米作家ジョーン・ディディオン氏が死去　８７歳

【ニューヨークＡＦＰ＝時事】「ニュージャーナリズム」の先駆けとされる米作家ジョーン・ディディオン氏が２３日、死去した。８７歳。（写真は米作家のジョーン・ディディオン氏）
　米出版社ペンギンランダムハウス傘下のクノッフ社によると、ディディオン氏はパーキンソン病に伴う合併症のためニューヨークの自宅で死去した。
　記者や映画脚本家、小説家として成功を収めたディディオン氏は、鋭い洞察と控えめだが魅力的な文章で知られる。１９６８年の独創的なエッセー集「ベツレヘムに向け、身を屈めて」で一躍注目を浴びた後、ハリウッドの生活を描いた小説「プレイ・イット・アズ・イット・レイズ（未邦訳）」などの作品を発表。ロサンゼルスを舞台にしたエッセー集「６０年代の過ぎた朝」は代表作となった。
　夫のジョン・グレゴリー・ダン氏と共同で脚本を手掛けた、バーブラ・ストライサンドとクリス・クリストファーソン主演のミュージカル映画『スター誕生』（１９７６年）は大ヒットを飛ばした。
　２００３年には夫のダン氏を心臓発作で、その後２年もたたずして娘のクィンターナ・ローさん（当時３９）も急性すい臓炎で亡くした。一連の死別経験を２０１１年の回想録「さよなら、私のクィンターナ」などで率直につづり、再び注目を集めた。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2021/12/24-13:10）

Author Joan Didion, a US literary icon credited with ushering in new journalism with her essays on Los Angeles life in the tumultuous 1960s, died on Thursday. She was 87.
Didion, a successful reporter, film screenwriter and novelist known for her piercing insights and understated glamor, died at her home in New York due to complications from Parkinson's disease, her publisher said.
We will mourn her death but celebrate her life, knowing that her work will inspire generations of readers and writers to come, said her editor Shelley Wanger, at Penguin Random House's Knopf imprint.
Didion's early work included her seminal 1968 first-person essay collection Slouching Towards Bethlehem -- which delighted critics and made her a bona fide star -- and Play It as It Lays, a novel about Hollywood lives.
The White Album, an essay collection that depicted West Coast hippie counterculture, the rise of the Black Panthers and the notorious Manson murders, is perhaps Didion's most widely recognized work, starting with the famous sentence: We tell ourselves stories in order to live.
Didion and her husband John Gregory Dunne penned screenplays including Al Pacino's romantic drama The Panic in Needle Park.
In 1976, they re-wrote romantic musical A Star is Born, resulting in the smash box-office hit starring Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson.
Other scripts included True Confessions, starring Robert De Niro and Robert Duvall, and Up Close and Personal, an adaptation of a biography of US news anchor Jessica Savitch featuring Robert Redford and Michelle Pfeiffer.
As well as her acuity in describing contemporary American society, Didion became renowned for her autobiographical talents.
Decades after her heyday as a Hollywood socialite, screenwriter, essayist and novelist, Didion found herself again in the spotlight for her searingly honest writing on bereavement following a harrowing double tragedy.
Didion was 69 when Dunne suffered a fatal heart attack and, less than two years later, the couple's adopted daughter Quintana Roo was killed at age 39 by acute pancreatitis.
She explored her devastating loss in her 2011 memoir Blue Nights.
- 'Modern classics' -
Didion was one of the country's most trenchant writers and astute observers, said Knopf executive Paul Bogaards in a statement to AFP.
Her best-selling works of fiction, commentary, and memoir have received numerous honors and are considered modern classics.
Didion was born in Sacramento, California in 1934.
She began her career as a proofreader with Vogue in New York, and published her first novel Run River, about the disintegration of a California family, in 1963.
She met Dunne, who was then writing for Life magazine, in New York.
Her other novels include A Book of Common Prayer, set in a fictional Central American country, and The Last Thing He Wanted.
Didion was awarded a National Medal of Arts and Humanities by President Barack Obama in 2013.
In 2017, she was profiled in the Netflix documentary Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold, directed by Griffin Dunne, the son of her brother-in-law.