If you were to think of American culture and politics in the past half-century as a hurricane of change and controversy, then you should also picture the petite Joan Didion calmly typing away in the eye of the storm, unruffled, helping us to make sense of it all.
With her essays, novels, screenplays and criticism, Didion has risen to the rank of America’s first lady of letters and its premier chronicler, through her observations on her personal – and her nation’s – upheavals, downturns, life changes and states of mind.
Now, her nephew Griffin Dunne has crafted an intimate documentary about his "Aunt Joan" – Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold – which promises a rare feature-length glimpse into her extraordinary life, when it debuts on Netflix this Friday.
A distinguished actor and Oscar-nominated filmmaker in his own right, Dunne, 62, has enjoyed a career on both sides of the camera, having starred in box-office hits such as An American Werewolf in London (1981) and dark comedy After Hours (1985) – and more recently opposite Matthew McConaughey in Dallas Buyers Club (2013).
Didion, 82, rose to fame as a fresh voice in the wave of New Journalism, a writing style that emerged in the ‘60s and ’70s. Like her fellow practitioners – who included the likes of Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote, Hunter S Thompson and Norman Mailer – she immersed herself in her stories, took a subjective viewpoint and employed literary, storytelling techniques to emphasise the “truth” of the matter at hand, as opposed to remaining invisible and simply reciting facts like the conventional reportage of the era.
“My first notebook was given to me by my mother, with the suggestion I amuse myself by writing down my thoughts,” Didion recalls of her childhood. “I didn’t have any real clear picture of how to do it, but I do remember having a very clear sense that I wanted this to continue.”
Didion kept at it, and her breakthrough came with her 1968 book of essays, Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Its titular piece, says Dunne, proved to be "the definitive essay on what the hippie movement really was, what was really going on. Not peace, love and beads and free love and all that – but the disillusionment of the American family. The runaways. The drug problem. She was looking at that when other people were making cute Madison Avenue Volkswagen Bug commercials with hippies in it. She was seeing the darkness underneath."
Dunne unearths a treasure trove of archival footage of his “Aunt Joan”, her husband the late writer John Gregory Dunne and their late daughter Quintana Roo Dunne, including: partying with Janis Joplin in a house full of Los Angeles rockers; hanging out in a recording studio with Jim Morrison of The Doors; and cooking dinner for one of mass-murderer Charles Manson’s women for a magazine story.
According to Netflix: "Didion guides us through the sleek literati scene of New York in the 1950s and early '60s, when she wrote for Vogue; her return to her home state of California for two turbulent decades; the writing of her seminal books, including Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Play It as It Lays, A Book of Common Prayer and The White Album; her film scripts, including The Panic in Needle Park; her view of 1980s and '90s political personalities; and the meeting of minds that was her long marriage to writer Dunne."
"My husband, my daughter and me, we finally got a house (in California)," says Didion. "Everybody showed up at this house. Stephen Spielberg. Marty Scorsese. Warren Beatty." The good times, however, would later be marred by tragedy, for both Didion and Dunne. Dominique Dunne, Griffin's 22-year-old sister and a rising star of Poltergeist (1982), was strangled and subsequently died shortly after the film's release. Meanwhile, in the space of two years, Didion lost both her husband and her daughter, in 2003 and 2005, respectively.
With superhuman determination, Didion wrote about her reckoning with grief after Dunne's death, in The Year of Magical Thinking, which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction, and later about the death of their daughter Quintana Roo, in Blue Nights. "I've always found that if I examine something, it's less scary," says Didion.
Friends and collaborators who appear in Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold include: Vanessa Redgrave, Harrison Ford, Anna Wintour, David Hare, Calvin Trillin, Hilton Als, and Susanna Moore. As a filmmaker, Dunne was challenged to find the right approach to capture the legacy of Didion, known for her unsentimental approach to her own life. "I try to avoid sentiment as much in my telling as she does in her writing," he says. "I tried to tell her story, but still have that same sort of feeling (as she does) of also withholding – you're sharing but you're telling as much as you're prepared to say. "We had loss in common over people we'd loved and had known the majority of our lives. I think when you experience that – and you have that in common, and you talk about it - you don't talk about loss really in a sentimental way."
Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold is streamed on Netflix from Friday
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Emergency
Director: Kangana Ranaut
Stars: Kangana Ranaut, Anupam Kher, Shreyas Talpade, Milind Soman, Mahima Chaudhry
Rating: 2/5
Profile
Company: Libra Project
Based: Masdar City, ADGM, London and Delaware
Launch year: 2017
Size: A team of 12 with six employed full-time
Sector: Renewable energy
Funding: $500,000 in Series A funding from family and friends in 2018. A Series B round looking to raise $1.5m is now live.
Guide to intelligent investing
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MATCH INFO
Juventus 1 (Dybala 45')
Lazio 3 (Alberto 16', Lulic 73', Cataldi 90 4')
Red card: Rodrigo Bentancur (Juventus)
England v West Indies
England squad for the first Test Cook, Stoneman, Westley, Root (captain), Malan, Stokes, Bairstow, Moeen, Roland-Jones, Broad, Anderson, Woakes, Crane
Fixtures
1st Test Aug 17-21, Edgbaston
2nd Test Aug 25-29, Headingley
3rd Test Sep 7-11, Lord's
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
How to wear a kandura
Dos
- Wear the right fabric for the right season and occasion
- Always ask for the dress code if you don’t know
- Wear a white kandura, white ghutra / shemagh (headwear) and black shoes for work
- Wear 100 per cent cotton under the kandura as most fabrics are polyester
Don’ts
- Wear hamdania for work, always wear a ghutra and agal
- Buy a kandura only based on how it feels; ask questions about the fabric and understand what you are buying
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Top 10 most polluted cities
- Bhiwadi, India
- Ghaziabad, India
- Hotan, China
- Delhi, India
- Jaunpur, India
- Faisalabad, Pakistan
- Noida, India
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Director: Jon Favreau
Starring: Donald Glover, Seth Rogen, John Oliver
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: HyperSpace
Started: 2020
Founders: Alexander Heller, Rama Allen and Desi Gonzalez
Based: Dubai, UAE
Sector: Entertainment
Number of staff: 210
Investment raised: $75 million from investors including Galaxy Interactive, Riyadh Season, Sega Ventures and Apis Venture Partners
Federer's 11 Wimbledon finals
2003 Beat Mark Philippoussis
2004 Beat Andy Roddick
2005 Beat Andy Roddick
2006 Beat Rafael Nadal
2007 Beat Rafael Nadal
2008 Lost to Rafael Nadal
2009 Beat Andy Roddick
2012 Beat Andy Murray
2014 Lost to Novak Djokovic
2015 Lost to Novak Djokovic
2017 Beat Marin Cilic
Scoreline
Al Wasl 1 (Caio Canedo 90 1')
Al Ain 2 (Ismail Ahmed 3', Marcus Berg 50')
Red cards: Ismail Ahmed (Al Ain) 77'
How to protect yourself when air quality drops
Install an air filter in your home.
Close your windows and turn on the AC.
Shower or bath after being outside.
Wear a face mask.
Stay indoors when conditions are particularly poor.
If driving, turn your engine off when stationary.
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Almnssa
Started: August 2020
Founder: Areej Selmi
Based: Gaza
Sectors: Internet, e-commerce
Investments: Grants/private funding
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
