Quintana, 1968: Tragedy of the Most Beautiful Little Girl

Joan's perfectionism was part of the problem, in my opinion.

I wonder what it was like being raised by an anorexic mother.

The tragic outcome started with Joan's chain-smoking through conception, pregnancy, labor, and delivery.

But enough about your mother, R3.

Quintana was adopted, dumbass.

Who knows why Quintana was so troubled? Maybe it was that name they gave her: Quintana. Or maybe it was genetic. Or environmental. Who knows.

By the way, she was an average looking child, not a beautiful one.

I think it was less about Joan Didion's perfectionism than her being emotionally distant/preoccupied. Throw in John Gregory Dunne's bad temper--and the alcoholism/pill popping of both and it was a less than stellar situation for a child who sounds like she came in with the abandonment/identity issues that can show up in adopted kids.

Joan Didion criticizes herself for treating Quintana like a beautiful little doll and dressing her up in perfect clothes instead of really dealing with her emotionally. It's odd to read her writing about her daughter just because it does feel weirdly disconnected.

Quintana's death seems to have been indirectly linked to alcoholism--i.e. pancreatitis.

I read Joan's book about Q's death, and I remember thinking something seemed very odd about Q's husband. I almost sensed he was a social climber and opportunistic in marrying her, but it has been so long since I read the book. Did anyone else get a sense of him?

Did the identity of Q's bio parent ever come out? Where they addicts?

Her bio parents were a mess. No doubt drug users.

Joan writes about Quintana coming home from meeting them as an adult, distressed that they were Deadheads (and having other issues that I can't recall).

Joan and John weren't perfect, but they were highly intelligent and sensitive people who were attuned to the benefits of psychiatry. So many of us grew up in households where mental health issues were not talked about or classified as weakness.

But even psychologists of that era didn't really realize or address the lifelong psychological issues of the adopted. Parents were told to say, "You're special because you were chosen." The flipside of that is, if you were available to be chosen, that means someone didn't want you. Some people aren't strong enough to deal with that. The initial rejection follows you around for a lifetime. Debbie Harry was adopted and wrote about this in her memoir. She had enough fuck-you attitude to get past it (even when her bio mother rejected her as an adult). Quintana just didn't.

R9 Thanks! That's insightful.

Quintana was adopted at a year old.

Unfortunately, the lack of attachment in that lost year can make for a lifetime of troubles. Attachment (the back and forth cycle of trust between mother and child) is needed to regulate the entire nervous system.

Lacking it, the child can develop developmental trauma and have the brain permanently changed unless interventions are done.

The science for this is only coming out in the last 15 years. It can be fixed through therapeutic parenting, but regular parenting even with the best of intentions often isn't enough.

When the bio family got in contact with Q they were pretty pushy, when Q told the mother she needed a little space and time to process, the bio mother cut off contact completely. Quintana who was already pretty fragile took another dive down.

I used to work with a lot of families with young adopted kids. I'd consider all the parents well meaning and loving, but some were just in way over their heads. The best I saw was a kindergarten teacher, she was warm, loving, but also understood kids, which meant she could spot potential trouble ahead of time.

Quintana was adopted at birth . They picked her up from A hospital in Santa Monica.

Dominique Dunne was 6 years older and loved Roo like a little sister .

Genes. She had fucked up genes from her biological parents

Joan surmised in her book Blue Nights , that Roo had a deep insecurity and fear of abandonment.. probably due to her adoption

Questions like these are impossible to answer, there are too many factors that go into forming someone's personality. Quintana seemed like the type of person who would have benefited from a warm and demonstrative environment. The literary elite is filled with some very cold people. That being said who knows, there could have been a million other genetic, social or cultural factors at play.And people are rarely fucked up from just one thing.

She had no other siblings to bounce things off

[quote]How did Joan find and select Quintana?

That is a weird and creepy sentence.

[quote]Joan and John weren't perfect, but they were highly intelligent and sensitive people who were attuned to the benefits of psychiatry.

That makes their treatment of their relatives worse, in my opinion. Griffin may laugh it off but he's told a few stories here and there about John that make him sound like a monster, and John and Joan were such devout social climbers that they prioritized their friendship with Leslie Abramson over the murder of their own niece, because Abramson was defending the murderer.

Parents shouldn’t write about their children.

You can either be a writer, or a mother. But not both. They are mutually exclusive.

Because ‘writers are always selling somebody out’, so Joan, of all people, should have known better.

Instead, she chose to be a ‘writing mother’, hence the deeply disappointing sub par memoir that is ‘Blue Nights’

So many good comments here. Especially like yours R21 and agree completely.

I wonder why Joan decided to adopt. Could she not carry a child of her own to term or was she too worried about weight gain and the damage pregnancy might do to her thin body?

Writers are for the most part horrible people. The more sophisticated and successful their writing, the worse they are. They think nothing of publishing thinly veiled condescending swipes at those they pretend to be friends with. I could never trust one enough to be close to. I would always wonder if they were " mining" me for material.

I also wonder why Joan decided to become a mother. Motherhood didn't seem to fit the priorities of her lifestyle.

It was a strange book. I remember being so confused about how she died, then looked it up outside of the book. What did come across was her struggle to fit in somewhere. I may be misremembering, so please correct me, but I believe Joan dismissed her as having any ability as a writer.

She wrote Blue Nights after Quintana's death, so your complaint makes no sense, R21.

Plenty of people have been successful writers and mothers. Joan didn't write essays about Quintana. She mentioned her from time to time. John wrote a children's book called "Quintana and Friends." But there's no evidence her parents' profession fucked her up. It gave her a very privileged life, actually.

Shit happens regardless of your mother's job. More people have been harmed by mothers who lack intellectual curiosity.

R21 is one of the dumbest comments I've ever read on DL.

R26 I agree. It was a strange book. I came away feeling Joan was somewhat guilty but . . . of what? Later, I wondered if I felt that way because Joan felt guilty.

Also, I think Joan's detachment in tone while speaking of the loss of Q. made her seem like an unnatural mother.

Good going, Sherlock R29, you really know how to read between the lines!

I remember this book and thinking Q’s husband was a fortune hunter, Joan well meaning but so wrapped up in her husband and her writing, her daughter came in third. John seemed to be the primary parent.

It makes me wonder if, in some ways, keeping adoptions secret is preferred. I don’t really mean it, but at least kids wouldn’t grow up feeling rejected. The flip side of kids always knowing they are adopted is it can really screw with their mental health.

[quote]I think Joan's detachment in tone while speaking of the loss of Q. made her seem like an unnatural mother.

Joan was detached in tone about everything, including her own thoughts and feelings.

That was her style. She was a trained reporter.

Some of you really need to revisit—or at least read—her most basic work before opening your traps.

She was also quite traditional and wrote about how much she valued her family, her roots, and how she enjoyed domestic things considered "dog work" in the '70s like cooking. There's one line in an essay about how it's New Year's Eve and she's with her husband and child and her feelings of contentedness are almost overwhelming.

[quote]Her bio parents were a mess. No doubt drug users.

Joan was as well, probably John, too. They were what was then (and now, to an extent) considered the "good" kind of drug users. It's really more about class, i.e. Quintana's "Deadhead" bio parents were bad for using drugs, her rich famous adoptive parents did drugs but that was simply part of the "privilege" of living with them.

Did Quintana have a quinceanera?

R11 that was eloquently said.

I'm 50 and have been doing attachment repair work for the past 2 years (Dan Brown's IPF protocol)

I've always wondered if Didion was on the spectrum, but have rarely heard anyone else speculate as to this so perhaps not.

R22: thanks.

Joan’s protective maternal took over, most obviously in her glaring omission of Q’s formal cause of death. Like r26, I had to Google the internet to find out: it’s a acute pancreatitis, caused by alcoholism.

Joan has always been known for her unflinchingly honesty in her writing, so such evasiveness about such a crucial detail is really untypical of her writing.

There are other fuzziness, like the one pointed out above about Q’s somewhat dodgy husband.

There were also speculations on the net that the reason, aGain not mentioned in the book, why Q fell and hurt herself badly after landing in LA was because she had had too much to drink while on the flight.

But then I’m ultimately glad that she let her maternal instinct took over. I would really question her humanity and basic decency if she were to perform a laserlike forensic operation on her own daughter.

So now I get to keep my respect for Joan, as a mother and a human being.

