But many of the specific stories she alludes to in the essay have remained maddeningly opaque. Precisely what prompted her physical breakdown, as well as her terse reference to Kennedy’s funeral, have long been the subject of speculation for Didionologists. “What was she doing at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel during Robert Kennedy’s funeral?” Tracy Daugherty wrote in “The Last Love Song,” his 2015 biography of Ms. Didion. What is the point of teasing us with the hotel if not to deliberately disorient the reader?”Now we finally know the answer. (A transcript, processed in 2019, can also be found in the New York City Public Library’s collection of Ms. Stein’s papers.)

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Persons: There’s, Joan Didion’s, Robert Kennedy’s, “, Didion, ”, Didion’s, —, ” Tracy Daugherty, John Gregory Dunne, Jean Stein, Robert Kennedy, John F Organizations: Hawaiian Hotel, Hawaiian, Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, New York Locations: Honolulu, ”