We would value her take on the deeply divided America of this moment. Mailer, Capote, and Stone are gone, Talese produces little, Wolfe has become a novelist, and Didion, wracked by personal loss and age, seems to have withdrawn into the silence of darkest Manhattan. And Joan Didion, with her chilly, stylish, deceptively objective prose, would lead us somewhere we need to go with the sort of reasoning that exposed the prejudice and legal folly behind the Central Park “wilding” case. Tom Wolfe would explore the social milieu of the liberal opposition and expose its weak underbelly so that it could better and more wisely defend itself. Stone would tease out the nuances of Trump’s policies and trace them to their full logical implications. Imagine Norman Mailer on Donald Trump! Mailer’s own bullying temperament would understand Trump’s, so that when with saber-toothed prose he eviscerated our president, he would stay eviscerated. Stone, Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote, Gay Talese, and Joan Didion to help us think through the unthinkable sixties and seventies. In times of exceptional social and political stress, we turn to our most eloquent journalists and commentators for explanation and relief. South and West: From a Notebook by Joan Didion
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