^^ protective maternal *instinct*

Because she was adopted.

I still have trouble believing that in this day and age, people genuinely think that placing a child with a bunch of strangers is going to work out well for everyone involved.

We name our daughters after Mexican states in order to live.

R11, thanks for the science, but your facts of this case are wrong.

Quintana was adopted at birth.

Hope you checked your citations on the other stuff.

The 90s, encapsulated

When I look at that picture, I don't see a beautiful golden child with everything. I see a child with profoundly sad and empty eyes and a mother with similar sadness who can't put down her cigarette for even one minute while their picture is taken.

Family dynamics, in one pic

Yeah, it's hard to have a name like Quintana Roo on the playground...

California dreamin’

R42 The daughter looks retarded. Obviously she was a drinker. And anorexics can be mean as snakes. This girl was surely ‘fat’ if she had a glass of milk.

[quote]Yeah, it's hard to have a name like Quintana Roo on the playground...

Tell me about it,

[quote] a mother with similar sadness who can't put down her cigarette for even one minute while their picture is taken.

Joanie saw some crazy shite -- a kindergartener on acid, hobnobbing with members of the Manson Family and the Black Panthers. No wonder she was neurotic.

I'll always love her for her brutal takedown of Nancy Reagan though.

Happy Bride

The answer is right in the photo you posted OP. Why is that stupid mother smoking a CIGARRETTE inches from a baby's face? Clearly the second hand smoke at this young age caused cognitive defects.

R41

Thanks for the correction -- one of the articles I read said she was adopted a year after her birth. And, yes, my citations are correct on the other stuff.

Unfortunately, there can be a sense of loss even in early adoptions. The baby is aware that she is being moved from a familiar smell (bio mom) to the adoptive family.

The science is also showing that babies in the womb are very affected by stress of the birth mom, whether they are "wanted," etc.etc.

So this all plays a part.

Yes, the memoir is vey vague about the cause of death and the shady husband. If I remember correctly, the husband was a bartender or bar owner (??). Joan thought that was a poor choice for Q who was emotionally fragile, trying to get/stay sober.

The photo at R50 is telling. Q seems a chunky bride at first glance, but look down at her arms--thin arms, thin body. Only her face is fat. That could be alcohol bloat even at a young age.

[quote]hobnobbing with members of the Manson Family and the Black Panthers

Okay, girls, let's dial it back a bit and try not to compare the Manson family to the Black Panthers.

Griffin's documentary a few years ago was pretty enlightening about the whole Quintana Roo thing, though still vague at times.

I think what some of the people earlier were saying about Didion's distance is really summed up in a part of that documentary that's mentioned at the beginning of this article. It's about the little girl she came across who was on LSD, and how she described finding that girl as being literary "gold." Not that she wanted to help, not that she was horrified, but that it was "gold."

Considering Quintana Roo's origins, it's almost impossible NOT to make a comparison there.

R54: that pic was taken in 2003; she was 37

She died, at the age of 39, in 2005

What is the point of this thread?

To crucify Joan Didion, based on personality traits and reporting about her family she revealed herself?

To support a concept—"the most beautiful little girl," who actually looks like the child of Ethel Merman and Ernest Borgnine—that is clearly false to any seeing person?

People raise children who turn out to be alcoholic fuckups and die young. Celebrity writers aren't exempt. There's not a Joan Crawford situation here. Quintana was adopted from messy bio parents and turned out to be a mess. Shocker. Addiction has many causes.

Yes, we're all "crucifying" Joan Didion because we know it'll personally hurt your feelings. That's exactly what we're doing here, r58. You are very smart.

Joan wouldn't acknowledge it but Quintana died because of alcoholicism and the Didions helped make her one because the Didions themselves constantly drank.

[quote]Joan wouldn't acknowledge it but Quintana died because of alcoholicism and the Didions helped make her one because the Didions themselves constantly drank.

So many celebrity parents don't understand how critical the auditioning process is for selecting the "right" celebrity child...

I tried out three difference "Christophers" before we found the right one - and even then...well, we did our best...

[quote]It was a strange book. I remember being so confused about how she died, then looked it up outside of the book. What did come across was her struggle to fit in somewhere.

Numerous references to her daughter are strange; when I first read "The Year of Magical Thinking", I kept her daughter was a kid, not an adult. Aside for the many other readings listed on this thread, she seemed incapable of seeing her daughter as an independent, fully formed person, instead of this extension of herself. Other famous people have written about their kids struggles with addictions and while I don't necessarily think there's anything wrong with that, it requires seeing your kids failures & shortcomings because parents see it as "their" failure, often resulting in an incomplete & contradictory story.

She & John sound like pretty toxic people - good lord, whatever you think of your brother, you niece was brutally murdered - show some class. That may have factored in too.

Was Quintana into cocaina?

How could she have died so very young just from drinking? Surely, there was also something else? Alcoholism is typically a slow killer.

R64 nope, there are 20-somethings dying from it, it depends on how much they are drinking and probably partly their genes too (some people can tolerate it more than others).

Now that we’ve seen the pic at r50, where Q was already showing alcoholic bloat and had had just two years left to live, it makes rereading the following passage from ‘Blue Nights’ even more heartbreaking: someone deep in the throes of irreversible addiction, trying desperately to recreate once idyllic childhood memories:

[quote]When she said she wanted cucumber and watercress sandwiches at her wedding I remembered her laying out plates of cucumber and watercress sandwiches on the tables we had set up around the pool for her sixteenth-birthday lunch. When she said she wanted leis in place of bouquets at her wedding I remembered her at three or four or five getting off a plane at Bradley Field in Hartford wearing the leis she had been given when she left Honolulu the night before. The temperature in Connecticut that morning was six degrees below zero and she had no coat (she had been wearing no coat when we left Los Angeles for Honolulu, we had not expected to go on to Hartford) but she had seen no problem. Children with leis don’t wear coats, she advised me.

[quote]Sentimental choices.

[quote]On the day of that wedding she got all her sentimental choices except one: she had wanted the little girls to go barefoot in the cathedral ”

She was always following me taking notes, mumbling "This will make a good book someday...".

[quote] The tragic outcome started with Joan's chain-smoking through conception, pregnancy, labor, and delivery.

Was that so unusual for the time?

After she quit (for the most part) she had the habit of raising that arm in the same way, twisting her hand backwards and resting it on or stroking her shoulder as she spoke.

In her hyper-halting delivery. I often wondered if that weren't more than a little contrived.

[quote]Unfortunately, there can be a sense of loss even in early adoptions. The baby is aware that she is being moved from a familiar smell (bio mom) to the adoptive family.

I've seen this mentioned a few times lately and wonder if it's proven science that the baby recognizes its mother's smell and that affects them when they're separated at adoption. *If* this is true, it doesn't bode well for surrogacies. Hopefully, it isn't true, especially for adoptees.

I'm stunned to see how beautiful JOAN was.

Lovely place that Quintana Roo.

I would actually be interested in hearing Harrison Ford’s take on her. He was in and out of that house for over a year sometimes 10-12 hours a day when he would have seen them at their best and worst. He remained friends afterwards and was invited to their parties and would have seen her grow up over time.

[quote]The photo at [R50] is telling. Q seems a chunky bride at first glance, but look down at her arms--thin arms, thin body. Only her face is fat. That could be alcohol bloat even at a young age.

Possibly, but the poor woman has emaciated corpses on either side of her. Karen Carpenter would look like a fatty in that picture.

I tend to agree that there was something else going on (prescription drug abuse?) going on besides drinking; she naturally had a fuller face, but isn't fat (unless you compare her to Joan). She looked pretty healthy for a person who kicked it so young

Well, guess they are all together now at the columbarium at Saint John The Divine’s cathedral. I’ve not heard of any memorial service for her, which seems strange.

Joan did do a reading/performance at the church with V Redgrave. Does that count?

I always picture a young Quintana going to wake up her mommy in the late morning with an ice cold CocaCola and her ciggies, Joan in her quilted nightgown and face mask, cursing the light of day and not being able to utter a word until she’s taken a large gulp of cola and a long pull from a cigarette, and then saying “How are you doing today Darling!” And passive aggressively adding “That father of yours didn’t feed you Quisp for breakfast again did he?”

R75 Yes, Joan had memorials for both John and Quintana there, I’m asking when is hers? Is Griffen to caught up filming the last season of This Is Us?

