RIP: Joan Didion, legendary American writer, dead at 87.

Twenty years ago, reviewing The White Album and Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Orrin Judd wrote, “Thankfully, we muddled through the decades-long period of dread out of which these pieces grew, but anyone who is trying to recapture the pervasive sense of desperation and gloom that drenched the late ’60s and the ’70s can do no better than to look here.  At least in these two early collections, Joan Didion’s work must rank her with Tom Wolfe as one of the most perceptive observers of late 20th Century American culture.  I really just can’t recommend them highly enough.”