The Great Joan Didion Dead at 87; She Understood APPOINTMENTS IN SAMARRA

The great American writer and essayist Joan Didion has died, at 87. Truly it can be said, she witnessed appointments in Samarra.

"The Appointment in Samarra"

(as retold by W. Somerset Maugham [1933])

The speaker is Death

There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture, now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threating getsture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.....k.state.edu."

Joan Didion witnessing appointments in Samarra.

"…. On December 30, 2003, while their daughter Quintana Roo Dunne lay comatose in the ICU with septic shock resulting from pneumonia, her husband suffered a fatal heart attack at the dinner table. Didion delayed his funeral arrangements for approximately three months until Quintana was well enough to attend. Visiting Los Angeles after her father's funeral, Quintana fell at the airport, hit her head on the pavement and suffered a massive hematoma, requiring six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center. After progressing toward recovery in 2004, Quintana died of acute pancreatitis on August 26, 2005, during Didion's New York promotion for The Year of Magical Thinking. She was 39."

Joan Didion, her husband and daughter before their appontments in Samarra

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