American writer, a nonfiction journalist turned pop novelist. His best-selling works include “Dutch Shea, Jr,” 1982 and “The Red White and Blue,” 1987. “True Confessions” was Dunne’s first bestseller and, according to New York Times reviewer Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, “the book he was born to write.” “Crackling dialogue, gritty characters, a fierce, unblinking stare at acts of brutality-these elements mark the novels of John Gregory Dunne,” wrote fellow novelist Anne Tyler in the New York Times Book Review.
The son of Richard Edwin, a physician, and Dorothy Burns Dunne, John’s Irish Catholic background is often reflected in his writings. As a kid, he stammered and in overcoming the handicap, later became a mimic. .
After graduating from Princeton University in 1954, Dunne began his career as a writer at Time magazine and moved on to freelance work before publishing his first novel, “Vegas.- A Memoir of a Dark Season” in 1974. The book had hardcover sales of more than 50,000 copies, more than a million paperback sales, and a film adaptation. Since then Dunne has worked in a variety of genres producing books that explore the Irish Catholic experience with language and content that is often disturbingly graphic.
He married writer Joan Didion on 30 January 1964 and they adopted a daughter in March 1966, Quintana Roo. They collaborated on the screenplays “Panic in Needle Park,” 1971 and “Play It as It Lays,” 1972. . As a writing team, they took eight years and 27 drafts to script “Up Close and Personal,” the screenplay about newswoman Jessica Savitch. Dunne and Didion lived in Southern California for years, writing screenplays off and on and meeting everyone in the movie business before moving to Manhattan.
He is noted for a quick temper and an uproarious laugh. In 1970, he had a writer’s block and a deep depression for 17 months
The writer died on December 30, 2003 from a heart attack. He and his wife, Joan Didion, had just sat down to dinner in their Manhattan, NY apartment after visiting their seriously ill daughter when Dunne was stricken and could not be revived. Sadly, his daughter died two years later, on August 26, 2005.
Link to Wikipedia biography