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Political Fictions

joan didion

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In these coolly observant essays, the iconic bestselling writer 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.

338 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,2001

This edition

Format
338 pages, Paperback
Published
August 27, 2002 by Vintage
ISBN
9780375718908
ASIN
0375718907
Language
English

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About the author

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joan didion

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Joan Didion was an American writer and journalist. She is considered one of the pioneers of New Journalism along with Gay Talese, Hunter S. Thompson, and Tom Wolfe.
Didion's career began in the 1950s after she won an essay contest sponsored by Vogue magazine. Over the course of her career, Didion wrote essays for many magazines, including The Saturday Evening Post, Life, Esquire, The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker. Her writing during the 1960s through the late 1970s engaged audiences in the realities of the counterculture of the 1960s, the Hollywood lifestyle, and the history and culture of California. Didion's political writing in the 1980s and 1990s often concentrated on the subtext of political rhetoric and the United States's foreign policy in Latin America. In 1991, she wrote the earliest mainstream media article to suggest the Central Park Five had been wrongfully convicted. In 2005, Didion won the National Book Award for Nonfiction and was a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for The Year of Magical Thinking, a memoir of the year following the death of her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne. She later adapted the book into a play that premiered on Broadway in 2007. In 2013, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal by president Barack Obama. Didion was profiled in the Netflix documentary The Center Will Not Hold, directed by her nephew Griffin Dunne, in 2017.

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Rating(4 / 5.0, 100 votes)
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Zerephiehell
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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I fear I am not informed enough about the political climate of these years to truly connect with or understand this book. Didion's unique style is still palpable, making it an enjoyable read nonetheless. I do really enjoy the way that she pulls quotes and information from a multitude of sources, allowing her to shape a narrative without connecting herself to a certain political ideology. Thanks Joan!
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Nomylord
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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I took this book off the shelf the day I heard of Joan Didion’s passing; the one unread book of hers I had. I’ve never thought of her as a political writer, even though I am/ was a great admirer of her writing, and her independence, adventurous spirit, and intelligence. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that she can also write about politics; my socks were knocked off after probably the first page. Her clarity and insight into politics and Washington “insiders” were disarming to me. But even more disconcerting was how she wrote about the late ‘80s, ‘90s and early 2000, and how evident it was to the modern reader that the more time passes and things appear to change, it really is all the same. In particular, how she wrote about politicians working to “save the soul of the nation” and her commentary on a democracy at risk shadow the current political discourse. The only reason I gave this a four instead of a five is that some of the essays seemed a bit long.
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O_TAKIS
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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I read this in June 2002 and I can't believe I forgot to add it to my list. It is an excellent guide to all the wingnuts popping up in politics. Better yet, it was written just about the time the wingnuts began to pop up.
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eeveel
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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"This is something one should talk about in another time, in another country."
― Major Jocoaitique to Todd Greentree and Major McKay in Joan Didion's "The West Wing of Oz", Political Fictions.



"History is context"
― Joan Didion

"Joan Didion—and I mean this in the most adoring and complimentary way possible—is a well-known stone cold bitch."
― Madeleine Davies in "Joan Didion's Crème Caramel Must Be Very Hostile", Jezebel, 2/12/15

How could I not forever love Joan Didion? She is a prose goddess who is prepared to burn down every single America's sacred political temples. She takes no prisoners. Reagan is an empty shirt who can hit a mark. George Bush, Sr. Boring. The Clinton campaign? Bottom-feeding, focus-grouped idiots. George W. Bush? A pandering fool for Christ. And I think she actually liked most those politicians as people.

Joan saves her hottest anger for when she is writing about the opinion makers, the political journalist, etc. (I honestly think whenever she switches gears from politicos to the hacks, she puts away the ink and starts to write with blood); and those back-room attorneys plotting Clinton's demise or Clinton's campaign, and the absolute buffoons who try to keep us up-to-date on the horse race of the campaign. That special class of idiots who type the narrative we are supposed to ingest about the moral failings, the moral resurrection, the need for morality in our politicians. She hates them all. It is a delicious thing to watch. The closest emotion I can point to is that feeling I get when I watch Dexter or Hannibal cut up and eat one of their righteous kills. It both disgusts and thrills me.

And yes. Certainly. Didion is part of the game. She is part of the narrative makers she bitches about. However, she is a wiser Buddha, a cooler Jesus, a Moses who can really kick political ass. If I could with ease, hand out to a handful of my favorite writers the secret of eternal life, I would save an early vial for Queen Didion. I can't imagine a written world without her wit, her sideways shivs, her beautiful prose. A political year with out Didion is a political theatre I don't want to watch.

