It’s really not a good interview, but it’s the first one that came up on YouTube, and the books talked about are the good ones, and the lines the interviewer quotes are good ones (with close-ups of the paragraphs! SWOON!), and after 11:50 minutes of stilted, hilarious example upon stilted, hilarious example of why great writers should never do television—seriously, just read the essays—the interviewer LITERALLY says: “Joan Didion is going to be with us for three hours today.”

If you listen closely—even though she’s not onscreen—you can hear Joan Didion’s heart stop.

Christopher Frizzelle was The Stranger's print editor, and first joined the staff in 2003. He was the editor-in-chief from 2007 to 2016, and edited the story by Eli Sanders that won a 2012 Pulitzer...

5 replies on “Sometimes on a Tuesday Night All You Want to Do Is YouTube Videos of Joan Didion”

  4. I like the late 1960s/early 1970s interviews where you had writers sniping at each other, like Buckley/Vidal, Flannery+Vidal vs. Mailer…

  5. Joan Didion … 78 years old and fielding questions in a brutally long interview. You no like?

    Kudos to Connie Brod, one of the great hosts, as always.

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