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Joan Didion s new collection of old essays holds the key to her shimmer Steffie Nelson © (Craig Aurness / Corbis) Joan Didion turned her childhood awareness of Hearst Castle, in coastal San Simeon, into a shimmering string of words and ideas. (Craig Aurness / Corbis) “You know, sometimes I think I can’t think at all unless I’m behind my typewriter,” Joan Didion told an editor for Ms. magazine during an interview at the author’s Malibu home. It was January 1977, and Didion’s third novel, “A Book of Common Prayer,” would be published in March. The editor, Susan Braudy, had asked Didion to describe a scene from her life so quintessential that it could open a nonfiction piece about her.

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