The first story, based on actual reporting, is interesting...but the rest of the book seems to be a series of book reviews from the ‘90s (Newt Gingrich, a bunch of Clinton drama). And one Google search later reveals that, yes, they are book reviews from the NYRB. Perhaps if I’d known that going in, my expectations could have been adjusted.

As balanced and pragmatic as ever, Didion tackles an area she was previously not interested in. Part of why this collection of essays excels so much is because she was not, and never became, a member of the political in-group. By circumventing jargon, she speaks clearly and frankly about politicians in the 90s and how things work, pulling back the curtain and shattering the long-held illusion that we, the masses, play any role to speak of in the selection of our leaders and the choices they make.

Non è decisamente un saggio che si limita a commentare l'andamento della campagna elettorale e delle elezioni del 1992, ma del resto da Joan Didion non mi aspettavo altro.
A partire da spunti politici, l'autrice fa una riflessione che tocca diversi temi, che vanno da una riflessione sulla moralità dei politici alle modalità e finalità del giornalismo che si occupa di politica.
Sebbene l'ambientazione sia negli anni '90, alcune tematiche sono attuali ancora oggi, con le dovute constestualizzazioni.
Nel complesso sono molto soddisfatta della lettura!

Published in 2001, this book is a series of essays which Didion wrote for The New York Review of Books. The essays clearly show how it is not the voters who decide but those insiders who have "set it all up" so the results are what they want. The essays were at once informative and disheartening to me as my suspicions were confirmed. It would be interesting to have Didion write similar essays about our current political situation, explaining just how we got to where we are today. Maybe we don't want to know but we certainly do need to know.

I was not convinced by the thesis of every essay in this volume. But the writing is pristine. Didion’s reasoning trenchant and consistently thought-provoking. I would offer the minor complaint that Didion is not an empirical scholar, and at several points I think she misses the mark for this reason. But even the weaker essays in this collection are (to my taste) an ideal complement to nearly everything written in the past seven years about populism and the fracturing of the media environment.

There are eight essays here, excluding Didion's foreword (although that's worth reading as well), spanning the late 80s to the year 2000. A couple- like "Newt Gingrich, Superstar", and "Political Pornography", about the books of Bob Woodward- narrow the focus to a single person or body of work, and a couple- like "Insider Baseball" and "The West Wing of Oz"- draw unexpected but intuitive connections among seemingly disparate subjects, but each one is excellent and worth reading. One of the strengths of the book is that Didion is not a Washington insider, not habituated to political reporting, and furthermore that her general skepticism (or what the NYRB called, slightly less charitably, her "patrician accent") allows her to hear the cliches and "the pieties" that "were repeated to the point where they could be referred to in shorthand"; to identify a system of language, and therefore thought, that refers to nothing outside of itself.

One of the standouts here is "Eyes on the Prize", which offers a perfect illustration, through its outline of the gradual re-shaping of the aims of the Democratic party via Bill Clinton and other members of the Democratic Leadership Council, of one of Simone Weil's points in On the Abolition of All Political Parties, about how the ultimate goal of any party eventually becomes its own growth- the imperative to win at all costs- and that of the two factors, it's really ideology that always proves malleable. Then again, it's hard to make a case for continued futility, either. A Democratic candidate in 1972 campaigned on ending the war in Vietnam. 49 out of 50 states sent back the answer that that's not what this country was.

Another highlight is "Clinton Agonistes", perhaps the clearest of all the essays on a theme that runs throughout the book, which is the hermeticism of the political class in Washington.  As Didion puts it, in the world of 24/7 news, a very small group of people decide what the zeitgeist is, and run with it- the rest of us just try to keep up.  The rest of us tune in to get informed about what 'people' are thinking and feeling, even though those people are...well, us; or to find out which candidate is the most 'electable', which one I should throw my efforts behind so he/she can beat the other side, except for the fact that the people who should determine which candidate is the most 'electable' are...again, us. By, you know, electing him or her. Didion showcases the absurdity of the outrage generated among the political class by Bill Clinton's behavior- that is to say, an outrage that was made to seem as though it was sweeping the nation, when in fact it wasn't- no matter how obvious it became that the majority of the country just didn't care:

Mr. Clinton's own polls...showed pretty much what everyone else's polls showed: that a majority of the public had believed all along that the president had some kind of involvement with Monica Lewinsky...continued to see it as a private rather than a political matter, believed Kenneth Starr to be the kind of sanctimonious hall monitor with sex on the brain they had avoided in their formative years...and, even as they acknowledged the gravity of lying under oath, did not wish to see the president removed from office.

