“The second reason [Stephen] Metcalf was left flat by this line of reasoning is that he isn’t a woman, and to really love Joan Didion—to have been blown over by things like the smell of jasmine and the packing list she kept by her suitcase—you have to be female.” — Caitlin Flanagan, The Atlantic, Jan. 10, 2012

Fellow Atlantic staff writer Conor Friedersdorf disagrees.

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“Reading “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” started me off on what has been a long on-and-off love affair with Didion’s work. (I have never met her, though I had a very pleasant e-mail acquaintance with her late husband, John Gregory Dunne.) She has never published a word of nonfiction that I have not liked, and she has almost never published a word of fiction of which I can say the same.” — Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post, Dec. 27, 2007

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“Joan started laughing almost as if she would cry, reaching out to the screen with those famously frail fingers of hers as if she would take it and embrace it and hold it to her chest. And I thought, as I have often thought these last three decades, that I really do adore Joan. No. That’s not quite the word. I really do love Joan.” — Christopher Dickey, The Daily Beast, Nov. 2, 2011

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“I always had a chip on my shoulder about her as my ex said he could not take anyone serious who did not love Joan Didion.” — Anonymous person on random thread I found who was annoyed that his or her boyfriend once said such a thing.

I can see this person’s point.