An exploration of the visual corollary to Didions life and work and the feeling that each generates in her admirers detractors and criticsincluding artists from Helen Lundeberg to Diane Arbus Betye Saar to Maren Hassinger Vija Celmins and Andy WarholIn Joan Didion What She Means the writer and curator Hilton Als creates a mosaic that explores Didions life and work and the feeling each generates in her admirers detractors and critics.Arranged chronologically the book highlights Didions fascination with the two coasts that made her. As a Westerner transplanted to New York Didion was able to look at her native land its mores and fixed rules of behavior with the loving and critical eyes of a daughter who got out and went back. Didion and her late husband moved from New York to Los Angeles in 1964 where they worked as highly successful screenwriters producing scripts for 1971s The Panic in Needle Park and 1976s A Star Is Born among other works before returning to New York 20 years later.