I knew somebody who died of the effects of his alcoholism at 43, and women are usually hit far harder than men because their bodies have lower tolerance. It's totally possible to drink yourself to death in your thirties or earlier, despite the existence of hard drinkers in their eighties.

Something disquieting about this pic…

I was so disappointed and angry with how Joan &john completely dissed their niece Dominique after she was murdered. I don’t believe they had anything against Dominique, in fact I think they really adored her.. but John and a serious resentment towards Dominick and he and Joan went to Ma Maison after the murder and that understandably infuriated Dominique’s parents and siblings. They also refused to attend the trial or have Quintana testify.

I also read, on here I believe, that Joan tied up the phone taking to her editor while they were waiting to hear from family and make funeral plans. Did Quintana stand a chance?

It was worse than that . While Dominique was in a coma essentially dead they were awaiting the calls from the doctors to give them updates on her condition,and Joanwas on the phone in Dominique’s mother’s master bedroom. Dominick entered the room and she looked up annoyed and said “yes?” He was fuming .

Honestly, I think Quintana would have survived the pancreatitis had she not passed out and hit her head on the pavement outside the airport after her dad's memorial service. She had a long road of recovery ahead of her and I really think it was kind of a fluke that she didn't survive.

Maybe she was into this.

Sigh, kids today - they can't even be proper boozehounds! They're stuffing up their snatches or assholes. Joan would not approve!

[quote]I also wonder why Joan decided to become a mother. Motherhood didn't seem to fit the priorities of her lifestyle.

That's just what women were supposed to do back then. There was a lot of societal pressure to be a mother. Married couples were supposed to have kids. Lots of people who never should've been parents had kids anyway because of this and the result were often disastrous.

Those two must have been atrocious parents. Face facts.

OP Her adopted parents were poisonous scum.

A young woman I went to high school with died of pancreatitis, related to alcoholism, in her late twenties. I didn’t personally know her, but heard she had initially been misdiagnosed at the hospital and she died within a few days of being admitted.

I’m never had pancreatitis, or had anyone close to me diagnosed with it, so I don’t know the symptoms or how it leads to a cause of death.

R89 From what I've heard it's extremely painful and horrible.

A friend died of pancreatic cancer in her 40s. She was diagnosed and dead six weeks later. She was a major alcoholic but seemed to finally have overcome it. I guess it caught up with her. It was the first I heard of the pancreas + connection.

Adopted kids can have issues but my friend was the well-loved bio daughter of a close, loving wealthy family but she basically drank herself to death. Sometimes people just f*ck up their lives.

I don’t know why, but I think Quintana Roo’s life would make a fascinating, tragic musical.

The girl loved Cancun, what can you say?

R83: but that fall, as many speculated on the net when ‘Blue Nights’ came out, wasn’t random, and was a direct result of her alcoholism.

The argument was, she had had too much to drink on the flight, so by the time they landed and were leaving the airport, and Q and her husband were walking towards their ride, she tripped and fell and hit her head. Normally, it should have been no big deal when an able-bodied adult walking and accidentally falling, he/she would just pick themselves out and continue.

But apparently Q was so intoxicated that she fell and hit her head really hard, and ended up in the UCLA Hospital’s ICU. That’s the beginning of her many stays in ICUs on both coasts.

It also led to brain bleed and comas.

But of course Joan didn’t say anything in the book about the precise reasons or circumstances of the fall. So the reader is left wondering: walking and falling, and ends up in the ICU?

^^ pick themselves *up*

I don't like alcohol and never drink. I've had pancreatitis. I went out to lunch, came home and vomited everything. The pain was excruciating, right up there with childbirth. When the EMTs came with the ambulance, I asked them if I was having a coronary because I couldn't imagine it could be anything else with that sort of pain. They kept me in the hospital for 5 days, wouldn't let me leave until I ate. I lied and told them I did as I knew I would never feel better until I slept in my own bed. Didn't eat solid food for weeks.

I've had pancreatitis too. The pain was excruciating, right up there with the first time I got fucked up the ass.

To the poster up thread re pancreatic cancer, my dad only ever drank a shot of bourbon with his father in law once a yea on Christmas Eve and got it. Mess of a disease.

Back to Joan, I believe anyone who names a person Quintana Roo is having a baby as a performative exercise. If my memory from the book is correct, John was the closer parent.

Pancreatitis isn't the same thing as pancreatic cancer, R98.

Joan Didion just seemed like one of the least maternal women who ever lived.

Dunne may have been the more active parent, but he also seems to have been the meaner one--he tore up an essay of Quintana's because she hadn't edited or something and threw it out the car.

Dominick Dunne and family were mad at Dunne and Didion because they were friends with the defense attorney in the Dunne murder case. I get both sides of that one. If you're the family of the victim, that will feel like a betrayal, but defending people is a job and a friend is a friend. Everyone has the right to a defense--that's how it works in the U.S.

Didion wrote that she had a strong urge to have a baby. She didn't say why she adopted.

For those of you bitching about Didion's smoking: Everybody smoked in front of their kids back in those days, and everybody smoked indoors. Everybody. That was the norm back then. It didn't really start to change until well into the 1980s.

Happy, once

R103 That photo doesn't look very happy to me.

[quote]Didion wrote that she had a strong urge to have a baby. She didn't say why she adopted.

I picture Didion talking about motherhood like Edina Monsoon. "Of course I want a baby dahling, it's the ultimate accessory!"

I think DL is united in the fact that while Dunne & Didion were entertaining & interesting people, it'd be a nightmare to be in their family, much less live in their home

[quote] It makes me wonder if, in some ways, keeping adoptions secret is preferred. I don’t really mean it, but at least kids wouldn’t grow up feeling rejected. The flip side of kids always knowing they are adopted is it can really screw with their mental health

I’m tired of people like you and others that talk about adoption like it’s a minefield. I was adopted at birth and knew I was adopted as soon as I could understand the concept.

I didn’t feel rejected nor abandoned. It didn’t affect my mental health. I grew up with the only loving family I’d ever known so I didn’t feel “adopted”. My middle brother was adopted, too. My biological mother was adopted as well.

I’m so glad I was adopted. My bio dad was a rapist and my bio grandfather was an Evangelist. I can’t imagine what my life would’ve been like left in their care.

So please stop assuming that adoption is a burden or unpleasant or shameful or a handicap. Millions of people are adopted and walking amongst you.

What Malibu child of the 60’s & 70’s turned out ok?

R101, I agree that being friends with Leslie Abramson isn't necessarily wrong, but Joan and John also went to Ma Maison where the murderer worked, and they also suggested to Dominick that he take the plea without telling him that they were friends with Abramson. He found out later. There was more than one thing going on, unfortunately, and it all added up to them simply not caring except for themselves and their own social status.

Heartbreaking.

Joan Didion seemed like a horrible mother. I remember watching that documentary on her and just wondering why she ever bothered adopting a child at all.

Say what you want about her talent for writing, but she seemed like an insufferable, chain-smoking anorexic. The hysterical outpouring from even the dumbest of celebrities who claimed to love her writing after she died was absurd. Suddenly every actress on Instagram was all lifelong fan of Joan Didion. Sure Jan.

R109 What a load of crap. CDAN is a total fantasist. Use your common sense - how would this one man be able to publish multiple gossip blinds about celebs of all walks of life every day? And being poisoned by arsenic? Yeah sure, that wouldn't have been picked up on.

Anyone who quotes CDAN or Darwin Porter doesn't deserve to partake in DL gossip. We have our standards!

R112 well yes. There are some legit blind gossip item purveyors like Michael Musto but CDAN is not one of them.

How did Joan poison her daughter if they didn’t live together? Joan was a cold fish mom, but she doesn’t deserve that nonsense.

R109 R110 FRAU alert!

Oh my god that photo posted by r103 is SO interesting. There's so much there. (And it's not "happiness")

While hate watching that Kat show with Mayim, I came to the realization that Swoosie Kurts could potentially make and excellent Joan in movie. Of course only late in life Joan, but she’s got that very thin, painful fragility about her. Vanessa Redgrave was amazing on stage doing The Year of Magical Thinking, but it never read as Joan, and they purposely distanced her from being Joan saying it was a character. But Swoosie could pull it off I think in a movie version or limited series.

Dominick Dunne’s family was much warmer and joyful. John and Joan were too serious and insecure

R109 That Margaret Atwood I could see, but Joan Didion? I'm just kidding. CDAN is ridiculous.

