Dec. 7, 2025 7 AM PT <\/p>\n
To the editor<\/b>: Because none of your literary commentators on Joan Didion mentioned her work as a screenwriter, they missed what may be her best writing about Los Angeles: \u201cStrangers in Hollywood,\u201d<\/a> published (ironically, in the New Yorker) just after the disastrous 1988 Writers Guild strike (\u201c6 writers remember Joan Didion, L.A.\u2019s literary prophet who \u2018remains full of surprise,\u2019\u201d<\/a> Dec. 4). She opens with some chuckles about how we experience earthquakes and commentary on the red-hot housing market. That concludes with her reflections on the Spelling mansion (then under construction) as a segue to a biting comparison of \u201cmovie people\u201d and executives.<\/p>\n In classic Didion prose, she peppers this with anecdotes about how the industry mistreats writers \u2014 but really heats up when she talks about the writers whose defection sank the 1988 strike. Toward them, she felt \u201ca coolness bordering on distaste, as if we had gone back forty years, and they had named names.\u201d Words to remember as the industry prepares for the 2026 contract negotiations.<\/p>\n Alan Paul, Los Angeles<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dec. 7, 2025 7 AM PT To the editor: Because none of your literary commentators on Joan Didion…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":432241,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,11890,7129,3195,197792,6276,2961,200665,197795,224,2444,5337,200666,50043,200667,22685,6807,27020,49253],"class_list":{"0":"post-432240","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-commentary","11":"tag-editor","12":"tag-industry","13":"tag-joan-didion","14":"tag-l-a","15":"tag-la","16":"tag-literary-commentator","17":"tag-literary-prophet","18":"tag-los-angeles","19":"tag-los-angeles-times","20":"tag-losangeles","21":"tag-movie-people","22":"tag-next-year","23":"tag-spelling-mansion","24":"tag-strangers","25":"tag-strike","26":"tag-word","27":"tag-writer"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}