After reading Joan Didion’s Blue Nights, I picked up Cory Leadbeater’s The Uptown Local at the library because it is about his life working as Didion’s assistant, and my interest in Didion had been renewed. This is a memoir, and Leadbeater has quite a lot to share about his own life and creative process, as well as what it meant to him to work so closely with Didion.

This book is honest and insightful, and very self aware. Readers will get some Didion fixes, but more than that, it offers insight into what it might’ve been like to be her assistant in her final years. And, I’m sure many readers and writers probably have fantasized about just such a job. I have.

Leadbeater portrays their dynamic as a kind of mother son relationship. In fact, Didion refers to herself a “mommy” in her book inscription to him. Leadbeater seems to wear his troubles on his sleeve, and Didion seems to not shy away from them. She seems to fully embrace and welcome him, even despite (or because?) of his challenges. Even when her more aristocratic friends disregard him, Didion is stalwart. I wonder if she saw her own daughter in Leadbeater. Some of their troubles seemed the same, from what I can gather, which is very little.

In the end, both Didion and Leadbeater both offer insights on relationships, art appreciation, poetry, and how to live a meaningful life–something we could all probably use.