Tag: Joan Didion

Portrait of Joan Didion (1934– 2021) by Brigitte Lacombe (1950–), 1996, Lot 2 from the sale. Gelatin silver print, 10 inches square. All photographs courtesy of Stair Galleries, Hudson, New York. When Stair Galleries, an auction house in the small upstate New York city of Hudson, released its catalogue for the sale of famed author Joan Didion’s personal effects, there was one item that immediately caught our eye: a stack of thirteen blank notebooks, tied up neatly with a piece of cotton twine. The auction estimate was $100–200. A group of thirteen blank notebooks, Lot 14 from Stair Galleries’ An American Icon: Property from the Collection of Joan Didion sale on November 16, 2022. Smallest 5 1/2 by 3 1/2 inches, largest 6 3/4 by 5 inches.  There was the emotional element to these notebooks—they were owned by one of the greatest nonfiction writers in the pantheon of American literature— and there was the tangible element as objects. What these notebooks would eventually sell for would say a lot about how we, as a society, value the ephemera of celebrity. But as objects? In a world where the digital is regnant and kids no longer even learn cursive writing, what is a bunch of blank notebooks worth? Lisa Thomas, director of the fine arts department at Stair, added the notebooks to the auction as an afterthought. She and Colin Stair, who represents the fourth generation of his family doing business in auctions and the antiques world, spent a few days in Didion’s Manhattan apartment selecting pieces for the sale. These included a large leather-top partner’s desk. “I was poking around in the drawers of the desk,” Lisa recalls, “and one of the sides was