After Henry

After Henry is a 1992 book of essays by Joan Didion. The entire contents of this book are reprinted in We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction (2006). A personal memorial for Henry Robbins, who was Didion's friend and editor from 1966 until he died in 1979. The essays collected in this book were written after Henry's death. Two of the three essays from the "Washington" section of the book were republished in 2001 as part ... more

After Henry is a 1992 book of essays by Joan Didion. The entire contents of this book are reprinted in We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction (2006). A personal memorial for Henry Robbins, who was Didion's friend and editor from 1966 until he died in 1979. The essays collected in this book were written after Henry's death. Two of the three essays from the "Washington" section of the book were republished in 2001 as part of Didion's book Political Fictions. Analyzes Ronald Reagan's style of government, mostly through the character of his wife and other handlers. Didion says that the Reagans maintained, in their years in Sacramento and Washington, the sheltered, disconnected lifestyle of "actors on location," living in housing provided by the studio. A refrain in the piece is the public-relations language of Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan, putting words to the president's grandiose but vague political vision: "Where brave heroes blank, and during those... less