Didn't Joan kill her, too? You know, like the rest?

Or didn't she admit this one?

R106 I’m glad to hear your story. Do you think it was luck that, for whatever reason, you didn’t have feelings of abandonment or is it totally typical and the exceptions are just the stories that we hear about?

Barbara Gruzzetti's brilliant 1979 hatchet job on Didion mentions Quintana Roo in the first sentence.

R109 That BL doesn't even make sense. Like... what the fuck? I'm all for a good (fake) blind item, but this one is not even grounded in reality.

R122 That essay is a classic and really pinpointed much of what bothered me about Didions' writing.

What else has Barbara Grizzuti Harrison done of note, other than that one essay criticizing Joan?

That essay by Harrison was some great cunting. I suspect, however, there was some jealousy involved.

R116: please elaborate! Am curious why y’all aren’t seeing happiness in that pic

I think a John Dunne was jealous of his brother.

[quote] I think a John Dunne was jealous of his brother.

And of his wife.

R127 I'm not a body language expert, but they're all disconnected from one other.

Another disquieting pic; in the middle is Abigail McCarthy

If she wasn’t going to look fabulous that day, Joan just didn’t bother to get out of bed.

^^ Lolz well she did have her well documented migraine as an alibi though

R131 Yes, freaky pic.

Roo looks haunted

I went to middle/high school with Quintana. She was a year ahead of me, so I wouldn't pretend to know her well, but she seemed pretty nice. Definitely wasn't a snooty, mean-girl (of which there many), but she was known as a "partier".

That is not a beautiful kid by any stretch of the imagination.

R94's take isn't very accurate.

Quintana had been sick prior to John dying, and in fact John dropped dead of a heart attack after visiting Quintana at the hospital, where she had been in and out of a coma for months due to pneumonia that turned into sepsis and pancreatitis.

They had the memorial for John in spring of 2004 after Quintana recovered enough to attend, and she later left and went back to California. It was at the CA airport that she had a cerebral hemorrhage that caused her to fall and hit her head, causing further damage. She was in and out of the hospital at that point until the pancreatitis returned (it's unclear if it ever fully went away in the first place) and she died in August 2005.

It's likely that alcoholism contributed to the pancreatitis, and Didion says repeatedly that Quintana was an alcoholic and had a drinking problem. What doesn't make sense is why she would say that so often and yet "hide" that Quintana died from alcoholism.

It makes more sense to say that alcoholism contributed to but did not fully cause her death. I don't know why people want to make a conspiracy out of this when the truth is probably that she had health problems that were made fatal by drinking, which isn't the same as "died of alcoholism and Joan hid it." Especially since Joan never hid Quintana's alcoholism.

Q at Bennington, at the time reputed to be the most expensive college in America

[quote] It was at the CA airport that she had a cerebral hemorrhage that caused her to fall and hit her head, causing further damage.

Now this is the questionable part: did the cerebral haemorrhage cause the fall? Or did she fall - due to intoxication - hit her head, thereby causing the cerebral hemorrhage?

Which is the cause? And which is the effect?

I don’t think it’s ever settled one way or another, that why people on the net at the time *speculated*.

That was fantastic r122, I'm glad you linked it.

Gosh, these are really fascinating questions and details in the above posts. I'm really enjoying them! My questions seem silly, but I'm wondering how Joan stayed so skinny and still had the habit of drinking Coke daily. Coke has loads of chemicals and calories and usually makes people fat if they drink it regularly. Did she drink Coke her entire life? If so, how did she stay so thin?

The speculation about Quintana's health and death turned into a grisly conspiracy-based obsession, especially after that Jezebel piece where the author said that the family had every right to privacy on the matter, but that we had every right to question what we had been told by the family, and that our curiosity about Quintana's death was equally as important as the family's right to privacy.

The truth is that it doesn't matter at all whether Quintana's death was because she drank too much, and speculating that maybe she'd had too many little mini bottles of Kahlua or something on the plane and that's why she fell and died is kind of strange. There's more than a touch of moralizing in that; it sounds like an accusation from someone who is angry about something. What could you possibly be angry about? You don't know any of these people. Why the moralizing? Like no one has ever drank too much after attending their father's funeral?

You can tell that the entire topic has gotten out of hand by the fact that CDAN made up a blind that says Joan Didion poisoned Quintana Roo with arsenic over the course of months. Once things get to that point, it's no longer harmless speculation.

Well of course many of us are playing sleuths, but that’s because the memoir itself was so vague, and it therefore unwittingly provoked all these questions and speculations, on the part of its readers.

And wanting to establish the sequence of facts leading to that critical fall isn’t moralizing. The readers know that Q had a drinking problem, so getting intoxicated on the flight, leading to the fall later, just seems like a more logical explanation.

Otherwise how does one explain that cerebral haemorrhage, which seemingly came out of nowhere?

I for one am deeply sympathetic with Q’s plight, as one of my siblings also drank to the extent of suffering from acute pancreatitis. But thank god he managed to turn sober and is living a relatively normal life now.

It’s really a pity that Q didn’t pull through

[quote]Otherwise how does one explain that cerebral haemorrhage, which seemingly came out of nowhere?

Septicemia often causes strokes. "Sepsis leads to systemic inflammation, hemodynamic dysfunction and collapse, and coagulopathy, thereby increasing the risk for stroke."

Personally, I don't think it unwittingly provoked these questions, I think Didion did it on purpose.

* by "it" in r145 I meant Didion's memoir, I wasn't very clear, sorry

[quote]Barbara Gruzzetti's brilliant 1979 hatchet job on Didion

Oh, dear.

R145: I don’t mean to be pointlessly argumentative, because as I said I’m deeply sympathetic to people who have alcoholic problems.

And I see what you mean by septicaemia causing cerebral haemorrhage.

But again the question: when did the septicaemia set in? Did it happen before, or after, the flight to LA?

I honestly don’t think the book is clear on that too. We’re just told she had had many stays in ICUs, and somewhere along the line, sepsis set in.

That’s why I think the memoir is unsatisfying. If Joan had just said, Q died of acute pancreatitis, a very simple factual statement, and leave it at that, then all these speculations wouldn’t have arisen

I can see a Jim Henson biopic on Joan would work well.....

The Wikipedia article for Abigail McCarthy, seen in R131, contains the immortal line: " Following their separation, they lived separately, though they never divorced."

Mother should have pulled the front of the baby's dress over her nappy for the picture. Ladylikeness mattered back then.

[quote]But again the question: when did the septicaemia set in? Did it happen before, or after, the flight to LA?

Before. She had it in 2003, it started out as pneumonia and progressed to septicemia with accompanying pancreatitis. It's why she was in a coma in the hospital when John died. It's why his funeral was postponed, Joan was waiting until Quintana recovered from septicemia before having the memorial service.

Septicemia can increase chances of stroke, as I posted, and the cerebral hemorrhage she suffered has always been noted to have caused the fall, not the other way around.

From there she had a "cascade of health crises" including a period where she was paralyzed, and finally died of "pancreatitis and septic shock" as the NYT put it.

I get that Joan said she died of "acute" pancreatitis and it doesn't appear to have been acute so much as a recurrence of her previous septicemia and pancreatitis, and that makes people question the story, and I get that, but it doesn't seem really to be much of a mystery. Joan said she was alcoholic and I believe her; I believe alcoholism made Quintana's health problems worse, and what started out as pneumonia turned into septicemia that hospitalized her, which increased her chances of severe continuing health problems, and that (almost certainly alcohol-induced) pancreatitis complicated things even more.

R152: your information and sequence of events are no doubt accurate.

However, I just check my écopy of ‘Blue Nights’, and did a Search for terms like ‘pancreatitis’, ‘ septicemia’, none appeared.

I think you must have gotten the info from somewhere else, as these items are not in the memoir.

I just want to be clear that readers of ‘Blue Nights’ *alone* would not have had those items of information that you provided, for which I thank you

Grizzutti was a pretty fearless writer.

Agreed, R151. That caught my eye. Even if one doesn't subscribe to the presumably bourgeois standards of "ladylike," there is such a thing as sloppiness, not to mention privacy.

r142 some people are just naturally thin no matter what. Didion drank Coke daily, but she also didn't eat much and she was a heavy smoker.

R136, in NYC or LA?

You bastards are making fun of a poor dead girl's name.

