All of that is to say that because Tom Wolfe and because James Baldwin and Hunter S. Thompson and Michael Herr, but because Didion most of all, an American essay today without the sudden and revelatory personal aside is hardly an American essay at all.
Joan Didion turns 80 this month, and is still one of the most present literary authors of our times. At the Los Angeles Review of Books, Emmett Rensin recalls how the writer influenced his life and work as an essayist.
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