A Star-Studded Goodbye to All That

“I do know why we attempt to maintain the lifeless alive,” the actress Vanessa Redgrave stated on Wednesday night, talking from a lectern on the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine on the Higher West Facet of Manhattan, the place she was accompanied by her son-in-law, the film star Liam Neeson. “We attempt to maintain them alive as a way to maintain them with us.”

The phrases Ms. Redgrave was talking weren’t her personal. They belong to Joan Didion, the tiny in measurement however towering in stature author who, even earlier than her loss of life final December at 87, had change into as a lot an thought as an individual — not only a literary icon however a beacon of mental stylish, who in 2015 appeared in a Celine marketing campaign.

The church was stuffed for a memorial service in her honor, placed on by her publishing home, Knopf, and arranged by her editor there, Shelley Wanger.

Amongst these in attendance have been the writers Fran Lebowitz and Donna Tartt, the photographers Annie Leibovitz and Brigitte Lacombe, the actors Bob Balaban and Anjelica Huston, the director Greta Gerwig, and plenty of of her civilian followers, who lined up outdoors. It was the sort of crowd Ms. Didion most probably would have appreciated. She was an acute chronicler of energy; to be inside was its personal type of standing.

Over the course of an almost 70-year profession, Ms. Didion had written about practically each side of American life: presidential campaigns, tarot card readers, murders, rock ’n’ roll, civil rights and grief.

However the overarching theme of her work was decline — of our politics, the atmosphere, reality, intellectualism. The eulogies mirrored that preoccupation.

The primary speech got here from the Rev. Patrick Malloy, who described Ms. Didion’s detailed directions for tips on how to deal with the small funeral that occurred shortly after her loss of life.

The directives concerned preserving issues “very temporary” and studying passages from the Guide of Frequent Prayer that have been among the many most “dour.”

“She didn’t consider in a private God,” he stated. “However she did consider in a God that was like geology. You realize it exists, and you already know it has an influence in your life, however basically, it doesn’t know you or actually care a lot about you. And that’s not a extremely shocking factor for somebody who had endured the issues in life she had endured.”

This included the 2003 loss of life of Ms. Didion’s husband, the author John Gregory Dunne, from a sudden coronary heart assault, adopted lower than two years later by the loss of life of their daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne, on the age of 39. Quickly after that, Ms. Didion acquired a analysis of Parkinson’s illness. (Ms. Redgrave appeared within the stage model of “The Yr of Magical Considering,” Ms. Didion’s best-selling e-book concerning the aftermath of loss.)

Contained in the humid church, organizers clad in black handed out followers printed with an Edna St. Vincent Millay quote to visitors. (The memorial was delayed, not less than partially, as a result of the Cathedral had not open for giant gatherings on the time of Ms. Didion’s loss of life.) On the entrance of the cathedral, a display screen flashed pictures of Ms. Didion all through her life: together with her husband, with Barack and Michelle Obama when she acquired the 2012 Nationwide Humanities Medal, with Ms. Redgrave at a rehearsal for “The Yr of Magical Considering.”

Was one of many images taken by Ms. Leibovitz, a reporter requested her. “A number of,” she stated.

Most of the audio system who adopted Mr. Malloy have been writers — amongst them Hilton Als, Calvin Trillin, Jia Tolentino, David Remnick and Susanna Moore — however there was additionally a smattering of non-public buddies (Susan Traylor, who grew up in Malibu with Ms. Didion’s daughter), family (her nephew Griffin Dunne, who directed a 2018 documentary about Ms. Didion, for Netflix), a former governor (Jerry Brown talking on video) and even one former Supreme Court docket justice (Anthony Kennedy, who grew up with Ms. Didion in Sacramento).

As Mr. Kennedy informed it, his older sister had been Ms. Didion’s closest childhood buddy.

“She got here to our home on a regular basis after college and stayed for dinner and sometimes in a single day,” he stated.

Invariably, Ms. Didion introduced notebooks. She needed to file her notes concerning the dialog on the home, in order that she might enhance her sense of dialogue, he stated, including that she was already writing for the highschool newspaper.

