As an aspiring author in his 20s, Corey Leadbeater landed what should have been a dream gig as an assistant and confidante to the legendary American writer. But his own life was unravelling.
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” wrote Joan Didion in her seminal 1979 essay collection,As it happened, to continue living was a daily trial for someone close to her. Cory Leadbeater, her personal assistant for nine years, considered “self-erasure” more than once while working with the acclaimed writer and journalist. The fuel to keep going came from writing his own dark fiction, a steady supply of bourbon, and knowledge about the limits of reinvention.
As these crises unfolded, Leadbeater’s impulse for self-annihilation beckoned each day while attending to Didion. The job had arrived by chance when he befriended a university lecturer who set up the unlikely pairing. “Need for a Personal Assistant” read the cryptic email that arrived one night in 2012. After an awkward first introduction, the relationship quickly became one of co-dependence.
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