Right Out of ‘Bonfire’

It was indeed disquieting to learn that those quintessential Californians, Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, have forsaken Los Angeles for New York. (“Why They Left” by Elizabeth Mehren, May 9). That news alone was enough to send me slouching toward my bed for the rest of the day.

What I found really alarming, though, was to discover that Didion moved to New York to become a character in “The Bonfire of the Vanities.” “You have no idea how much smaller a 10-room apartment in New York is than a 10-room house in Los Angeles,” she says. Tom Wolfe himself couldn’t have written a better line.

MAURA K. EGGAN

Irvine