The Photos of Joan Didion That Defined the Californian Kitchen

"California belongs to Joan Didion," is what Michiko Kakutani, former chief book critic for the New York Times, wrote of the aggressively clear-eyed literary figure in a 1979 profile. Kakutani eventually won a Pulitzer Prize for "distinguished criticism," so I’m inclined to believe her. Today, Didion— who was born in Sacramento in 1934 and died in 2021 in New York, where she relocated from California in the late ’80s—is widely regarded as the ultimate Golden State writer, perhaps more so than Steinbeck. Her nervy reported essays, as well as several recognizable portraits from her younger years, helped crystallize her unique brand of unaffected California-tinted cool.

One of the standouts was taken in 1968 by Time photographer Julian Wasser. Didion stands in front of her Corvette Stingray in a long-sleeve dress and sandals. She has a cigarette in hand, an icy glare on her face, and a heavy nonchalance on her shoulders. Another series of photos, less famous than Wasser’s, captures a softer and sunnier portrait of the prolific writer. In these images, shot by fashion photographer Henry Clarke for a 1972 Vogue feature, Didion poses in the sun-soaked California kitchen of her family’s cliffside Malibu home.

In one shot, Didion stands at the kitchen counter, chopping leafy greens on a wooden cutting board, while a hulking Le Creuset pot—a bright sunburst of red and orange—sits beside her. Another shows a corner brimming with fresh citrus and alliums in hanging wire baskets typically used for storing eggs in French farmhouse kitchens. Didion used hers to house lemons, grapefruits, oranges, Vidalia onions, and garlic bulbs. Underneath, three Mexican ceramic planters—presumably chipped and weathered by the salty breeze of the Pacific Ocean—house chives, mint, and a third herb I can’t quite identify. Tucked away to the side is a row of about two dozen cooking and gardening books. My favorite detail is a tiny cardboard box chock-full of notecards, presumably holding recipes.

Didion’s longtime friend, writer Susanna Moore, wrote in her 2020 memoir that "Joan" was "fastidious and particular" about her domestic life, mentioning some dishes the writer cooked and served in that kitchen. Each reads as more Californian than the last. Artichoke vinaigrette. An orange-and-endive salad. Mexican chicken. (Didion said she learned to cook as a writer at Vogue; one of her tasks was to proofread all the recipes.) Moore tells a story of how Didion once became irritated when fellow writer Nora Ephron kept pestering her for the chicken recipe. Actor and director (and also Didion’s nephew) Griffin Dunne offered a PDF cookbook as a Kickstarter perk for the 2017 documentary he made on his legendary aunt. Included were recipes for a simple parsley salad (parsley, olive oil, vinegar, and parmesan), artichokes au gratin, and Alice Waters’s coleslaw. In that Vogue spread, two books on Didion’s kitchen counter offer another hint of her domestic sensibilities. One is Cooking à la Cordon Bleu by Alma Lach, and the other is Sunset magazine’s Western Garden Book. (Didion owning a book produced by Sunset is as Californian as it gets.)

In these photos, Didion’s Malibu kitchen also has an unmistakable West Coast feel, even if the quintessential "California-style" kitchen is hard to pinpoint. There isn’t a universal standard for the aesthetic—it tends to feel like a hodgepodge of French farmhouse, Craftsman, and Spanish Revival. A classic California kitchen will favor bold tile over marble, sunlight and warmth over modern sleekness, and there is usually a heft dosage of wood. The sum of those features makes for a kitchen that feels lived-in. Didion’s checks all these boxes and then some.

There is something uniquely delightful about Didion having sunburst cookware and potted herbs in her kitchen. Her oft-prickly prose, sentences that oscillate between doomy and seductive in one breath, can feel at odds with this homey kitchen. Moore and Didion’s friends have hinted that the woman they knew as a host and home cook contrasts the Didion the world knows as a writer. After her death, we learned she brought her Le Creuset cookware and cookbooks from California to her New York kitchen. The same hulking pot was part of a set that sold at her estate auction for $8,000, and six "California cookbooks" sold for $6,000, the hammer price for both blowing past the estimates.

The Corvette, her sharp stare, and smoke in hand may sprint to the front of mind when one summons an image of Didion, but it’s also quite fun to think of "Joan" dressing a salad of oranges and endives in her sun-soaked Malibu kitchen. An affinity for both cigarettes and citrus—that’s the California way.

Top photo by Henry Clarke/Condé Nast/Shutterstock.

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