Brooding, detached, apocalyptic and neurasthenic are all words that have been applied to the writings of Joan Didion. While generally respected for her purposefully staccato and elliptical fiction, Didion has also been hailed as one of the best female prose stylists of her generation for her nonfiction. (As of 1997, she had written five novels and five books of nonfiction.) In collaboration with her husband, novelist-journalist John Gregory Dunne (best known for his gritty stories of the Irish Catholic American experience), Didion has crafted several screenplay adaptations of books by herself,
