Scientology is a very strange sect. It reminds me of the Hare Krishna sect that was popular in the late ‘60’s and early’70s in the U.S. It has pretty much died out here but is still relevant in India. I think Scientology is on the same downward spiral. Weird, money hungry cults passing themselves off as religions when all they want is $$$.
Yeah… I have been working on my '“Goodbye to all that” on leaving Baldwin world and I've been revisiting a lot of Joan Didion because of her piece of that title on leaving NYC behind. I have become jaded with the scene, if you will.
It is hard to grasp, I think, for people outside of the Hollywood bubble how bizarre and barking mad some of these celebs are from years in the fishbowl. I know that's one of the reasons I got drawn in.
It just seems so much like kismet in because this weekend I was listening to Didion’s White Album audiobook in the background and I'd forgotten, or sublimated in my mind, that Joan references John and Michelle Phillips taking a detour to pick up a friend on their way to the hospital to have Chynna. Didion essentially said being around musicians of the Laurel Canyon scene was maddening and utterly random and she said that John and Michelle were the most emblematic to her of the music business.
Your deep dive into Baldwiniana is epic, Leo. I’ve greatly enjoyed your writings. I have to take periodic breaks from Pepino Nation at Reddit myself, because gorging on their tales gets so depressing. Their TLC show upset me further. How could Alec and Hillary possibly imagine that they could gain a new public with segments devoted to cursing toddlers and omnipresent dog poo?
Funny you should mention “Goodbye to All That” and Joan Didion, because recent events make me think of—and mention—her constantly. My poor husband is bearing the brunt of my rekindled obsession. There’s Lili Anolik’s new book about frenemies Didion and Eve Babitz. Even though Didion died in 2021, she’s got a book coming out in April, “Notes to John,” from her accounts of later-life psychiatric treatment that were found in a file folder next to her desk. As circumspect as she was about public disclosure during her life, thousands of pages of letters, notes, and personal items belonging to her and her husband were donated to the New York Public Library. All it takes to look is a library card, now that the archive is open, and randos are clogging the stacks. (To the librarians’ ill-concealed glee.) Menus and recipes from her famous dinner parties. Letters to her parents. It’s incredible. If I lived in NYC, I’d be there. Another recent discovery has been a story on Vanity Fair about Didion’s first love, and great passion, Noel Parmentel Jr., the roue who selected John Gregory Dunne as her husband. Do you think Didion had a traumatic illegal abortion? I do.
It’s said we should never meet our idols, but I actually did: I talked to Didion several times before graduate journalism colloquia I technically had no right to attend as a sophomore at Berkeley. That was when she was a visiting prof, which she’s written about, as has Caitlin Flanagan in The Atlantic. She really is that tiny and whispery. (During their prolonged falling-out, according to Dominick Dunne’s biography by Robert Hofler, he referred to his brother and SIL as “Big Time” and “Frail.”) I recalled recently that Didion had seemed quite put out when I admitted to her that I was putting myself through uni. When my advisor introduced us, as a point of common interest he mentioned to her that my parents had moved to Hawai’i. She’d immediately assumed they were wealthy, a notion not disabused by the fact that I was able to hold up my end when she discussed Pearl Harbor, the Punchbowl, and her favorite hotels. (I’d once had a Coke at the Royal Hawaiian.) And here I was washing other people’s dishes, dear dear. Even when I was very young, as much as I then admired her work, I was infuriated by her claim of being so poor while working at Vogue, she was charging food at the gourmet department at Bloomingdale’s. “If I wrote my father for money, he would have sent it, and I’d never know if I could make it on my own,” she lamely explained. If I asked for money, my parental units would gloat and refuse. So I stopped asking.
Can you imagine a situation in the future in which the grossly undersocialized Baldwin Guacamolitos apply to college, get accepted, and actually stay there? Or that there would be any of Alec’s money left by then to send them? I can’t. Those poor kids.
Thank you so much for this. I read an excerpt of Anolik's book in VF I think a few years back but I have been meaning to read it. I have definitely felt at times like I was being voyeuristic in my interest in Joan. Her Year of Magical Thinking was very raw and I got some catharsis from reading it and listening to the audio version probably too many times.
It would have been fascinating on a lot of levels to meet her, but I feel like knowing her outside of her published writings is somehow out of bounds. One of the reasons I think I identify with her is that I share a lot of the traits of extreme introvertedness.
Thanks again for taking the time to share your thoughts. I just hopefully finished editing a video - there's always something else when trying to publish on youtube - and I am a bit punchy but I wanted to touch base because I got a kick out of reading your reply.
