In Defense of Joan Didion, With Respect to L.A. Water

Catherine Mulholland, in making her case against “Mulholland’s Dream,” (“Water and Power--and Accuracy,” Calendar, June 23) takes shots at Jon Else, who made the documentary, at Marc Reisner, the author of “Cadillac Desert,” on which the show is based, and at Kevin Starr and Robert Towne, who supply commentary. So far, so good: Take a stand, take the shot; it goes with the territory. But then Mulholland goes into the ether, as if needing another name, and says: “All that’s lacking is Joan Didion murmuring about the Nothingness of it all.”

Say again.

Didion has written about California water in the most reverential, even worshipful, terms (see “Holy Water,” “The White Album,” both Simon & Schuster): “I particularly like to think of it as it cascades down the 45-degree stone steps that aerate Owens water after its airless passage through the mountain pipes and siphons. . . . As it happens my own reverence for water has always taken the form . . . of an obsessive interest not in the politics of water, but in the waterworks themselves. . . . I know the data on water projects I will never see . . . the tailrace at Hoover on the Colorado, the surge tank in the Tehachapi Mountains that receives California Aqueduct water pumped higher than water has ever been pumped before. . . . “

So much for Nothingness. I doubt even William Mulholland was that loony over water movement.

Catherine Mulholland is determined to salvage the reputation of her grandfather, a complicated and compromised man, perhaps even a great one, and if she takes a tendentious whack at my wife, she’s entitled. Howard Rosenberg is not. A middle-aged Pulitzer Prize winner with access to Nexis and browsers and search engines does not take a cheap shot without getting called on it.

Not to call him on it would be Nothingness.