Mr. Brown, talking by video, additionally had a private connection to Ms. Didion. His sister had been her sorority mate at Berkeley, the place Ms. Didion was identified for making grand entrances within the mornings, descending the steps of the sorority home “carrying a pink chenille gown,” cigarette in hand.

Mr. Als credited Ms. Didion with instructing him “that household was all the time a part of the story, together with place, and the way the author’s job was to face the fear, magnificence, banality, and reality of each.”

He then quoted her 1966 essay “Notes From a Native Daughter.”

“What occurred in New York and Washington and overseas appeared to impinge under no circumstances on the Sacramento thoughts,” he learn. “I keep in mind being taken to name upon a really outdated lady, a rancher’s widow, who was reminiscing (the favored conversational mode in Sacramento) concerning the son of some up to date of hers. ‘The Johnston boy by no means did quantity to a lot,’ she stated. My mom protested: Alva Johnston, she stated, had gained the Pulitzer Prize when he was working for The New York Occasions. Our hostess checked out us impassively. ‘He by no means amounted to something in Sacramento.’”

Ms. Traylor, her daughter’s childhood buddy, spoke of the best way Ms. Didion would pull Quintana and Ms. Traylor in near sing to them with tears in her eyes. She additionally recalled how Ms. Didion made chocolate soufflés for them at events and taught everybody tips on how to eat them. (“I didn’t know tips on how to make birthday cake, I knew tips on how to make chocolate soufflé,” Ms. Didion later defined.)

Ms. Tolentino, a millennial essayist and New Yorker workers author, stated that she had not learn Ms. Didion till her 20s, however instantly realized that “by means of the phrases of others, I had been studying her my whole life.”

At a memorial the place so lots of the eulogies got here from writers who’ve been paid so much to finish sentences, it got here as little shock that the visitors spent a lot time debating about who’d given one of the best one.

However the funniest, many individuals stated, belonged to Ms. Moore, who vividly recalled a few of Ms. Didion’s one-liners, amongst them, “No matter you do, you’ll remorse each,” and “evil is the absence of seriousness.”

That one arrived following a dinner Ms. Didion hosted. Among the many visitors, Ms. Moore stated, was Bianca Jagger, who ignited scorn from Ms. Didion by continuing to select the magazines up off the espresso desk and browse them one after the opposite.

Later, different visitors recalled to a reporter recommendation Ms. Didion had given them.

The editor Joan Juliet Buck described a dialog she had with Ms. Didion, who had informed her tips on how to take care of a stalker: “Transfer into the Carlyle.” Annabelle Dunne, Ms. Didion’s niece, reported that her aunt had suggested: “Don’t neglect to have a child. It’s simple to neglect.”

Mr. Remnick began his speech along with his misgivings about giving it: “How do you talk about somebody who was in her time the foremost enemy of canned cliché and falsehood?” he requested, earlier than happening to reward her “authority of tone” and the best way she led by instance.

“When Joan died simply earlier than Christmas, it was onerous to obtain the information as a shock,” he stated. “And but so many readers and so many writers absorbed the information of Joan’s loss of life as a sort of devastation. The reason being clear. Is there an essayist at this time who’s extra admired by younger readers and writers?”

The one different he might consider was “possibly James Baldwin.”

“‘There may be a lot in Didion one would possibly disagree with personally, politically, aesthetically,’” he stated, studying from a Zadie Smith essay about Ms. Didion that had been printed in The New Yorker. “‘I’ll by no means love the Doorways,’” it continued, referring to her e-book “The White Album,” by which Ms. Didion explains her admiration for the best way their music insisted that “love was intercourse and intercourse was loss of life and therein lay salvation.” (It wasn’t the Doorways that performed contained in the cathedral, however relatively Patti Smith, who sang Bob Dylan’s ballad “Chimes of Freedom.”)

“The X-acto knife of her prose” is one thing many attempt to imitate, Mr. Remnick stated. “I want all of them good luck. She is inimitable.”