Scientology is a very strange sect. It reminds me of the Hare Krishna sect that was popular in the late ‘60’s and early’70s in the U.S. It has pretty much died out here but is still relevant in India. I think Scientology is on the same downward spiral. Weird, money hungry cults passing themselves off as religions when all they want is $$$.
Whoa. After reading about Bijou, it’s no wonder that her half-sister Chynna Phillips might seek refuge in evangelical Xtianity.
Yeah… I have been working on my '“Goodbye to all that” on leaving Baldwin world and I've been revisiting a lot of Joan Didion because of her piece of that title on leaving NYC behind. I have become jaded with the scene, if you will.
It is hard to grasp, I think, for people outside of the Hollywood bubble how bizarre and barking mad some of these celebs are from years in the fishbowl. I know that's one of the reasons I got drawn in.
It just seems so much like kismet in because this weekend I was listening to Didion’s White Album audiobook in the background and I'd forgotten, or sublimated in my mind, that Joan references John and Michelle Phillips taking a detour to pick up a friend on their way to the hospital to have Chynna. Didion essentially said being around musicians of the Laurel Canyon scene was maddening and utterly random and she said that John and Michelle were the most emblematic to her of the music business.
Thanks much for the comment!
Your deep dive into Baldwiniana is epic, Leo. I’ve greatly enjoyed your writings. I have to take periodic breaks from Pepino Nation at Reddit myself, because gorging on their tales gets so depressing. Their TLC show upset me further. How could Alec and Hillary possibly imagine that they could gain a new public with segments devoted to cursing toddlers and omnipresent dog poo?
Funny you should mention “Goodbye to All That” and Joan Didion, because recent events make me think of—and mention—her constantly. My poor husband is bearing the brunt of my rekindled obsession. There’s Lili Anolik’s new book about frenemies Didion and Eve Babitz. Even though Didion died in 2021, she’s got a book coming out in April, “Notes to John,” from her accounts of later-life psychiatric treatment that were found in a file folder next to her desk. As circumspect as she was about public disclosure during her life, thousands of pages of letters, notes, and personal items belonging to her and her husband were donated to the New York Public Library. All it takes to look is a library card, now that the archive is open, and randos are clogging the stacks. (To the librarians’ ill-concealed glee.) Menus and recipes from her famous dinner parties. Letters to her parents. It’s incredible. If I lived in NYC, I’d be there. Another recent discovery has been a story on Vanity Fair about Didion’s first love, and great passion, Noel Parmentel Jr., the roue who selected John Gregory Dunne as her husband. Do you think Didion had a traumatic illegal abortion? I do.
It’s said we should never meet our idols, but I actually did: I talked to Didion several times before graduate journalism colloquia I technically had no right to attend as a sophomore at Berkeley. That was when she was a visiting prof, which she’s written about, as has Caitlin Flanagan in The Atlantic. She really is that tiny and whispery. (During their prolonged falling-out, according to Dominick Dunne’s biography by Robert Hofler, he referred to his brother and SIL as “Big Time” and “Frail.”) I recalled recently that Didion had seemed quite put out when I admitted to her that I was putting myself through uni. When my advisor introduced us, as a point of common interest he mentioned to her that my parents had moved to Hawai’i. She’d immediately assumed they were wealthy, a notion not disabused by the fact that I was able to hold up my end when she discussed Pearl Harbor, the Punchbowl, and her favorite hotels. (I’d once had a Coke at the Royal Hawaiian.) And here I was washing other people’s dishes, dear dear. Even when I was very young, as much as I then admired her work, I was infuriated by her claim of being so poor while working at Vogue, she was charging food at the gourmet department at Bloomingdale’s. “If I wrote my father for money, he would have sent it, and I’d never know if I could make it on my own,” she lamely explained. If I asked for money, my parental units would gloat and refuse. So I stopped asking.
Can you imagine a situation in the future in which the grossly undersocialized Baldwin Guacamolitos apply to college, get accepted, and actually stay there? Or that there would be any of Alec’s money left by then to send them? I can’t. Those poor kids.
Thank you so much for this. I read an excerpt of Anolik's book in VF I think a few years back but I have been meaning to read it. I have definitely felt at times like I was being voyeuristic in my interest in Joan. Her Year of Magical Thinking was very raw and I got some catharsis from reading it and listening to the audio version probably too many times.
It would have been fascinating on a lot of levels to meet her, but I feel like knowing her outside of her published writings is somehow out of bounds. One of the reasons I think I identify with her is that I share a lot of the traits of extreme introvertedness.
Thanks again for taking the time to share your thoughts. I just hopefully finished editing a video - there's always something else when trying to publish on youtube - and I am a bit punchy but I wanted to touch base because I got a kick out of reading your reply.