I heard/saw Joan Didion speak at Mizzou just after this book was released. Basically she chronicles politics of the last two decades, from the election of George H.W. to his defeat by Clinton to Clinton’s impeachment to the election of George W.

Didion is wry and often sardonic and it’s easy to see why the NYT has described her writing as “night scope sniper prose.” Indeed, and Didion’s target is the pansy, self-serving politicos who hide behind their spin-doctors.

Her writing style is unique and may take some getting used to, but she is definitely in a league all her own.

Ditto heads beware.

didion is just alienated enough from politico-speak that she’s able to look at it skeptically. love the early essays focusing on how pageantry and narrative are consciously spun webs that the political class uses to imbue their work with importance. the gingrich piece is just hilarious. some of the ideas get repeated somewhat frequently — the product of this being an essay compilation no doubt — but it doesn’t drag often. recommended!

4.5/5? Taking off half a point because some of this flew over my head even as a policy nerd. Loved learning about some historical campaigns though! Specifically “God’s Country” is suuuuch a good essay anyways this makes me want to do political writing in some future

Phew this was a doozy! Been "reading" it for what feels like forever.

Definitely a lot denser than her other work I've read. She lost me at times, but ultimately I thought this was a really interesting look at language and messaging and how they're manipulated as powerful political tools (whether for good, bad, or otherwise). She really gets into the nitty gritty minutia.

She is also just so effortlessly cunning and precise with her own language. The way she tears down some of the subjects just with a single sentence or an offhand comment is just SO good. It almost feels like it adds insult to injury because I'm not even sure if she's trying to be mean, I think she's just being honest. Queen.

I guess it's no surprise to my friends that I like this book so much, but even I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. Perhaps "enjoy" is not the best word - reading about the machinations of both Republicans and Democrats in the 1980s and 1990s reminds you, sadly, that nothing has changed. But I am amazed at how Didion "reads" the political stage like a dense piece of literary work, noting how carefully-written stories, fabrications, and narratives drive so much of what we think is a rational, open, democratic process of deciding our political fate. The advantage of this kind of analysis is that she applies it equally to both political parties, as well as to all people who are involved in the business of politics. And this is a particularly timely read, with regard to this year's elections, where talk about voters' disenchantment and disengagement with the candidates reflects what Didion asserts.

Loved this book. Great collection of Didion's political writings from the 80s through the 2000s.

Joan Didion drags prominent Democrats and Republicans from the '80s to early 2000's. It's fun, engaging, and offers an outsider's perspective on the American political process that is rarely granted the level of access she's allowed. The resulting anecdotes highlight idiosyncrasies that are often taken for granted by the political class. Would recommend!

*3.5 rounded up

“

(3.75)

whatever you do, DO NOT make an enemy of Joan Didion.

had i read these essays at the time of publication, i’m sure i’d rate this differently. that being said, i still found myself amazed by how she cuts to the root of the issue and disappointed by how little the discourse has actually changed in our political cycles.

Probably the angriest book I’ve read from Didion. Pertinent and relevant, filled with long sentences that entrap and intoxicate. It’s not my favorite of hers, and can only be rightfully compared to other Didion works, but it’s still good and still impactful.

Skewering the politicos

I hope what Joan Didion, essayist extraordinary, learned from this adventure in pol land Americana (that her husband, John Gregory Dunne, "already knew," as she notes on the dedication page) is that there is not a dime's worth of difference between Republicans (they suck!) and Democrats (they suck!) in this democracy by capitalism. Well, maybe fifteen cents. How terribly, terribly impatient I got with Bill Clinton and the demos, that is until George W. took office and then I began to feel some nostalgia for good old fashion sexual malfeasance in lieu of the Incredible Shrinking Bill of Rights and a return to foreign policy as conceived by the CIA.

I think Ms Didion did indeed notice the similarities between the parties in this collection of political essays and journalisms, 1988-2000, most of which were first published in The New York Review of Books. She seems to find Dukakis, Clinton and Gore just as lame as George and George W., although in different ways. (Of course one does sense that overall there is just the barest leftward lean!) Sometimes however it is difficult to tell whether she is just observing the madness or satirizing it, so exquisitely sharp is her rapier. But take a hint from some of the titles, e.g., "The West Wing of Oz," "Newt Gingrich, Superstar," "Political Pornography," "Vichy Washington," "God's Country," etc.

Let's take especially the chapter on the one-time Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Republican congressman from Georgia (and fellow Amazon.com reviewer!) to see what Miss Didion is up to. The chapter starts out innocently enough with a 213-word sentence (no semicolons!) detailing the "personalities and books and events" that helped shape the one-time presidential hopeful. Didion uses a technique here that might be called "damning by bizarre association." Thus one reads that Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, etc., influenced the Honorable Mr. Gingrich, but so did Tom Clancy, "Zen in the Art of Archery," and the 1913 Girl Scout Handbook. One senses where Didion is going when a page later she describes Gingrich's method of developing "an intellectual base" by "collecting quotes and ideas on scraps of paper stored in shoeboxes" (quoting Dick Williams, author of "Newt!" on page 169). The cat is completely out of the bag when Didion notes some of Gingrich's publications, including the novel "1945," which Didion describes as "a fairly primitive example of the kind of speculative fiction known as alternative history." Didion goes on to give capsule reviews of "1945" and "To Renew America," taking some delight in Newt's fixation on numbers and outline forms, "seven steps necessary to solve the drug problem," "eight areas of necessary change in our health care system," etc. ending with the observation on page 179 that "we have here a man who once estimated the odds on the survival of his second marriage at 53 to 47." Didion calls this an "inclination toward the pointlessly specific...coupled with a tic to inflate what is actually specific into a general principle, a big concept." By the time Didion is through with Professor Gingrich, one sees that the epithet, "Superstar" is sarcastic and a delusion of the mind of a nerd fully grown.

Well, is this fair? I don't know, but it is kind of fun. However I recommend that you read this not for fun or for the edification that you might get from the material. Instead I recommend Joan Didion's political pieces as a study in style, as an education in how to slice finely and well, how to discredit and lampoon with class. Didion, when she writes about politics, is like Gore Vidal or Mark Twain being well-behaved at tea with a pinky aimed directly and unmistakably at the hostess.

Comparing this book to her now classic Slouching Towards Bethlehem (circa 1961) which includes the famous self-revelatory essay, "On Going Home," one notices that the novelistic and "affecting" style has disappeared. In its place we have a hard-nosed, but fancy, street journalism with the author somewhere in the background discreetly washing her hands.

By the way, the "...they suck!" above is a paraphrase of a lyric by the now defunct ska band, Out of Order.

--Dennis Littrell, author of the mystery novel, “Teddy and Teri”

Didion was always ruthless in her eviscerations of illusions, and this elegant volume of essays regarding U.S. politics between 1988 and 2000 is a laser that vaporizes Americans' conception of their own democracy. Didion skillfully draws and quarters both political parties and their candidates, exposing the moral and intellectual bankruptcy and vapidity at the core of each, while reserving special scorn for the media that purports to "cover" such electoral charades while cheerfully collaborating with the engineering of pseudo-events like The Clinton Impeachment.

An invaluable read that presages the Age of Trump.