JOAN DIDION
Joan Didion (1934-2021 ) was a novelist, journalist, and memoirist from California who for over 50 years wrote some of the sharpest and most evocative analyses of American culture, politics, and mise en scène. Her novels captured a victorious postwar people struggling with anxieties, doubts, and the chloroform of abundance. Although the literary influences on her seem clear (Joseph Conrad, Hemingway, Graham Greene, noir, perhaps some Beat, definitely New Journalism), she is justly famous for her own cool, distanced, and all-seeing style. Her writing imbues us with awe. If you want to understand America, you must read Didion.
Political Fictions
Political Fictions
In these coolly observant essays, Joan Didion looks at the American political process and at “that handful of insiders who invent, year in and year out, the narrative of public life.” Through the deconstruction of the sound bites and photo ops of three presidential campaigns, one presidential impeachment, and an unforgettable sex scandal, Didion reveals the mechanics of American politics. She tells us the uncomfortable truth about the way we vote, the candidates we vote for, and the people who tell us to vote for them. These pieces build, one on the other, into a disturbing portrait of the American political landscape, providing essential reading on our democracy.
“One of our most cherished and insightful explicators of American culture…brings her perspective to the ultimate insider world.” —San Francisco Chronicle
Winner of the George Polk Book Award