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A review by davenash
Political Fictions by Joan Didion
5.0
Reading these essays written between 1988 and 2000 through the lens of 2008 and 2016 is like reading the Old Testament through the lens of the New.
Didion identifies the problem with our politics in the fist paragraph of the first essay, the people she hung out with in high school - average Janes and Joe's - don't vote and are not involved in the "process". Didion's coverage of the 88 Democratic Primary in California predicts both Obama's and Trump's rise.
Jesse Jackson was dangerous for three reasons - First, white people started to vote for him. Obama won Iowa and that's how he won the nomination. Second, Jackson was financed outside the political process. That's Trump. Third he had no political experience - that's basically both of them. "I heard him [Jackson] he didn't sound like a politician."
But the her piece "Clinton Agonistes" just nails Clinton while circling back to the main theme. From the first paragraph (Didion's opening's are her best parts, that goes for Democracy and The Last Thing He Wanted except when when she ends with a killer quote)
"No one who ever passed through an American public high school could have watched William Jefferson Clinton running for office in 1992 and failed to recognize the familiar predatory sexuality of a the provincial adolescent."
"No one could have missed the reservoir of self-pity, the quickness to blame, the narrowing of the eyes, as if in wildlife documentary, when things did not go his way. That famous tendency of the candidate to take a less than forthcoming approach to embarrassing questions that had already been well documented."
"Nothing that is now known about the 42nd President was not known before the New Hampshire primary in 1992."
And then the killer close:
"Who cares about what every adult thinks", said one staffer, "It's totally not germane to the point".
Didion identifies the problem with our politics in the fist paragraph of the first essay, the people she hung out with in high school - average Janes and Joe's - don't vote and are not involved in the "process". Didion's coverage of the 88 Democratic Primary in California predicts both Obama's and Trump's rise.
Jesse Jackson was dangerous for three reasons - First, white people started to vote for him. Obama won Iowa and that's how he won the nomination. Second, Jackson was financed outside the political process. That's Trump. Third he had no political experience - that's basically both of them. "I heard him [Jackson] he didn't sound like a politician."
But the her piece "Clinton Agonistes" just nails Clinton while circling back to the main theme. From the first paragraph (Didion's opening's are her best parts, that goes for Democracy and The Last Thing He Wanted except when when she ends with a killer quote)
"No one who ever passed through an American public high school could have watched William Jefferson Clinton running for office in 1992 and failed to recognize the familiar predatory sexuality of a the provincial adolescent."
"No one could have missed the reservoir of self-pity, the quickness to blame, the narrowing of the eyes, as if in wildlife documentary, when things did not go his way. That famous tendency of the candidate to take a less than forthcoming approach to embarrassing questions that had already been well documented."
"Nothing that is now known about the 42nd President was not known before the New Hampshire primary in 1992."
And then the killer close:
"Who cares about what every adult thinks", said one staffer, "It's totally not germane to the point".