Joan Didion and Norman Mailer: The literary odd couple

Joan Didion and Norman Mailer do not immediately strike you as two writers who should have had much in common.

Mailer was loud, combative, theatrical and seemingly incapable of entering a room without eventually becoming one of the principal subjects under discussion. He ran for mayor of New York. He got into fights. He appeared on television and argued with people. He wrote about politics, war, sex, boxing and himself, frequently managing to combine several of these subjects at once. Norman Mailer didn't simply have a public persona. At times, Norman Mailer appeared to be the principal character in the ongoing Norman Mailer production. He was always the main character.

Didion was something else entirely. Small, watchful, controlled. Dark glasses, cigarette, notebook. She cultivated the impression of somebody sitting quietly at the edge of the room while everyone else made the potentially catastrophic mistake of forgetting she was there.