Joan Didion, Literary Titan, Succumbs To Parkinson's Disease At 87

Joan Didion, a resounding voice in American literature who insightfully captured the ’60s and California through observant and beautiful language, died on Thursday at home in Manhattan. She was 87 years old, Emily Kirkpatrick reported for Vanity Fair.

Photo Insert: Joan Didion became renowned for her linguistic froideur, keen insights, and provocative yet elegant prose, writing fiction, nonfiction, and screenplays over the course of her lengthy career.

The famed writer’s cause of death was Parkinson’s disease, according to an email sent by her publisher, Paul Bogaards, an executive at Knopf, to The New York Times. Her friend, the writer Hilton Als, also confirmed the news on Instagram. He posted a black square with the simple caption: “Joan Didion. 12.5.34–12.23.21.”

Didion’s death comes 18 years after her husband, John Gregory Dunne, died of a heart attack at 71 in 2003. (Dunne’s brother was longtime Vanity Fair special correspondent Dominick Dunne.) Two years later, Didion’s daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne, died of pancreatitis and septic shock.

Didion became renowned for her linguistic froideur, keen insights, and provocative yet elegant prose, writing fiction, nonfiction, and screenplays over the course of her lengthy career. But she saved her most personal subjects for last.

Her acclaimed 2005 book, “The Year of Magical Thinking,” in which she grappled with the unexpected death of her husband, won the National Book Award for Nonfiction. She also attempted to come to terms with the death of her child in 2011’s “Blue Nights.” Didion was born on December 5, 1934, in Sacramento to Frank and Eduene (Jerrett) Didion.

The author was a fifth-generation Californian descended from settlers who parted ways with the Donner party in 1846 before that group met its infamous end. During her junior year at the University of California, Berkeley, Didion entered a short story contest in Mademoiselle, winning a spot as the magazine’s guest fiction editor.

The following year, she won another essay contest for Vogue, turning down the prize of a trip to Paris in favor of a job at the magazine.

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