Anyway, this book is made up of eight articles and a forward:

1. Insider Baseball, New York Review of Books, Oct 27, 1988
2. The West Wing of Oz
3. Eyes on the Prize, New York Review of Books, Sep 24, 1992
4. New Gingrich, Superstar
5. Political Pornography
6. Clinton Agonistes, New York Review of Books, Oct 22, 1998
7. Vichy Washington
8. God's Country, New York Review of Books, Nov 2, 2000

Read them. Read them all. We have started a brand new election year and among all the bullshit and political noise, it helps to have a lighthouse, a golden goddess to guide one through the darkness of spin, Luntzcraft and massaged messages to light, truth, and damn good prose.
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swagchungussette
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Another gem in the crown of Joan Didion’s collection of non-fiction writing. In “Political Fictions” she explores the nature of our political system in the United States and the manner in which we all buy into the story. It is my understanding that the book was released in 2000 and what struck me was just how prophetic most of her ideas were, especially in the wake of the recent 2008 election.

Various thoughts and notes I made on the book are as follows:
•tA 1995 essay about Newt Gingrich concludes that “personal popularity among large numbers of voters may continue to elude him.” While it is difficult to argue with Mr. Gingrich’s intellect, I think time has revealed that his style has not played everywhere.
•tDonna Brazille is, in my humble opinion, a poor campaign strategist, as evidenced not only in her handling of the Gore campaign, but also the comments attributed to her here as part of the Dukakis campaign in 1988, of which I was not aware that she was a part of – yet her opinion is still solicited today. Odd.
•tThe essay about Jesse Jackson and the spirit of inclusiveness of his campaign and how its message of hope, really foreshadowed some of the greater themes of the successful Obama campaign.
•tIn my humble opinion, Bill Clinton was a rather slimy and divisive campaigner.
•t The essay about President George H.W. Bush and the need for camels really presaged the importance of stagecraft in politics. Reagan was the master at stagecraft and Obama uses it to tremendous effect, as well.
•tOne of the first ideas I got from reading the book was the importance of branding in politics and how branding and marketing has assumed even more importance since these essays were crafted.
•tThe initial essay about the Clinton/Lewinsky affair and the public’s apathy towards it was simply remarkable. Didion hits at Kenneth Starr and his Ahab-like pursuit of the white whale. She talks about the unreliable first-person narrator aspect of the Starr Report and she just hits a perfect pitch.
•tDidion hints at the notion that the Clinton impeachment was certainly clearly political. The Republicans focus on the strict rule of law was not so essential during the Ollie North version of the Iran-Contra Affair.
•tClearly the coziness of Republicans in the name-that-Clinton-scandal was an issue. Although the vast right wing conspiracy argument made by Hillary Clinton was a bridge too far, there sure were lots of Republican elves like Ann Coulter working their magic - all a bit too close to the Office of Independent Counsel.
•tThe pundit class in Washington did not then, and does not now, understand the rest of America.
•tHow very damaging Joe Lieberman was to the Gore campaign. Polls showed that 68% of voters in February 1999 did not want the impeachment issue brought up in the campaign with only 1/3 concerned about the effect of Clinton’s actions on the country. Lieberman brought back all of those ghosts because his resume at that time consisted almost solely of chastising the President.
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smilemelove
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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I agree with another reviewer who said that t his would have been even better with better candidates. I read t his way long ago so my review maybe a bit vague. But I enjoyed i t. I like to read anything and everything political.

I would like to see her come out wit h another book about what is going in right now in America. I just got done watching Trump's impeachment trial. It makes me sad that people..adults..OUR POLITICIANS who serve at our pleasure..act like they are three years old, slinging insult s and making up stories.

So many of our elected leaders are nothing more then sociopaths. She does an excellent job in explaining the political process which has worsened with time and I would like to read her thoughts on the mess that is our political process in 2020.
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Empanadadeuva
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Clear eyed view of the contradictions and mentality of the political landscape and election process. When Joan Didion writes, it is going to be a nuanced view, a fresh perspective on what is happening. Not even today where there is more behind the scenes dealings and about faces, does the writing and insight match Didion. Maybe it's her being new to covering the campaign or that she is always searching for the equations in the world that don't add up, of which there are many. In her essays which dealing with 1988 caning, Bill Clinton's campaign, and Newt Gingrich, I was often left disgusted and unsure why any of us vote or become involved. Insider Baseball showed that the process is run by insiders, for insiders, and written about by insiders. Dukakis plays catch with a baseball in the heat, a moment so choreographed that
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Jupi-Jup
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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4.5*

Superb book of essays on US presidential politics (1985-2000) and the way the work of politicians, political consultants and operatives and the media within the political process is divorced from the "real" issues of the day.

True, as far as it goes, but their jobs are not to diagnose and cure the country's ills but to win elections, win consulting assignments and flourish in their writing careers. Examined in the same way as JD does, would any other profession (as a whole) look different?

But excellent observations and exposure of the distortions in the political processes and the untruths we put up with. I would have loved to read her take on the Trump Presidency, but apparently she refused to write about him. The pickings were too easy I guess.
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