My only warning is that Didion's book will make the news even more difficult to stomach. I happened to finish her book a couple of days ago; that evening, on-air commentators were talking about the latest Trump rally, where the crowd had chanted, about Ilhan Omar, "send her back." "People", the commentators seemed to agree, "even some Republicans", were upset about this. Trump had finally gone "too far", and, setting morality aside, he'd made a costly political error. Well, my memory is not great, but I'm fairly certain that these same people (or those of the same hermetic political-commentator class) told us that Trump had gone "too far" when he said that Mexicans were rapists, when he suggested that McCain was a loser for getting captured in the war that Trump had managed to avoid fighting in, when the "grab-'em-by-the-pussy" audio was released, after Charlottesville- the point is that a person who comments on politics for a living and interacts primarily with people who do the same thing (maybe relying on polling data to try to understand what people are thinking "out there", beyond the Beltway) is probably not going to be able to reconcile the heinousness of a Trump rally with his or her vision of what the country is- but that doesn't mean it's something that ~45% of the country isn't on board with. Personally, I'll bet that Trump didn't lose a single vote this week.

A cogent analysis of insider politics. Joan Didion highlights instances in which the American political process has served the few rather than the many, and explains how political outsiders remain oblivious to the oft-fictitious nature of our republic. My only critique is in regard to the writing style. In my exasperation at having to re-read a particularly long and complex sentence out loud multiple times, I counted 72 words in the offending sentence. This was a great way to kick off 2020, as I found that Didion’s work is still applicable nearly two decades later, and as we have a major election coming up this year!

A wonderful antidote to the sometimes obnoxious over-excitement surrounding the 2008 American presidential election, Didion's "Political Fictions" reminds us why revving up the engine of hope when it comes to political change usually leads to frustration. As a marker of her often unintentional prescience, consider her observation about the robotic mantras of the 1992 DNC:

"Not much at their [the Democrats' 1992] convention got left to improvisation. They spoke about 'unity.' They spoke about a 'new generation,' about 'change,' about 'putting people first.'"

It's tempting to dismiss Didion's cynicism as unhelpful or simplistic, but, reading her book, it becomes equally clear how easy it is to nurture the bloated aspirations our candidates offer us, aspirations that become more bloated when divorced from a knowledge of history. This book helps to restore the necessary dimensions of historical knowledge that can help us make sense of--or at least recognize--the cycles and patterns that pervade election season after season.

Didion's account of the 1988 presidential election, for instance, and the ways in which the "insider" process functions at a level "perilously remote" from the people it purports to represent, makes for a sobering comparison with our current election.

If politics is the art, not the practice, of the possible, then Didion's chief skill is her lapidary exposure of the art, and artistry, that goes into crafting our national political narratives. She calls these narratives fictions, but we dismiss their realness at the risk of being improperly informed voters.

A lot of it flew right above my head unfortunately, for lack of all but the more obivous references. Still, what landed from the very start was the recognition of an x ray gaze, capable of seing right to the bone of things, and of a laser sharp use of language, fleshing out those bones.

And in that, she is an artist. A sculptor in words.

And the book - a bas-relief frieze of American ruling class growing continously disconnected from the people over the years, and that space being necessarily filled back in with.. political fictions.

Loved the credit to the public's ability to discern and call bullshit. Sad hope.

Are we stuck in the 80s and 90s today? The names that keep coming up in these books are still front and centre in the current political climate (including our president, who appears on the floor of a convention; including Bob Woodward, who she thinks should actually draw conclusions instead of just allowing what are basically press releases in the form of interviews to be the record - what she calls 'political pornography'). We're still discussing how media and politics are intertwined, e.g. Michael Dukakis's game of catch for the cameras to eat up (how about news corporations calling themselves something less generic than media?), how there are people in the know and people who are in the no, who don't get the staging and pandering.

Of course Didion would be a powerful critic on this subject, since politics has veered into celebrity and winning/power. I appreciated her take on swing and values voters - and Florida.

