Everything and everyone in Joan Didion’s memoir Blue Nights about the life and death of her daughter Quintana Roo Dunne is something or somebody. Cakes come from the exquisite bakery Payard on the Upper East Side, soap from the upscale, since long gone department store I. Magnin. Children’s clothing is bought at Henry Bendel’s, that is: the old Henry Bendel on West 57th, before it became “just another store” on - for us earthlings – another stellar address 712 Fifth Avenue. One of Quintana’s friends was Natasha: Natasha Richardson, married to Liam Nieson and daughter of actress Vanessa Redgrave and filmmaker Tony Richardson (who bought a house in Hollywood that had belonged to Linda Lovelace, the star of Deep Throat). Patti Smith sings at Quintana’s funeral, where Calvin Trilling speaks. Even Quintana Roo’s name was not run of the mill: she was named after a region on the Yucatán peninsula in Mexico, which was in those days ‘still frequented mainly by archeologists, herpetologists, and bandits.’ And not yet that ‘institution that became spring break in Cancún […].’
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