Blue Nights

In Joan Didion's world, there are nothing but exemplary people and status markers. Natasha Richardson  didn't just cook; she "did a perfect buerre blanc." When Didion's daughter wed, the cake came from Payard. The whole work is dusted with brand names. Everything is pitched upward, is unassailable. The clueless intellectual is a stock figure, but he exists. I think of Edmund Wilson not being able to figure out a checkbook and getting taken for all his money late in life. In Didion's case, a loose baby tooth might require a trip to the emergency room. Drilling into everything with a colossal intellect, she comes up with dust.