PORNOGRAFIA POLITICA



Era il prodotto di un’infanzia trascorsa per lo più in mezzo a repubblicani conservatori in California (prima che il significato di “conservatore” cambiasse) durante il boom economico del dopoguerra. Alle persone con cui sono cresciuta interessavano imposte basse, bilancio in pareggio e governo limitato. Soprattutto credevano che quest’ultimo non dovesse interferire nella vita privata o culturale dei cittadini. Nel 1964, assecondando simili interessi e opinioni, votai convinta per Barry Goldwater. Se Barry Goldwater non fosse invecchiato, e si fosse ricandidato, avrei continuato a votarlo. Invece, scioccata, personalmente offesa, per quanto possa sembrare strano, dall’entusiasmo con il quale i repubblicani californiani avevano scaricato un vero conservatore (Goldwater ) ed erano passati da un giorno all’altro dalla parte di Ronald Reagan, mi iscrissi al Partito democratico, la prima della mia famiglia a farlo (e forse ancora l’unica della mia generazione). Il fatto che un simile gesto non implicasse un cambio di posizione su una serie di questioni fu una vera scoperta, che mi portò a dubitare del “bipartitismo americano”: questa fu la mia vera introduzione alla politica americana.



Dove Barry Goldwater è il candidato repubblicano alla presidenza che nel 1964 fu sconfitto da Lyndon B. Johnson, che era il presidente in carica in quanto da vice nominato numero uno dopo l’assassinio di John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
Dove Ronald Reagan, dopo una dignitosa carriera da attore mediocrino, era governatore della California dal 3 gennaio del 1967. E qui è possibile sottolineare l’unica cosa buona che abbia mai realizzato: spingere Joan Didion dal Partito repubblicano a quello democratico.
Dove invece non è così chiaro desumere che il celebrato bipartitismo americano contempla in realtà un terzo partito che è quello più numeroso: il partito della gente che sceglie di non votare, o che non vota senza neppure sceglierlo.



Nel 1988 fu chiesto a Joan Didion se voleva seguire la campagna per le elezioni presidenziali (quelle che opponevano il vicepresidente uscente George W. Bush, repubblicano, al candidato democratico Michael Dukakis, di fierissime origine greche). Joan traccheggiò. Era indecisa. E lo rimase a lungo.
Alla fine seguì la campagna presidenziale, quella e le seguenti. Ma fece uscire i suoi ‘pezzi’ qui raccolti solo nel 2001: Finzioni politiche fu pubblicato una settimana dopo gli attentati dell’11 settembre.
Ci parla di un’America che risale alla fine del secolo scorso: tuttavia, è quanto mai attuale. E non sembra parlare solo del suo paese, ma anticipare quello che va da tempo succedendo anche nel resto del mondo: il crescente disinteresse dei potenziali elettori, il progressivo scollamento e allontanamento del sistema politico dall’elettorato che avrebbe dovuto rappresentare, la distanza sempre in aumento tra cittadini e politici.



Sempre geniale e acuta, sempre divertente e tagliente, sempre attenta a ogni singola parola - qui anche molto attenta e brava nell’analizzare quelle altrui – Joan è meno “presente” in queste pagine di quanto non lo sia in altre sue celebri raccolte “giornalistiche”: penso a The White Album, penso per esempio a Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Quella sua splendida abilità di sapere ‘personalizzare’ qualsiasi argomento, dalla crisi di Cuba a una session dei Doors, qui è pressoché assente: e per un lettore italiano può risultare ostico il notevole numero di nomi, tra politici e giornalisti e opinionisti e testate e programmi tv, che allontanano un po’ dal racconto.
Quello che infastidisce molti lettori, il suo talento nel far ruotare qualsiasi narrazione intorno a se stessa – oppure, il sapere infilare se stessa in qualsiasi argomento di discussione e ricerca – è per me invece un prezioso bene che qui ho trovato in misura nettamente minore.
E mi è mancata, ho sentito assenza viva.
Tanto più viva ora che Joan è morta (23 dicembre 2021).

I’ll be honest; I’m still not completely sold on Joan Didion. These essays, collected from the 1980s to 2000 rotate around the political games and elections that tend to dominate (in some, but not all circles, as Didion quickly points out) the public consciousness and news media in the US. The introduction here is probably the best thing in the book, where Didion is laying out her prejudices and point of view—a refreshing take that helps guide the reader, but so many of these essays seemed to go on and on with no end in sight, and not nearly enough of a critical assessment as I was hoping for. I have an inclination to reading about political power and the craven figures who populate Washington, but I still felt at a distance when reading Didion’s takes on some of these figures.

Also, I’m sure this wasn’t Didion’s intention, but it’s worth mentioning how surreal it is to read so many of the same names—not just the politicians, but the media journalists, commentators, etc who are still, after all these years, the gate keepers for much of the discourse on national politics in 2023. Very distressing and makes Didion’s point that Washington is an exclusive club that is further and further removed from the everyday American. 3/5