This book read like a political Wes Anderson movie when I was visualizing it. Very quirky and weird; an eccentric twist on fictionalized (based on actual) foreign policy during the Vietnam War. Would recommend if you’re into that, like me!

Ne diyim harikaydı

This novel is poorly constructed. It can be classified as a conceptual novel, but it even fails at that.

The protagonist of the novel is Inez Christian Victor. Because her character is underdeveloped, she becomes boring quickly. She is having an affair with a spy: Jack Lovett. There is no intimacy between them.

Joan Didion did not write any love scenes. Not one character kissed another. The only intimacy is a hand touch in one scene.

In fact, most of this book is mostly a lot of telling and no showing. The scenes are cut short and don't feel complete.

The description also felt incomplete. There was hardly any description of the cities mentioned: Honolulu, Kuala Lumpur, Vientiane, Saigon, Guam, Los Angeles, and New York. You don't get a visual of any of these cities besides being told through the writing that a character is there. This is unfortunate because Didion is highly capable of writing setting effectively. If you read her previous book, a non-fiction one titled "Salvador," you get a vision of Salvador.

Didion even creates a character named after herself in the novel. Her character is a friend of Inez, but she doesn't elaborate on their friendship besides their introduction together at a photo shoot.

It seems like Didion was trying to mix fiction writing with report writing, but it reads like a first draft of a book.

This is a conceptual novel gone wrong!

Inez Victor knows that the major casualty of the political life is memory. But the people around Inez have made careers out of losing track. Her senator husband wants to forget the failure of his bid for the presidency. Her husband's handler would like the press to forget that Inez's father is a murderer. And, in 1975, the year in which this bitterly funny over is set, America is doing its best to lose track of its one-time client, the the lethally hemorrhaging republic of south Vietnam. As conceived by Joan Didion, these personages and events constitute the terminal fallout of democracy, a fallout that also includes fact finding junkets, senatorial groupies, the international arms market, and the Orwellian newspeak of the political class. Moving deftly from Honolulu to Jakarta, between romance, farce, and tradegy, Democracy is a tour de force from a writer who can dissect an entire society with a single phrase.

At nearly the halfway point (the Intermission?) of Democracy Didion, in a meta moment warns (or reminds) the reader with "I am resisting narrative here." She's not lying. Actually, the reader is placed on notice as early as chapter 2 where the author seems triggered by some images from a Wallace Stevens' poem toward writing, in a half assed way, a novel. But, "[c]ards on the table," she informs the reader she's at a point in her life where she (Didion) lacks "certainty." But Vietnam, even ten years out (Democracy came out in 1984) would be hard to sort out. Maybe it was writer's block, maybe she was hoping to write another zeitgeist novel, like her terrific send-up of the sixties, Play It as It Lays. Who knows?

All of that said, Didion then launches the construction of her main characters, soldier of fortune type, Jack Lovett and (the very Didion-like) Inez Victor, wife of a failed politician. She actually gets off to an interesting and evocative start with family history, money, clothes (lots of them), but as this short novel unfolds Didion relies more and more on fast-moving dialogue (she's a master), and quickly changing events without the necessary connective tissue of narrative. There's a murder or two, and on the periphery of things the fall of Vietnam (it's 1975). I suppose there could be a metaphor in there, but I don't really care. The novel fails, and if it wasn't for Didion's name and fame, this book would have long faded from memory as an out-of-print item. Yes, I did give it two stars. Didion is a first-rate writer with a bad novel. You can still find some great moments and conversations, even if as a whole the novel is thin and unsatisfying. If you want a savage and excellent home-front book on Vietnam and its moral costs, I recommend Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone.

I am slowly making my way through Joan Didion's oeuvre and Democracy (1984) is easily one of her best works of fiction. I think it incorporates many of her interests and themes. For example, Inez Victory is unhappily married to a politician and gets involved with a former lover, a behind-the-scenes fixer in faraway locales, Jack Lovett. She shuttles from Honolulu (Hawaii is special place for Didion), California, to distant capitals in SE Asia: Manila, Jakarta, and Kula Lumpur. The novel is set in 1975 as America disgracefully disengages from Vietnam and the repercussion that are felt in Cambodia and throughout the world. It is a turbulent time in world history as well as Inez's personal history. The story is being told by a confidant of Inez, a certain writer named Joan Didion. Some people might find the author inserting themselves into a novel as a character as narcissistic, but I find it interesting--creating a sort of meta-narrative. Inez's children also offer a insight into the troubled would of youth culture in the mid 70s: Jessie is a recovering heroin addict who seems adrift in the world and her son Aldali is idealistic and somewhat unfocused in his attempts to be political, but inherits his unconventionally from his politician father. This was a compelling and somewhat fractured chronicle of a the private life of a public person with complicated relationships with her family and the world in general.

It took me a bit to attenuate my chakras with Didi’s here, as I initially felt her energy to be anything but groovy. Joanie just seemed on a bummer and, like, pithy? But once I opened my spine transom and recognized the Four Agreements, I was able to stop astrally projecting my own reality and cognitively appreciate that suffering is the component of the Second Noble Truth—aka pick up what she was putting down. After that shedding, my Kundalini was totally golden and flowing from my divine feminine goddess center (beforehand, I couldn’t tell you my bindu from my prana!) But, hand to Pan, when Joanie peeked through the fourth wall (metaphysically: 5D) and let me on what was to come in a totally meta (different kind) way, my third eye teared up, brother. Yup. All told: Didi’s ok, I’m ok, and you’re ok.

Actually, from where I’m sitting you look quite a bit more than ‘ok.’ Why don’t you come here, smoke this Thai stick with me, and I’ll brush out your hair? I’m really good at braiding, Prettyface. Just scooch that thing on over here….

People rarely talk about Didion’s fiction, and considering the impact she had on the essay form, this makes a good deal of sense. But this is also a very rich novel. For all that it repeats a lot of her favourite tropes (enigmatic women who are attached to arms dealers and oblique criticisms of US imperialism/counterinsurgency efforts in Latin America and East Asia), it also experiments more with voice, form, and especially, narration, than some of her other novels. Joan Didion is herself present as author and these meta inflections are some of the most fascinating moments. She mobilises her acute sense for detail so sharply to create rich characters and worlds. Some of this is a little confusing at times—especially keeping track of who is who and where they are—but I caught up by the end.

This was a pleasant surprise, I went into it not expecting very much and found myself hooked by the very first words.

The light at dawn during those Pacific tests was something to see.

Something to behold.

Something that could almost make you think you saw God, he said.

He said to her.

Jack Lovett said to Inez Victor.

Joan Didion uses her short sentences rather like short machine gun bursts, and it works well. It gives a sense of intimacy and longing, which echoes throughout the rest of the book even if Joan is writing the part you are currently reading in a more conventional format.

For the rest, the book doesn't exactly move at a breakneck pace, even though a lot of happening in the world; this is set around the events of 1975 when the States had to pull out of Vietnam. I would have enjoyed it even more if I'd had even the slightest background knowledge of this part of history but I am profoundly ignorant. If I ever re-read this I'll make sure to do a bit of prep work in this area first.

4.5!

This was such a slog. I kept waiting for it to take form, to pick up its pace, to come together as a story. It never did.

Not to be a lesbian, but I love Joan Didion.