The Last Love Song: A Biography of Joan Didion by Tracy Daugherty
A Review of Tracy Daugherty’s Biography of Joan Didion
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”
The Last Love Song: A Biography of Joan Didion by Tracy Daugherty (2015). Published by St. Martin Press. Image from The New York Times.
I’d always heard of Joan Didion and her literary legacy, but up until recently, I had no idea about who she actually was. Her books were always on bestseller lists and “these books changed me life omg” lists, but I never had an interest in her life. Then I watched the Netflix documentary about her, the one that describes her early life at Vogue and how her husband and daughter died. And suddenly I was interested, because I knew this writer’s life was marred with tragedy and that’s when she began to transcend to literary greatness.
And so, when I was looking up Didion’s books to reserve at my local library, I saw the Tracy Daugherty biography of Joan Didion. I’d been reading up on her life online (not just Wikipedia, I swear!) and so I thought that this would be a good book to read before
Before I begin the review, I’m going to lay down what I expect when I read a biography, especially of a literary figure. I want to know more, not just things I can easily find online. Biographies tend to be very chunky, since we are indeed covering an entire person’s life, and so this reached that expectation while clocking in at a lengthy 752 pages. I want to be engaged with this person’s life, because the writing style can completely ruin the book for me if the pacing isn’t properly done in sections.
Alright, with that out of the way, let’s jump straight into it.
Content
Because I had already read so much about Joan Didion online before reading this biography, I honestly didn’t feel like I actually learned anything. Then, when I looked this biography up online while prepping to write this review, I found out that the biographer didn’t actually talk to any of Didion’s family or even Didion herself. She had refused to cooperate with this project and so the only primary sources the biographer has are people who are distantly connected to Didion.
I find that understandable in a way, because Didion has such a tightly controlled reputation. It’s very specific and almost has a cult-like following around it and I imagine as a writer like her, you’d want to write your own autobiography. And she has written her own memoirs, such as Blue Nights and The Year of Magical Thinking. Many of her published works are the compiled essays she had published across various platforms and mediums.
Stylistically, there was nothing wrong with the words that were on the page. The biography itself was just too clunky and extremely slow in the beginning of the book. I found the first 150-ish pages to be unbearable to get through, because there were so many tangents about Didion’s ancestors or about Sacramento that weren’t connected as well as I wanted them to be. There was too much and it wasn’t woven tightly enough.
I read a lot of biographies, and, at the end of the day, I always return to Nancy Milford’s biographies on Zelda Fitzgerald and Edna St. Vincent Milly as my references for what is a good biography. My first of the two was the St. Vincent bio, the one titled Savage Beauty, and I was rarely bored throughout because of the pacing and all of the details were directly connected to St. Vincent’s life at the moment. That’s what I wished this biography had more of at the end of the day.
Overall Thoughts
I wanted to like this, I really did. But it didn’t fit what I wanted from a biography, so it knocks off a couple of points from me because of that and the slow pacing in the first overall arc of the novel. If you don’t know anything about Didion and want a place to start, this is probably the biography for you. But if you actually know quite a bit about Didion and want to know more, you’re not going to find what you’re looking for.
