actress Dominique Dunne Now Brings Outrage to Her Family,”
People,
October 10, 1983; available at
people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20086105,00.html
.

“I need you” and subsequent dialogue: Dominick Dunne,
Justice: Crimes, Trials, and Punishments
(New York: Crown, 2001), 2.

“The news is not good,” “brain damage,” and “permission to insert”: ibid., 4–5.

“She looks even worse than Diana did”: Lenny Dunne quoted in Didion,
Blue Nights,
67.

“It's not black and white”: Dominick Dunne,
Justice,
6.

“It's not necessarily an either-or situation”: Joan Didion,
Democracy
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), 151–52.

“Give me your talent”:
Dominick Dunne: After the Party,
directed and produced by Kirsty de Garis and Timothy Jolley (Mercury Media/Road Trip Films/Film Art Docco, 2008), film documentary.

“Oh, what difference does it make?” and subsequent dialogue: Dominick Dunne,
Justice,
7–8.

“two television programs”: ibid., 9.

“Most people I know at Westlake”: Joan Didion,
The Year of Magical Thinking
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 172–73. See also John Gregory Dunne,
Harp
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), 106.

“It all evens out in the end”: Didion,
The Year of Magical Thinking,
173. See also Dunne,
Harp
, 106.

“I have watched too many murder trials”: Dunne,
Harp,
107.

“John, who knew his way around”: Dominick Dunne, “A Death in the Family,” originally published in
Vanity Fair
, March 2004; reprinted in Andrew Blauner, ed.,
Brothers: 26 Stories of Love and Rivalry
(San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009), 191.

“Lenny, Griffin, Alex and I”: ibid.

“When Miss Dunne got in from the bars”: Dominick Dunne,
Justice,
13.

“prejudicial”: ibid., 21.

“opened first one envelope” and subsequent courtroom dialogue: ibid., 30–31.

“Dominick, you don't want to do this”: Kim Masters, “You Don't Want to Do This,” posted at
slate.com/articles/arts/hollywoodland/2007/08/you-don't-want-to-do-this.html
.

He told the story this way: Dominick Dunne,
The Way We Lived Then: Recollections of a Well-Known Name Dropper
(New York: Crown, 1999), 215. See also James H. Hyde, “Dominick Dunne: An Inveterate Connecticut Yankee Tells Us About His Remarkable Life,” posted at
newenglandtimes.com/dominick_dunne/dd_index.shtml
; Marie Brenner, “Behind the Big Round Glasses,”
Vanity Fair,
August 20, 2009; available at
www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2009/08/marie-brenners-dominick-dunne-tribute
.

“If I hadn't kept that journal”: Dominick Dunne quoted in Mick Brown, “Dominick Dunne: Lost and Found,”
The Telegraph,
October 18, 2008; available at
telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/3562275/Dominick-Dunne-lost-and-found.html
.

“Tina … saw something”: Dominick Dunne,
The Way We Lived Then,
215.

“For the first time in my life”: Dominick Dunne,
Justice,
xi.

“great, highbrow, bling-bling”: Hyde, “Dominick Dunne.”

“Wealthy people aren't quite shooting themselves”: Graydon Carter quoted in
Dominick Dunne: After the Party,
film documentary.

“I had an exciting revelation”: Didion,
Blue Nights,
131.

“The guests, gathered on a terrace”: Leslie Garis, “Didion and Dunne: The Rewards of a Literary Marriage,”
New York Times Magazine,
February 8, 1987; available at
www.nytimes.com/1987/02/08/magazine/dunne-didion-the-rewards-of-a-literary-marriage.html
. See also David Rieff,
Los Angeles: Capital of the Third World
(New York: Touchstone, 1992), 92–93.

“The last time I saw Joan”: Don Bachardy in conversation with the author, April 23, 2013.

“You still have not taken my advice”: Dunne,
Harp,
72.

“BRENTWOOD PARK STEAL!”: John Gregory Dunne letter to Tom Johnson, September 8, 1981, Lois Wallace Literary Agency Records, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

“That's Rupert Murdoch for you”: John Gregory Dunne quoted in Lois Wallace letter to Anthony Sheil, September 18, 1983; in ibid.

“At some point … I think I twigged to the fact”: Hari Kunzru, “Joan Didion's Yellow Corvette,” posted at
harikunzru.com/archive/joan-didion-yellow-corvette-interview-transcript-2011
.

“a stressful time,” “adolescent substance abuse,” and the subsequent dialogue exchange: Didion,
Democracy,
61–63.

“reminded me of you” and “Cuddling on the ice floe”: Didion,
Blue Nights,
151.

“Like when someone dies”
: ibid., 168.

“foundered on the twin rocks”: John Gregory Dunne,
Regards
:
The Selected Nonfiction of John Gregory Dunne
(New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2006), 61.

“the pay is good”: John Gregory Dunne,
The Red White and Blue
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), 34.

“celebrity and political action”: ibid., 15.

“not guilty by reason of insanity”: ibid., 474.

“There is in the development of every motion picture”: Joan Didion,
Political Fictions
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), 111.

“a lovely little war”: posted at
pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/reagan-grenada/
.

“the number of medals”: Didion,
Political Fictions,
101.

“new generation with no alternative source of information”: ibid., 96.