Bal Harbour

32 BAL HARBOUR HOLIDAY 2023 SPECIAL EDITION P H OTO CO U R T E S Y O F T H E A R T I S T ( D I D I O N ); ( B O O K S, F R O M TO P) CO U R T E S Y O F S & S/ M A RYS U E R U CC I B O O K S; K N O P F; S & S/ M A RYS U E R U CC I B O O K S; W. W. N O R TO N & CO M PA N Y; PA N T H E O N MATTER OF STYLE While penning a portrait of the Magic City in the 1980s, Joan Didion developed a close and lasting bond with the city. An exhibition on view at the Pérez Art Museum Miami explores the relationship. BY KATE DWYER oan Didion: What She Means," on view at the Pérez Ar t Museum Miami until Januar y 7, is a group show curated by writer and critic Hilton Als, featuring works by Vija Celmins, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Ana Mendieta, and nearly 50 other artists whose works aligned with Didion's sensibility and voice as a writer who commented pointedly on power, place, and perspective. "Didion wrote one of the most important books ever written about Miami," says Maritza Lacayo, Assistant Curator at PAMM, who adds that it felt like a natural choice to host the exhibition because Didion's "Miami" is "written from the perspective of an outsider looking in while simultaneously becoming an insider—spending time and interviewing some of the people who shaped and built this city." While researching her 1987 book, which is a portrait of the city's shifting power dynamics and political landscape, the author reached out to Books & Books owner Mitchell Kaplan and a number of Miami-based writers to get a sense of the city's literary side. By the 1980s, every major national paper had established Miami bureaus that dispatched reporters to cover stories in the Caribbean, Central America, and Latin America. "Latin America was a real magnet for people who were at all journalistically oriented," Kaplan says. And major stories were unfolding near Miami, including Cuba's Mariel boatlift and the beginning of the Cocaine Cowboys. Not only that, but shifting demographics meant that "Miami became a really interesting city, where you began to see the kind of diversity that we now see in more American cities," Kaplan continues. "It was a bit of a microcosm for the rest of the country," which made it a compelling place for Didion to turn her gaze. When Didion came to town for the first time to research "Miami," Kaplan was then a young bookseller, and the Coral Gables location of Books & Books had been open only a few years. "She was a very quiet person. But she asked lots of questions, and just dove right in." Though he didn't know Didion well, Kaplan says, she soon joined the many literary luminar- ies who make up his roster: "I continue with them from the sale of their books, to readings, and then, we see each other periodically." For Didion, it was the beginning of a lasting relationship with the region; whenever she released a new book in the following decades, she would present it at the Miami Book Fair, which happens every fall. Meanwhile, at PAMM the in-house curatorial team worked with Als to emphasize the section focused on Miami, Lacayo says, and even added works from PAMM's permanent collection that did not appear at the Hammer Museum's original presentation of the show this time last year. "As an institution, we have the chance to reflect on Didion's 'Miami' within the current historical and political context," Lacayo says, giving visitors a new entry point for "familiarizing themselves with the city in a new way." J '' FINDING MEANING IN MIAMI 'TIS THE SEASON FOR READING We asked some of this year's biggest authors to share their winter travel plans, along with the titles they plan to pack in their suitcases. BY KATE DWYER Paul Yoon, author of "The Hive and the Honey" I would love to return to North Yorkshire, England, where I'd take impossi- bly long hikes through the countryside, rest on the side of a hill, eat a turkey and avocado sandwich I had packed, drink a beer I cooled in a stream—and start reading Elsa Morante's "Lies and Sorcery." Keziah Weir, author of "The Mythmakers" I'll be driving up the coast to see family in seaside New Brunswick, Canada, armed with Yiyun Li's "Wednesday's Child," Shubha Sunder's "Boomtown Girl," and Kathleen Alcott's "Emergency"—I've been craving the concise potency of short stories! Dann McDorman, author of "West Heart Kill" I would travel, by train, to a stately manor in the Scottish highlands, to which I've maneuvered an invitation to the infamous Yuletide dinner of an old, crumbling aristocratic family. It's rumored that the reviled patriarch will stage a reading of his new will, gallows-faced barrister by his side, to a sullen crowd of rapacious relatives. In my satchel are hunting clothes, a packet of perfumed letters, and my 1933 edition of "Macfadden's Encyclopedia of Health and Physical Culture," which, strangely enough, tends to fall open to the chapter on curare and other natural poisons. Guy Gunaratne, author of "Mister, Mister" This holiday season I'll be heading to Finland. The book I'll be taking with me is "Bolla" by the Kosovan-born Pajtim Statovci, whose family fled to Finland when he was 2. Roxana Robinson, author of "Leaving" I would go to the Arctic Circle to watch the Northern Lights. I can't think of anything more thrilling and mysterious. I would take "Absolution," by Alice McDermott; "The Wren, the Wren," by Anne Enright; and "After the Funeral and Other Stories," Tessa Hadley's new collection of short stories. Also a collection of Chekhov's short stories—any collection, because all his stories are worth reading. Joan Didion, New York, 1996, by Brigitte Lacombe

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