Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold Page #2

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doing makeup or something like that

but these weren't like that.

They were personal pieces.

I started writing a novel, basically,

when I came to New York.

That was sort of what you... did.

You got out of school,

and now you were gonna write a novel.

So, I'd work all day at Vogue

then I'd come home...

and have dinner or whatever and do this.

I didn't have any

real clear picture of how to do it.

So, I would just do parts of it.

And then I would just pin up

these parts on the walls of my apartment.

I think ten people read it.

I think a total of 11 copies were sold.

First time I saw her in print

was probably her first novel

which was Run River.

It's not her best novel,

but it was her first, and it was the, uh...

The, uh, story about people we knew.

It was a Sacramento story.

So, I've always enjoyed that.

"Here was the story

about my father.

There was about him a sadness so pervasive

that it colored even those moments

when he seemed to be having a good time.

He could be in the middle of a party at

our own house, sitting at the piano,

a bourbon highball always within reach.

The tension he transmitted

would seem so great

that I would have to leave,

run to my room and close the door."

My father was severely depressed.

I didn't realize that at the time.

I thought...

this depressed behavior

was totally normal.

"We went to the movies

three or four afternoons a week.

And it was there that

I first saw John Wayne.

I heard him tell a girl in a picture

he'd build her a house

at the bend in the river

where the cottonwoods grow.

Deep in that part of my heart

where the artificial rain forever falls...

that is still the line I wait to hear.

As it happened, I did not grow up to be

the woman who is the heroine in a Western.

All of the men I have known

have had many virtues

and have taken me to live in

many places I have come to love,

they have never been John Wayne.

They have never taken me to that bend

in the river where the cottonwoods grow."

He's, you know, a protector.

You married a protector.

I did.

Although...

Also... Also a hothead.

- Quick with a gun.

- Yeah.

I met John Gregory Dunne at

TIME magazine.

We were sitting in this building,

late at night

with too much to drink.

And, so, there were a lot of

affairs going on.

But people were very quiet about it.

John was a great gossip...

and, uh, always came into my office...

and held up his hand and said,

"This, you will not believe."

I made him a character in a novel

about working at a news magazine.

The beginning of the book had a claimer

instead of a disclaimer. And it said,

"The character of Andy Wolferman is

based on John Gregory Dunne,

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