Historically famous critics

Joan Didion

1934-2021 · American · 20th-21st century

American essayist and reporter who coolly diagnosed American myths and disorder

Joan Didion was a founding voice of New Journalism whose cool, exacting prose exposed the illusions Americans told themselves. In Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album she chronicled the unraveling of the 1960s counterculture, and in books like Salvador and her political essays she dissected power, media, and national myth. She belongs in a hall of fame of criticism because she turned close personal observation into a scalpel for cutting through cultural self-deception.