Live a day in my shoes!

^ LOL!

R159- Shit or doody is NOT my humor, but I thought it was funny as hell!!!!!!! Thank you!!!!

(*You can trolldar me bitch- I was disgusted in that "Big Secret" thread that everyone admitted they farted in public. (Disgusted)

I am not into that shit. Literally

Joan felt enormous guilt for Quintana ‘s death . She really did some deep diving into Roo’s childhood and her trauma

What was Q. doing with her life? Did she have a job or career or a calling? Was she just drifting?

She was a photo of editor for vogue I believe. Her apartment was on Sutton Place. I wonder if moving to New York City when she was a teenager affected her badly. I think she really loves Los Angeles

Joan is dead.

Yes, r164, but I read her two books on her losses . She was truly questioning if she was a good mother or not . Roo was troubled since early childhood.

I would totally watch a TV show about a young 1980s alcoholic Quintana Roo as a single swinging bicoastal girl bopping between Los Angeles and New York and partying her brains out. Especially if it was show runned by Sam Levinson and played by an Apatow nepotistic child.

Q with husband Gerry Michael

Mommy was a tad on the slim side

R168 = Barbara Grizzutti Harrison

Q's husband doesn't look so happy in that photo at R167 does he?

They look related in this pic, it seems, despite no blood relation

Speaking of people who look like Joan---Harrison Ford's current wife, Calista Flockheart (Ally McBeal) looks very much like Joan when Joan was younger--same petite anorexic frame, same hair color and style, same pixie look with dark eyes and brown hair. I wonder if Harrison was attracted to Joan when he was a young carpenter working for her and if this is what attracted him to his current wife, who echos Joan in type and style?

R172: intriguing indeed

Joan reminds me of Sally Rooney. Glum, very thin, a bit of a worshipper of thinness (this has been noted about Rooney's books), a bit dead-eyed from the intense self-seriousness.

Long before Didion embraced Anorexia chic thinness, Karen Blixen had been living on coffee, cigarettes and champagne for decades. Of course Karen also had a touch of the syphilis too to help her keep thin.

R175: Miss Blixen was quite chicly thin indeed

Serving Soft Butch realness here

Making merry in the 80s

R142, Maybe all she consumed was Coke and just nibbled and pushed her food around the plate. And just my unscientific opinion but I think the Coke in the 60's and early70's had real cane sugar which I (perhaps erroneously) believe to be easier to burn off than corn syrup.

Yes, Coke used to have real sugar. Mexican Coke still does. You can buy it at Costco and it tastes better than American Coke with HFCS.

R167, hubs looks like Frankenstein. He was a bartender . That’s where they met

Husband is much older than her . Daddy issues , lesbian?

Yes, Mexican Coke is the best!

^ I think you can get it at World Market too!

The photo at OP. Would have been so easy to arrange Quintana's dress to cover her underpants. This photo was OK for a family album, but to publish it. Why? There was no care involved.

I'm not doubting that Didion was a smoker, but so was Jackie Onassis. The cigarette was a prop that Didion could never put down, even for a photo with her daughter.

Sad.

Did anyone hear the story at after Dominique Dunne was attacked and was in a coma, her father said stay off the fucking phone so the hospital can reach me. Joan picked up the phone and was talking to her editor in another room, blocking the line. She was dead to me when I heard that.

Now she is simply dead.

[quote]I'm not doubting that Didion was a smoker, but so was Jackie Onassis. The cigarette was a prop that Didion could never put down, even for a photo with her daughter.

[quote]Sad.

Back in those days a cigarette was an accessory, like a hat or a watch. Nobody really thought much of it. People didn't get hysterical over smoking until years later.

R186, she and John were beyond insensitive during the Dominique horror .

[quote]What else has Barbara Grizzuti Harrison done of note, other than that one essay criticizing Joan?

I thought I had recognized the name, Barbara Grizzuti Harrison! She wrote a brilliant article for the NYT back in the late '80s, "The Importance of being Oprah"

Harrison died many years ago.

R190, did Joan have her killed?

R191 Another arsenic positioning death. 😞

This place has a hard for upper class WASP matriarchs. Just look at the Beth Jarrett appreciation threads.

All you need to know about how John and Joan were as people could be gleamed from how they acted after Dominiques passing. What kind of person would go to the restaurant where the person who killed a family member of yours was a head chef?

R193, I think she had a serious change of heart . They were very fond of Dominique.

Quintessential nuclear family, plus an unidentified person

Anyone who asks "What has Barbara Grizzuti Harrison done besides write this essay I didn't like?" isn't asking in good faith. There's a huge Wikipedia article on her and hundreds of resources online about Harrison.

Till death do us part

And Barbara was quite a Babe back in the day

What is this shit about Dominique Dunne? Where’s the proof they were cavalier about the whole thing?

Simply stated, genes are everything.

Just because you haven't heard about it means it's a lie, r199?

Go to Google and stop being helpless. A ton has been written about it, and you've read enough on this thread to help you find what you're looking for.

R201 Why don’t you not be a complete bitch and use your fuckin thumbs to say what it is instead of being useless. Glad I took that 60seconds from you regardless

I already did in two replies on this thread, r201, and others have commented as well. It's not my problem that you apparently can't read at a 6th grade level or above.

* R203 should read "R202." I figured I'd better correct my typo, lest R202 get even more confused than they already are.

Search through the thread you bitch? Thanks for the 2 added minutes of your life. All mine. While you spew your bile. Can’t be useful with your time, can you?

Joan Didion brings out the cunts on DL like moths to a flame.

A rarely seen side of Joan

This one breaks my heart

R195 I think that might be teenage Griffin Dunne behind them. This was as close as I could find of a picture of him as a teen and he has long hair. I mean it would be a photo of him at his most handsomeness, there were other shots from that day as well.

Say what you will, Joan really wanted to adopt a baby so much so that it put the cushy little deal they had going living in Palos Verdes at risk because they had promised that they were just two adults and there would be no children at all. The adoption came early and unexpectedly and as soon as they accepted her they needed to vacate the residence on the Peninsula and move. I think this is when they first relocated to Santa Monica.

It might be Griffin's brother Alexander in the r195 photo but I'm having trouble finding a photo of him from then. He shunned the spotlight, then went missing in the early 1990s if I recall, and was found after he just walked out of the forest he was supposedly hiking in. I'm not sure we ever got any answers on that.

This is where they would have given up living to have a baby, it’s right by the ocean on a cliff overlooking Catalina Island.

Look how cute little Dominique is at far right . She must have been about 10 or 11 here

At r209 little Dominique far right :)

Lord, bitches (meaning gays and gals) be crazy tearing into Joan’s 1970s kitchen designs.

Joan descending a stair case.

Roo never looks happy

She looks pretty happy here. Graduation, Westlake School for Girls.

(photo from Didion's LA times obit, which I couldn't link)

R218, she graduated high school from West lake ? This may be her middle school picture because they moved to New York City when she was 15

QR looks very pretty in R218

She absolutely does . Pretty gal

R218 Is it Paul Sorvino? Was Mira the same age and at the school?

[R219] Nope. She graduated from Westlake in 1984 (and was there all six years, 7th-12th grade).

Senior Poll: "Most likely to be found taking pictures in her Paris flat."

I thought she went there from Kindergarten till 8th like her cousin Dominique?

When did Joan leave LA for NYC permanently?

R209: I went back to check, apparently it’s another nephew, Tony.

Is there a Tony Dunne? How many kids did Dominick have?

Trinity

R225- When Quintana was in college at Barnard. So it must have been in the late 80's..

So near yet so far

I don't think so, R224. Dominque was old enough to have attended Westlake when it was K-12, but Quintana wasn't. In 1968, it became a secondary school (exclusively) and started phasing out K-6th.

R219: I stand semi-corrected. The LA Times captioned the photo: "Daughter Quintana with Didion and Dunne at her graduation in 1984 from what was then Westlake School for Girls".

She did indeed graduate from Westlake in 1984. However, looking at the photo again, I believe you're right -- it's from her middle school graduation (or some other event) & the Times got the date (or event) wrong.

I didn't notice at first because I was distracted by Tom Bosley....but the chairs are facing the wrong direction for it to be Senior graduation. And there aren't nearly enough of them, nor people, nor any decorations on the railings & terrace (as there would be for graduation).

