I'm not exactly sure why I missed out on reading Joan Didion's 2001 book of political essays, Political Fictions. I suspect it might have something to do with thinking that he essays weren't relevant since they mostly were written between 1988 and 1998. Recently on a political podcast, recommendations were made about documentaries about Republican spin doctors Get Me Roger Stone and Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story as well as Didion's essay "The West Wing of Oz" that was included in this collection. So I went down a political rabbit hole and consumed these recommendations. Didion's book not only survives the test of time, as most of her nonfiction does, but the observations she makes are still relevant in the Trump era. In "Insider Baseball" Didion reports on the 1988 campaign where George H.W. Bush handily defeats Michael Dukakis and Didion takes to task the sycophantic press corps that were not doing their jobs properly because they were kow tow-ing to both candidates. This is timely in the way that the press has normalized Trump behavior throughout his campaign and time in as president-is seems as if the press cannot stick to one disgraceful trope long enough to pin him down for it-sexism, the Russian meddling in the election, the conflict of interest with his businesses, etc. This is followed by the piece, “The West Wing of Oz”, that was recommended that is a great analysis of the Reagan presidency. "From the outset,” she writes, “the invention of a president who could be seen as active rather than passive, who could be understood to possess mysteriously invisible and therefore miraculously potent leadership skills, became a White House priority.” Trump, in his showmanship, can be traced back to the cypher Reagan, the savior of the GOP and master storyteller and actor. Reading Political Fictions makes me wonder what Joan Didion has to say about Trump's triumph. "Eyes on the Prize" is a look at Bill Clinton's "Putting People First" program, which was fashioned with language largely determined by focus groups. As a result, in the scramble for all-important swing votes in the center, the Democratic Party abandoned any mention of the disenfranchised, unless by disenfranchised it meant the allegedly forgotten middle class-something that Trump was able to exploit in 2016. Next in the collection was "Newt Gingrinch, Superstar" in which she eviscerates the former House leader's bullet-pointed To Renew America and his novel 1945, which envisions a future culled from cut-rate science fiction in a review. In "Political Pornography" is a take down of Bob Woodward, the ultimate insider journalist, whose book The Choice was built on extensive interviews with Bill Clinton and Bob Dole—access gained, she suspects, from his idea of "fairness," or an avoidance of asking tough questions. Then the last two essays deal with the Clinton Impeachment. The main thesis of the essay “Clinton Agonistes”: that everything that happened in the wake of the Lewinsky revelations was already known about Clinton’s character from the beginning-not a "vast right wing conspiracy." And in the second essay, "Vichy Washington" Didion exposes the gap between the press and Republicans who acted shocked about Clinton's sexual antics while the general public saw no need for a constitutional crisis with Clinton's behavior. This collection is an assemblage of shrewdly written critiques on modern day American politics and a classic of the genre.

very interesting read in the context of today’s political landscape

This has been my third unsuccessful encounter with Didion. It started with The White Album, then Play as it Lays and now this, Political Fictions— all unsuccessful. I’ve come to the conclusion that Joan is simply not for me (in fact, I came to this conclusion long ago, but after reading her Critics at Large essay on Martha Stewart, I was tickled by a silly wit I hadn’t seen before and decided to give it another go). This abandoning would be easy if it were any other author, except I seem to have an innate desire to want to like Didion. Her straightforward, elegant style reeks of a poise and simplicity that I wish I enjoyed, her modernised in-ness, ever loved by the Cool-Girl TM, makes me insane. I wish I could pack my Didion paperback into my organic tote bag, hit the farmer’s market, and feel like a member of the exclusive and illusive club of the Ultra-Cool TM Joan Didion girls, who just adore (!) her precision and observance (“I just feel like, totally more into like, my feelings”). But alas, I am banished to the lizard-brain plebian corner of the permanently UN-cool TM idiots who don’t understand her genius. Is it my fault that I find her brittle and boring? Or Instagram and Twitter, for waving her books about like royal crown jewels? I’m not sure— Maybe only when I move to Sacramento and feel the Santa Ana winds warmly kiss my cheeks will I understand what they could see all along; I’ll find the missing piece of the Didion puzzle. But until then, that’s enough “precision” for me.

God I cannot express strongly enough how happy I am to be done with this book, which sucks because I was so excited when I bought it.

“It occurred to me, in California in June and in Atlanta in July and in New Orleans in August, in the course of watching first the California primary and then the Democratic and Republican national conventions, that it had not been by accident that the people with whom I had preferred to spend time in high school had, on the whole, hung out in gas stations. They had not run for student body office. They had not gone on to Yale or Swarthmore or DePauw, nor had they even applied. They had gotten drafted, gone through basic at Fort Ord. They had knocked up girls, and married them, had begun what they called the first night of the rest of their lives with a midnight drive to Carson City and a five-dollar ceremony performed by a justice still in his pajamas. They got jobs at the places that had laid off their uncles. They paid their bills or did not pay their bills, made down payments on tract houses, led lives on that social and economic edge referred to, in Washington and among those whose preferred locus is Washington, as "out there." They were never destined to be, in other words, communicants in what we have come to call, when we want to indicate the traditional ways in which power is exchanged and the status quo maintained in the United States, "the process."

This is probably the best part of the book and it’s literally the opening to the first chapter, Didion excels when she writes like this, but unfortunately this kind of writing does not return in this book.

For someone who was so preoccupied with being perceived as serious, and for a writer with a reputation for being very cleverly funny when writing about political/social issues, the ridiculous movie Bullworth (1998) is funnier and more serious than these 338 pages of filler content. Her theses were often incoherent, her politics annoyingly pessimistic, and her writing style inappropriately blasé. Her usually clinically precise cynicism, in the first couple essays comes off as nothing more than typical of the boomer generation — adding nothing original to the discourse and reminding me that I’d read about the same events from much more serious sources. Only Eyes on the Prize really stands out as a “good” essay start to finish — finally an essay that felt important, timeless. Newt Gingrich Superstar also had me laughing out loud as I was reading it on the train.

Clinton Agonistes and Vichy Washington threw me for a loop as they were so disgusting that I think I lost a little respect for Joan. It’s funny because in the latter essay she completely loses her cool (figuratively but also like her “cool” voice that she usually writes with) as she frantically defends Clinton, so much so that I found it a bit embarrassing to compromise integrity/quality for something like that… She’s redeemed only slightly by the fact that she grew up in a different era and the principle of these essays is strong despite Clinton’s sexual history being the hill she’s choosing to die on for said principles.

I guess, it just seems obvious when she’s invested in what she’s writing about and I believe she’s expressed that she didn’t really like writing about politics, so sometimes that shows. I’m glad that this kind of writing of hers is out there because it’s an indicator that a celebrity I like has generally ok politics, but otherwise a waste of my time apart from a couple specific essays or ingenious one-liners.

2.5/5 stars