How to have a Joan Didion Easter party

What can we learn about hosting from the esteemed writer?

Didion in her kitchen at home in Malibu

Joan Didion and her husband John Gregory Dunne were famously fabulous hosts, their parties legendary. Whether at their LA homes on Franklin Avenue and, later, in Malibu or their NYC apartment on the Upper East Side, guests could be assured of good food and even better conversation. Didion’s friend, the writer Eve Babitz, was quoted in the Didion biography, The Last Love Song, as saying, “She could make dinner for forty people with one hand tied around her back while everybody else was passed out on the floor”. 

But, despite being agnostic, Didion seemed to have a soft spot for Easter. In a 2017 interview with Vogue, the interviewer asked her if there was any tension between work and entertaining, “the serious writer and the person who loves to cook and throw big Easter parties”. Didion replied: “There was never tension. Easter parties are important to me”. Such references appear throughout her works and in interviews, so I decided to collate these glimpses into her life as a host (and as the name of my Substack suggests, I’m already a fan so this seemed like a fun exercise).

You could say that this is reducing one of the greatest writers in recent memory to lifestyle fodder but Didion, consciously or not, repeatedly played up that side of herself; it was and is an important part of her myth and legacy. It’s why people still reference her packing list from The White Album, and explains the commotion over her Celine ad at the age of 80, why people still share photographs of her Malibu kitchen with the hanging wire mesh baskets on Instagram, and why, after her death, her burnt, orange Le Creuset set sold for $8000 in auction. People remain transfixed by her aspirational lifestyle as much as her words. 

Didion’s Malibu kitchen

The last question of Didion’s final (and taciturnity) interview, which appeared in Time in January 2021, asked “What are you most looking forward to this year?” to which she replied, “An Easter party, if it can be given”. Didion died in December of the same year. I hope she got to have her final Easter party. 

FOOD

Didion kept a black three-ring binder that contained a list of every dinner party she ever held, who came, and what she served to eat. Last year the New York Public Library acquired her archives, including letters, photos and, yes, recipes. Alongside the papers of her husband’s, the collection is due to open to the public in 2025. In the meantime some of her recipes exist online, republished from a PDF book that was given to donors who helped crowdfund the Didion documentary The Center Will Not Hold. You can find the recipes for Didion’s crème caramel, risotto and a famous parsley salad that feeds 35-40, among a few others, here. 

Elsewhere, small details have arisen. Vogue reported that one such dinner party she had logged in her binder included: “Roast chicken with rosemary. Roasted garlic, scallions, carrots, celery. Goat cheese and Brie. Olives. Bibb lettuce vinaigrette. Chocolate and almonds”.

But for the full Easter works, take a look at this photo of one of Didion’s dinner plans from a party that was held at the library to celebrate its acquisition of her archives and published in the New York Times.

A Didion dinner plan acquired by the NY Public Library

It reads: 

1. Avocado with vinaigrette dressing and sprigs of basil. French bread. 

2. Roast leg of lamb (mint jelly), roasted potatoes, peas and asparagus. 

3. Pineapple with sprigs of mint, chocolate and coffee in library.  

Sounds like a perfect Easter menu to me. If only I had a library…

DRINKS

In the preface for Slouching Towards Bethlehem Didion writes about drinking gin and hot water which, while sounding quite nasty, was actually only used for medicinal purposes so we can skip that one. In The White Album she complained when entertaining musicians that they never wanted “ordinary drinks. They wanted sake, or champagne cocktails, or tequila neat”. It seems she favoured straightforward booze.

So what’s on the menu? In the 2021 Time interview Didion said that the thing she missed most amid the pandemic was giving parties but, on the upside, noted that her “wine bills have gone down” so you’ll definitely need to get a few bottles of wine in. She was also known to enjoy whiskey on the rocks; a bottle of bourbon was included in her packing list and she again writes about drinking “a lot of bourbon” in “On Keeping A Notebook”. Wine and whiskey it is. 

I miss cigarettes

GUESTS

Lots of them and the more famous and intelligent, the better. In The Center Will Not Hold, Harrison Ford reveals that he was a regular guest at the couple’s annual Easter party in Malibu (Didion and Dunne had previously hired him as a carpenter to do renovations on their house) and said he always felt that “everyone there was smarter than I was and more cultured than I was”. Patti Smith and Janis Joplin often turned up to parties, as did Martin Scorsese and Brian De Palma. The writer Susanna Moore revealed that Warren Beatty had a crush on Didion and would always try to get himself seated next to the hostess so be sure to seat yourself beside a lothario.  

TABLEWARE

Babitz, on recalling Didion’s parties, said, “It’s the first time I ever saw Spode china”. A set of four dinner plates at Spode will cost you £80 which sounds like a steal compared to a single porcelain plate that went for $5000 in Didion’s posthumous auction. Her niece, Anabelle Dunne, has also noted Didion liked “ironed cloth paisley napkins”, and orchids and frangipanis were favourite flowers of Didion’s so get down the florist.

One of Didion’s Spode dinner sets that sold for $3500 in auction

MUSIC 

Didion could take or leave rock’n’roll but “The Doors were different, The Doors interested me”, she writes in The White Album, before having an underwhelming encounter with the band. In the book she also recalls an Easter party given at their home on Franklin Avenue: “I remember taking a 25-mg. Compazine one Easter Sunday and making a large and elaborate lunch for a number of people, many of whom were still around on Monday”, before writing that “Do You Wanna Dance” (The Beach Boys), “Visions of Johanna” (Bob Dylan) and “Midnight Confessions” (The Grass Roots) were on the record player. Elsewhere in The White Album she writes about playing “Lay Lady Lay” and “Suzanne”. So a solid mix of Dylan, Leonard Cohen and The Doors should do the trick.

DRESS CODE

Didion was famously a fan of the shift dress, so you can’t go wrong with one of those. She would often be seen at parties with a gardenia in her hair and apparently she liked to host with bare feet. It’s 14 degrees in London this Sunday so good luck with that. 

I hope you all have a brilliant Easter, Didionesque or not. I’ll be hosting lunch for eight on Sunday, but I’m hoping they won’t still be there on Monday. See you next week, Gillian

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