Last night I watched the Joan Didion documentary on Netflix directed by her nephew Griffin Dunne. I really enjoyed it. I can't believe that she was able to live so long as thin as she was. She was like Karen Carpenter thin. It seems like the little old ladies who eat like a bird tend to live the longest.

Dominique used to babysit Roo . They had a special bond

Beautiful Dominique

Young Dominique with papa

Ridiculous pose. Why can't any of these people deign to smile when they're being photographed?

It reminds me of the gigantic, glowering portrait the Roses (from Schitt's Creek) posed for when they were rich.

R225: Here's a 1988 L.A. Times article about Joan & John's permanent/full-time move to NYC . It mentions that they bought an apartment in NYC four years earlier & spent the fall there (which would have been Quintana's freshman year at Bennington).

R236 The somber and weighted expressions are a common affectation among professional writers. They either smirk knowingly or pose like someone in the year 1850. I guess the lack of smiling is to show how serious and non phony they are. Or something.

I agree; they are trying to look VERY serious /deep in most of their photos.

But here's another light-hearted, smiling photo of Quintana/Didion/Dunne. Not dated, but definitely during her teen years/early 80s (the sweater vest with those buttons is a dead giveaway).

Dominick and John Gregory look nothing alike.

R236, Griffin talked about he and his siblings hated posing with a serious look on face, to replicate royal families . That was all Dominick’s doing

^^ Royal family indeed

More casual mood

Dominique and her daddy were so close

Lenny Dunne was a great lady . She was kind, fun and elegant. She was lighthearted. She and Natalie Wood were best friends.

Imagine adminishing your children before a family photo is taken "get that smile off your face!"

Dominick's parents screwed him up and he no doubt said "I won't follow their example!" Then he proceeded to do stuff to his kids that was also harmful, though admittedly different. Cue "They fuck you up, your mum and dad..."

R241 Griffin knew that we'd be analyzing these family photos 50 years later, didn't he?

R244 Can the Dominique Dunne trolls dial down the creep factor, please.

Quintana didn't live long enough to have quintuplets.

John wrote an article for Esquire regarding his thoughts on family members Attending the trial of their murdered loved one. This so enraged Dominick and Dominique’s brothers they started to loathe John . I do wanna say that I’m Quintana felt ill and was in her coma, John reached out to Dominic and they reconciled. Dominick Dunne was a good man

John expressed actual contempt towards victim’s families.

Why did he express contempt for victims’ families?

R251, extreme envy towards his brother Dominick, and just an insecure asshole.

Poor Q, prematurely aged

The appeal of large men

Can y’all imagine the conversation between these two?

Did John and Joan ever swing? I don’t get a sexual vibe from them

Carrie fisher said to bff Griffin Dunne , that it was just like his mother to drive 200 miles to find a house for a friend.

Quintana, smiling on the J.V. Volleyball team, 9th grade.

Dominique , age 13 presumably at Westlake . She doesn’t look happy here.

Wow, that is very Wednesday Adams, R259.

Quintana's 9th grade yearbook photo:

R256 I feel like she would have written about it if they did. I would love to read a parody essay to be inserted into The White Album if someone has mad skills and knows how to fire up the Wattpad and create one.

Renata Adler : Pauline Kael = Barbara Grizzuti Harrison : Joan Didion

It wasn't only alcoholism with Q. Joan fessed up after being all coy and withholding in that con job titled "The Year of Magical Thinking." Perhaps she fessed up in the next book,can't recall. But she said that Q began to show signs of mental disturbance . . . when. Can't remember. College, I think. But she wrote that they carted her from shrink to shrink, diagnostician to diagnostician and had a carousel of diagnoses, from various personality disorders to bipolar. That swollen/bloat look people are discerning is probably all kinds of meds no less than booze. I think there were hospitalizations and breakdowns, lots of 'em.

She was being treated by child psychiatrists since early childhood.Her adoption messed her up if you read Blue Nights .

[quote]Tragedy of the Most Beautiful Little Girl

Were all the other little girls dead.

? ^^

Happier days [cousin Griffin on the right]

OMG i didn’t know that Papa John wrote a collection of essays called ‘Quintana & Friends’, published in 1978, Q would have been 12 then

I read John Gregory Dunne's memoir on screenwriting. He strikes me as a guy with more ambition than talent married to a more talented writer. He could deal with that, but when his big brother Dominick had a comeback as a more successful writer that probably just about drove him nuts. Dominick was just a better storyteller.

I think the real asshole was John and Joan just sort of went with it. She seems to have been such an odd combination of fragile and completely driven, not quite ruthless, but close at times. Originally she wanted to be an actress, but was told she was too small. I think if she'd really been driven to act that wouldn't have stopped her, but I think she must have liked attention and creating a persona--she knew how to make an interesting photo and she certainly had a flair for the dramatic in her writing--such as the famous opening essay line about being in Hawaii in lieu of gettiing a divorce.

I think Quintana just didn't have a strong enough sense of self to deal with two egotists as parents--even though I still think both Dunne and Didion actually meant well. Q might have made it if there had been one normal parent who put her first--like Lenny Dunne, who seems to have been the nicest person out of the whole bunch.

Lenny Dunne was very warm and kind

R268 You can borrow the whole thing on archive.org. Someone summarize it for us!

I wonder if Dominique’s murder further traumatized her. Roo seemed very cold about it, but that could have been a cover .

Griffin and Lenny, circa 1968

R271: I didn’t know such a thing existed . Thanks for letting me know!

R273, where do you find these pics?

Lenny looks like Glenne Headley in the pic at R273.

R275: some are from this Interview magazine article [ink below]; others are just random Google Image searches

Lenny was pretty . She had such a hard life her last few decades 😞

No way! I refuse to believe the one on the right is Joan in 1952!

R274 I only discovered it in January. There are lots of interesting, oddball out-of-print books available on there to borrow for free. It's great!

How on earth did Joan become so... simian in her later years?

R281: I know, right?

While I wouldn’t go so far as to describe the older Joan as ‘simian’ - Lolz! - the girl from 1951 actually looked genuinely sweet.

And ‘sweet’ really isn’t an adjective one associates with the mature Didion, not by a long shot

The picture is so disturbing, the lack of any protective gesture, the cigarette, the girls panties. She definitely had problems.

Exactly, R283. She doesn't even hold Quintana, who is plopped indifferently onto her lap like a doll. No connection evident between mother and daughter.

R279 I think that that is her picture from her Mademoiselle guest editor application (they had to submit pictures of themselves of course, can’t let unattractive riffraff get into the internship) and she is channeling her best Sylvia Plath. She knew she was at a disadvantage coming from the west coast, so she going full throttle New England prep.

There's something about John in these photos, he seems haunted and removed, even when laughing. I can't figure it out. Like he was cut from another photo and pasted into the scene

Interesting read by an author who graduated from Westlake a couple years ahead of Quintana (and was influenced by Didion)

[quote]I rarely return to Brentwood. My parents have passed away, and it is now home to Gwyneth and Reese, and while that level of fame always existed, it was not flashy, rife with paparazzi, or selfie desperation. Teslas with winged doors and $150,000 Mercedes G-Wagons with tinted windows did not hog the road or cut you off with bold lane changes.

BURN!

Westlake has a Sharon Tate murders connection

^^ Yep. I remember that being talked about when I started Westlake in 7th grade, nearly a decade after the murders. "Oooh, did you know....?!!" I t was part of Westlake "lore".

And before someone asks: "How/Why was a there sleep-over during first week of August?" Westlake had a little summer school/day-camp program. Academics in the morning, followed by swimming, tennis & volleyball in the afternoon . That was the group attending the "sleepover" on campus the night of the Tate/Manson murders.

The author mentions Carol Burnett's daughters.....

Jody Hamilton, Quintana's classmate, was expelled in 9th grade for bringing LSD on their class retreat to Catalina Island. For some reason, Jody thought it would be fun/a good idea, to take a hit of acid DURING the boat-ride to Catalina, with 200+ passengers.

It didn't go well. She started tripping HARD & it became obvious to the teachers/administrators that she was on SOMETHING. They searched her backpack & found a bunch of LSD tabs (more than she could have taken herself). The rest of the class disembarked in Avalon, and she was immediately sent back to Long Beach (after the boat refueled). The Headmaster had been called, and he'd called the Hamiltons......she was done/out/expelled immediately. Before she ever got back to Long Beach.

