Joan Didion Receives NBF's 2007 life-time achievement award

Part 2 of 2 - Joan Didion accepts the National Book Foundation's life-time achievement award for American writers. Recorded November 14, 2007, at the National Book Awards Dinner and Ceremony in New York City.

[@sibengerard1856]

grand damme of letters...genuinely humble; paying tribute to another writer at the end of her speech.

[@quickman200]

My favorite of her essays was "On Self Respect" because of how spot-on it is!

[@nicmart]

That, and her essay on feminism, should be read a re-read by every young man and woman in the Englis speaking world.

[@sibengerard1856]

highly underrated...a master.

[@softwarephil1709]

My favorite essay is On Morality. It’s a very earthy, even primal, piece befitting the locale where it was written. The news from The Snake about the widow’s lonely sentinel staring into the water stuck in my mind.

[@jackdobosh1682]

S I T D O W N .

[@thomasthompson6378]

Didion's "Some Dreamers of the Golden Dreams" remains, today, many years after it was written, a supreme example of what an essay should be. And in writing it she did something that had never been accomplished before: she used the techniques of fiction to make more vivid the reality of the very non-fiction story she was telling. That approach has now been co-opted by many other writers -- but it is worth nothing that Didion basically invented the approach. She's going to be much missed.

[@lindajakubowski3742]

Outstanding lady.

[@bonnehumeur09]

Simply the best...

[@mickey1954RK]

Slouching Toward Bethlehem and The White Album should be required reading for those who lived through the 60's but were not paying attention.

[@nicmart]

Why not those who did pay attention?