New York, 27 Jan. The huge archive of the American author Joan Didion, an exponent of New Journalism, and her husband, also a writer John Gregory Dunne, was acquired by the New York Public Library (NYPL, in English), the institution reported this Friday .
Didion, who died in 2021, and Dunne, who died in 2003, are considered iconic voices in contemporary US journalism, fiction, and scriptwriting, with prolific careers that became intertwined after they met precisely on the Great Manzana and they married in 1964.
His legacy includes personal and professional writing; letters with literary figures such as Margaret Atwood, Nora Ephron and Philip Roth, and photographs of the couple and other objects that shed light on Didion’s childhood and life together, according to a statement.
Among other things, the collection includes drafts related to one of Didion’s last works, “The Year of Magical Thought”, which she wrote after losing her husband and daughter and which won her The National Book Award in 2005. ) in the US to a non-fiction work.
There are also transcripts of an interview with Linda Kasabian, a member of the Manson Family; notes of the “confessions” of the famous case of rape in Central Park in 1989, and correspondence with the murderer of the young transgender Brandon Teena, with which he built his journalistic work.
“At once deeply intimate and professionally important, this collection is unmatched in the caliber of its materials and offers unprecedented insight into his creative processes,” NYPL Special Collections Officer Declan Kiely said in a note. .
The library did not disclose the cost of the Didion and Dunne archive, which will share a home with those of other renowned writers such as Tom Wolfe, Jean Stein and Renata Adler – among some 6,000 such collections – and which is expected to be available to the public. researcher in early 2025.
The NYPL, the largest public library system in the US, also indicated that it is living up to its commitment to collect the papers of revolutionary writers, and “particularly women writers.”
A few months ago, an auction of hundreds of Didion’s belongings, from sunglasses to blank notebooks, paper clips and a typewriter, raised a total of $1.9 million, which benefited the fight against Parkinson’s, a disease that she suffered until her death. EFE
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