^^ Oooh poor girl, tripping while having to deal with hostile adults

R292...I never suggested anyone should feel sorry for Jodi Hamilton. She got exactly what she deserved....a bad trip on the Catalina Express.

14 year olds do dumb things. It goes with the territory.

Agreed, R294....but taking LSD on a boat to a Catalina Island with 200 people is extraordinarily stupid.

All the worries in the world

For a second I thought this was Quintana

Looking happy in another Westlake yearbook photo.

Was Jasmine (the Westlake photographer) really that good? That she got miserable girls to smile?

Q went to Westlake same time as Bridget Fonda . Bridget is two grades ahead

You put me down a rabbit hole about Carol Burnett's kids of all things, r291. Jodi died at 38, all three had big drug problems, etc...

It seems Q looks most happy in middle school and high school and some of college. Something happened to her during or just after her college years, it seems. That's when she starts looking miserable and no longer as fit but bloated. I wonder what happened to make her go from a happy teen to a miserable adult?

R301 I'm sure the same thing that happens to most people as they age... the daily realities of life.

I’m piecing together that Q had a history of alcoholism? I read Joans books and don’t remember that - odd. I thought she had just died of some odd disease like pancreatitis - but sounds like the DL has more gossipy rationale for her young death? A recap would be helpful.

RR303. Jesus Christ.

Read the thread and buy Blue Nights and A Year Of Magical Thinking. Or google?

Short story- She was adopted and had some standard mental issues that come with being adopted and probably inherited genetics.

Joan would basically never say she was an alcoholic so you have to read between MANY lines- but its all there.

The girl was mentally ill like many people- probably not a great extent, but to the point of alcoholism.

I will say that the boyfriend never seemed sketchy to me, nor did Joan allude to that. I am sure he was out of place because he sounded blue collar, and the extremely uncomfortable bartender aspect of it all. He did not appear like some leech or slime bag.

Get the books though- they are both worth reading, and I particularly liked Blue Nights. If you are over 35 you will understand it better- as its about death, aging, and the inevitable fading of the blue nights of summer...

What strikes me about the husband is how much he reminded me of Edie Sedgwick’s husband who was named Michael. However briefly at the end they seemed to have found guys who genuinely cared for them, only for both wives to end up dead with in years of marriage. Hopefully they got some happiness and knew they were loved.

R301, my theory would be that the structure of school had a protective effect. Some folks with mental health issues don't falter until they leave school and have to find work and make major life decisions. I think this could be particularly true of people-pleasers. What do you do when you no longer have grades to give you a goal and an external measure of whether or not you're "good enough."

R301, her cousin Dominique’s death didn’t help

R300 Carol Burnett's daughter Jody is still alive at age 55. Her daughter Carrie is the one who died at age 38, of pneumonia as a complication of lung and brain cancer. Another daughter Erin is also still alive.

Carrie was her favorite

Thanks for the correction, r308, I don't know how I messed that up. Maybe it wasn't a rabbits hole I was going down

A little poem Q wrote as a child, and quoted in ‘Blue Night’:

^^

THE WORLD

The world Has nothing But morning And night It has no Day or lunch So this world Is poor and desertid. This is some Kind of an Island with Only three Houses on it In these Families are 2,1,2, people In each house So 2,1,2 make Only 5 people On this Island.

Wrong format. Let’s try again

THE WORLD

The world

Has nothing

But morning

And night

It has no

Day or lunch

So this world

Is poor and desertid.

This is some

Kind of an

Island with

Only three

Houses on it

In these

Families are

2,1,2, people

In each house

So 2,1,2 make

Only 5 people

On this

Island.

Joan was very cute before she had her nose bobbed which hugely increased the space between her nose and lips, thus the simian look.

I like Roo's poetry.

^^ Sorta Imagist, also quite Didionesque

Quintana’s hubby

Bump . You have to admit the Didion/Dunne family were Hollywood royalty

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

Q’s husband was handsome. Was the clan snobby to him?

I wonder if Burnett’s kids were cursed because their mother insisted on getting a Catholic married man with eight children, a couple of whom were infants.

Q was cute. She looked a bit like Anna Kornikova and Pia Zadora.

Carole was a part in home wrecking? But Hamilton was more at fault

Joel Hamilton was good looking

I met Erin , the baby of the his and ours brood . She was so nice and down to Earth .

Malibu, 1976

Cute as a button

Are buttons really cute?

DOLLFACE THREAD ALERT!

R328: Lolz I was actually thinking about the cliché while typing it: yeah where on earth did this button thing come in?

Just popping in to say this is the Mary-est thread title ever.

TRAGIC story of the MOST BEAUTIFUL little girl... 🤢

Quintana Roo IS the Gloria Vanderbilt of the last half of the 20th Century!

R327, Dominique looked like a precious moment doll

Any stories of Joan burping or farting or doing anything rude? Or was she just perfection all the time?

Yes R320 we can presume that Joan and John were distant at minimum, to Q's husband. They thought he was way beneath Q and more to the point that he was part of the party/drinking lifestyle and bad for her. Someone wrote that John was completely devastated and beside himself the day of the wedding he was so horrified at Q hitching up with the guy.

There are deets on him somewhere, in one of the books or a memoir essay by a friend of Q's, or something. I'll have to dig. He was a "musician" who didn't play a helluva lot of music, made his living slinging the booze. Q met him at the bar when he was working. There's a classic though horrid line attributed to Joan after Q's death, when somebody asked if Joan was going to stay in touch with the husband. Joan said something like, "I really don't see any reason to," or something. It was one of those ghastly WASP cuts that Joan was so adept at. They loathed the guy. Between the lines it sounded as if Joan blamed him for Q's descent and failure to recover, and for the final endgame, the plane flight after which Q slipped and fell and hit her head. Maybe they got completely sloshed on the plane, who knows. Joan wasn't gonna give us the dirty details, it was all implied.

Did Joan have horrid breath? Imagine the breath of an anorexic smoker!

Self absorbed people should never have children.

Dominick Dunn wrote a soupy elegy to his eleventh-hour reconciliation with John in VF after JDG's death. It included a total kiss-up to Joan, and painted a scene of Quintana's wedding day in which the parents beamed with approval at Quintana's choice.

But there is another piece out there that tells it differently. Searching and damned if I can find it. It definitely quoted Joan as giving that understated WASP cut of the knife about seeing no reason to have further contact with Quintana's husband. And it quoted somebody as saying the day of the wedding that John Gregory Dunne was horrified and beside himself. Dunno, maybe the story was yanked or quashed or something.

Of course, the Dominque Dunne fan/troll showed up with a bunch of photos of Dominque & her side of the family.... because. Quintana can't even have her own damn thread?

R339 But… but… Dominique loved her DADDY!!! 🤮

And if one more person (I believe its one caftan wearer) calls her ROO again, I am going to send a rabid kangaroo to kick your ass.

Too this.

"Roo" that.

Did you fucking know her personally?

🤣R341 triggered. I apologize. I said Roo. Je'cuse.Nope not a caftan-wearer!

LOL You little fucker R341.

Never once heard Quintana called "Roo" in any book or by any friend or foe.

But YOU decide to call her Roo.

Why not Quinny or "Our little lush"?

*Excuse moi!

R212 - You sure you want to live there?

[quote]Since 1956, the Portuguese Bend land has moved hundreds of feet towards the ocean.

The Dunne house in Beverly Hills, was the most socially warm and welcoming home to party at .

Bump

R271- Thank you, thank you so much for that site! It looks like a treasure!

[quote] I will not forget the instinctive wisdom of the friend who, every day for those first few weeks, brought me a quart container of scallion-and-ginger congee from Chinatown. Congee I could eat. Congee was all I could eat.

[quote]Rice Congee: Nourishing Food for Convalescence

Lots of comments about a nonentity. I am bored and tje girl was an ugly adult.

R351 This thread isn’t about you! This thread isn’t for you! You have everything, this thread is for those who don’t have, and have never had, you can see yourself out!

We haven’t seen this one before i don’t think

"We all survive more than we think we can," Didion says of living on after the deaths of her loved ones. "We imagine things — that we wouldn't be able to survive, but in fact, we do survive. ... We have no choice, so we do it."

John Gregory Dunne died of a massive heart attack. Quintana Roo Dunne died of complications from a flu that turned into pneumonia — then septic shock, an induced coma, a brain bleed, five surgeries and months in intensive care. It was a medical and emotional nightmare. Most of Didion's books contain little mantras — quick phrases, repeated here and there throughout the text. In Blue Nights it's this: When we talk about mortality, we're talking about our children.

From ^^^ Just after they adopted Quintana Roo (they'd seen the name on a map of Mexico, liked it, and chosen it) the writer says she acted as if she'd gotten a doll to dress up, not a real baby.

"We had many dresses," Didion says. "We had 66 dresses that she got for christening presents. ... Everybody was clueless, everybody to do with this angel baby had no clue."

Writer Joan Didion, whose 'electric anxiety' inspired a generation, has died at 87 OBITUARIES

Didion writes that her daughter was a quicksilver child — her many moods shifted rapidly. Eventually there was a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder, but Didion neither understood nor accepted that label.

Memories, now, for Didion, are stored in boxes, drawers and closets. She has saved the tiny dresses her daughter wore when she was 4 and 5 years old — hanging in Quintana's closet is a black wool challis dress with a rose print that she bought at Bendel's. "I open that closet door all the time now," she says.

In Blue Nights, Didion writes that in theory, these mementos should bring back the moment, but in fact, they only make clear how inadequately she appreciated the moment back when it happened.

Deeply introspective, Joan was consumed with anxiety and guilt

[quote] I began to see America as my own, a child’s map over which my child and I could skim and light at will. We spoke not of cities but of airports. If rain fell at Logan we could find sun at Dulles. Bags lost at O’Hare could be found at Dallas/Fort Worth. In the first-class cabins of the planes on which we traveled we were often, my child and I, the only female passengers, and I apprehended for the first time those particular illusions of mobility which power American business. Time was money. Motion was progress. Decisions were snap and the ministrations of other people were constant. Room service, for example, assumed paramount importance. We needed, my eleven-year-old and I, instant but erratically timed infusions of consommé, oatmeal, crab salad and asparagus vinaigrette. We needed Perrier water and tea to drink when we were working. We needed bourbon on the rocks and Shirley Temples to drink when we were not. A kind of irritable panic came over us when room service went off, and also when no one answered in the housekeeping department.

Being Joan Didion’s daughter was indeed quite hard work, but it did come with fabulous benefits. I would like to see some enterprising young actress do a one woman show called Being Joan Didion’s Daughter. Perhaps this might be a project for Millie Bobby Brown now that Stranger Things is winding down? Maybe written by Tracey Letts?

Being Joan Didion's Lettuce Sandwich would be interesting to see.

Sissy Spacek IS Joan.

R362 I said this earlier, but I think Swoosie Kurtz could do an amazing job embodying Joan, she has a fragility that I just can’t see Sissy pulling off. Sissy seemed to have such steely reserve, perhaps because of many of the roles she’s played. But Swoosie has that embodiment that she just might shatter at even the slightest touch that Joan has and it’s a quality that I don’t think Sissy could pull off in a performance. Similarly to Sissy, Vanessa Redgrave has that same quality, which didn’t exactly work for the stage production of The Year of Magical Thinking.

I just read Blue Nights. The daughter was adopted at birth and not at the age of one. She was told she was adopted early in because the Dunnes thought it best not to hide it but Didion writes about her daughter’s anxiety at a young age. She would repeatedly ask them what would’ve happened if her PPO stents were there to answer the phone when they learned about her, the baby, being available for adoption. And asked what if there’d been a car accident when they first brought her home. Fusion thought telling her at a young age about her adoption might’ve been the reason for her anxiety or it might’ve been part of her genetic brain chemistry. Quintana’s husband doesn’t figure in the story but I think that was a writer’s decision to narrow the focus of the story. Her comments about the husband are neutral ones.,

^ I apologize for the typos!

Why the DL obsession with this woman, Didion.

^because she was wealthy and pretentious, just as they fancy themselves to be.

lul, true R367.

Joan isn't that attractive. She looks vaguely simian to me.

Omg

Anyone know Dominique Dunne?

I party with her every weekend R371. What would you like to know?

R366 A certain demographic of DL loves WASPy women who remind them of their mothers. I grew up in a practical Scandinavian household, so the fascination to these matriarchs escapes me.

She’s a brilliant writer. One admires the talent, not just the person

Dominique was very well liked and kind

R374 Yeah, they sure admire her talent by nitpicking the details of every picture of Joan with dear "Roo."

I think Quintana Roo was an awesome name. 'Roo' is a cute nickname for boy or girl. Whomever hates 'Roo' never had a pet name as a child.

[quote] I recall an August afternoon in Chicago in 1973 when I took my daughter, then seven, to see what Georgia O’Keeffe had done with where she had been. One of the vast O’Keeffe “Sky Above Clouds” canvases floated over the back stairs in the Chicago Art Institute that day, dominating what seemed to be several stories of empty light, and my daughter looked at it once, ran to the landing, and kept on looking. “Who drew it,” she whispered after a while. I told her. “I need to talk to her,” she said finally.

[quote]My daughter was making, that day in Chicago, an entirely unconscious but quite basic assumption about people and the work they do. She was assuming that the glory she saw in the work reflected a glory in its maker, that the painting was the painter as the poem is the poet, that every choice one made alone—every word chosen or rejected, every brush stroke laid or not laid down—betrayed one’s character. Style is character. It seemed to me that afternoon that I had rarely seen so instinctive an application of this familiar principle, and I recall being pleased not only that my daughter responded to style as character but that it was Georgia O’Keeffe’s particular style to which she responded: this was a hard woman who had imposed her 192 square feet of clouds on Chicago.

The artist and her work

There’s no denying that Joan is still quite the Frauspiration…

R380 I blame Emma Roberts.

R381: OMG poor baby

And this one below is found on Instagram under the hashtag: #hotgirltotebag

R381 " Sweetie do you want to hear again about the creepy Santa Ana winds? "

“Mommy, mommy!, read the part again about the toddler dropping acid at Haight Asbury!”

r372 = Heather O'Rourke

This fucking Swoosie Kurtz Troll. Christ almighty.

Why don't you go drag out your Sisters DVD's from 1995 and finger yourself?

R385, lol And Heather was very attached to Dominique during filming of Poltergeist.

So Joan bought a print of ‘Sky Above Clouds’, circa 1977

Does anyone know what’s the other one, ‘Loose Gravel’?

Quintana with her BFF since elementary school, Susan Traylor, who also went to Westlake (plus two friends). Susan is on Quintana's left. Some may recognize her as the sassy gal who DIDN'T get a sunburned ass, in A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT. She spoke at John Dunne's funeral.

Griffin felt the spirits of his lost loved ones while making the documentary on Joan .

Dominique’s evil murderer from several years ago

Bump for an intriguing family

Can ugly Swoozie Kurtz PLAY ALL THE ROLLS???

Roo's Roll?

John's Roll?

AND Joan Van Ark's, ROLL?

R393: you mean like this?

Don't squeeze the Charmin, guys.

Doing that and being berated for it with Joan's 40 dollar vocabulary is likely what caused Quint's PTSD, which is why she was drinking her life away.

Jesus, Joan was such a gawd-help-us, as PG Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster would put it.

Bump

I have thoroughly enjoyed this thread. But every time I see that title, I wince.

It's really the gayest thing I have ever read on this site. And that's saying something.

Any tidbits on her cousin Dominique Dunne? I’ve heard she was so kind etc . It’s sad there’s not enough about her out there except for what happened to her by the demon bastard.

R399-She was too young to get any kid of reputation- good or bad- So luckily, she sounded like a sweetheart.

Dominique was raised in Beverly Hills surrounded by the industry people, and yet she remained down to earth and kind and everyone said who worked with her she was very professional. She was a terrific actress I wish she had lived.

Bump

Some weird gays obsessed with Dominique dunne. She’s cold and dead hunties move on.

R403, Dominique’s soul is eternal and she is more alive than her killer is .

Bump

I wonder if Quintana's problem was that her mother was so beautiful, thin, successful, talented. Did that start her drinking?

She was such a beautiful child, almost like a doll picked out from a vintage toy catalogue.

In other words, if Quintana had been adopted by another couple, would she still be alive today?

Whoever bumped this thread, so appropriate with the Joan memorial just happening, thank you. I enjoyed a long reread through and my own fabulous posts and those of others.

I think Q parents loved her like their own flesh and blood . They were just busy and self absorbed. Her cousin Dominique was a big sister to her and very nurturing influence.