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Democracy
Inez Victor knows that the major casualty of the political life is memory. But the people around Inez have made careers out of losing track. Her senator husband wants to forget the failure of his last bid for the presidency. Her husband's handler would like the press to forget that Inez's father is a murderer. And, in 1975, the year in which much of this bitterly funny novel is set, America is doing its best to lose track of its one-time client, the lethally hemorrhaging republic of South Vietnam.As conceived by Joan Didion, these personages and events constitute the terminal fallout of democracy, a fallout that also includes fact-finding junkets, senatorial groupies, the international arms market, and the Orwellian newspeak of the political class. Moving deftly from Honolulu to Jakarta, between romance, farce, and tragedy, Democracy is a tour de force from a writer who can dissect an entire society with a single phrase.
234 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1984
About the author
Joan Didion
94 books13.7k followersJoan 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.
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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June 17, 2022
LA PAROLA PERFETTA
Pubblicato nel 1984, ‘Democracy' è il quarto romanzo di Joan Didion, da molti considerato il suo migliore.
Forse il migliore lo è davvero, ma è comunque una bella gara, sono uno più bello dell’altro.
Scrive Edoardo Nesi:
Non sono mai stato capace di decidere se dell'opera narrativa di Joan Didion ammiro più l'esattezza chirurgica dello stile o il distante calore delle lievi, sospese trame; le esemplari descrizioni dei cieli e del sole e delle albe o la glaciale delicatezza con cui sa raccontare il dolore che riempie le tenere e durissime storie d'amore perduto che sempre riempiono e definiscono le sue eroine - perché, com'è giusto, è sempre una donna il personaggio più importante dei suoi romanzi.
Isole e palme e mare e cieli cangianti (non solo per i tramonti, anche per gli esperimenti atomici).
Condivido pienamente l’entusiasmo di Nesi per questa scrittrice, per questa artista il cui stile è come il canto di una sirena, con la sua insistita incessante riscrittura, alla ricerca della parola perfetta (le mot juste, avrebbe detto Flaubert), con quel suo incedere da mantra in effetto stereofonia.
In fondo (in fondo!) si tratta di storie d’amore, per lo più amore perduto, amore sofferto, amore incerto, amore incompreso, amore combattuto. Tragedie romantiche.
E, sempre, al centro dell’obiettivo, perfettamente a fuoco, c’è una donna.
O due, come qui, come anche in ‘Diglielo da parte mia’, la protagonista e la narratrice.
In questo caso, la narratrice è proprio Joan Didion: si presenta, si annuncia, rende esplicito che sta scrivendo un libro su Inez e la sua lunga storia con Jack, interviene, commenta, è presente all’interno della storia, incontra i protagonisti, li intervista, o meglio, li ascolta parlare, e li ascolta tacere, esprime la sua incertezza nel riempire le informazioni e i dettagli mancanti.
Conosco le convenzioni e so rispettarle, so riempire il canovaccio che io stessa ho preparato; so come raccontarvi cosa disse lui e cosa disse lei e soprattutto, dato che il cuore del racconto è un’ellissi calcolata, un contratto tra lo scrittore che promette di sorprendervi e i lettori che accettano di essere sorpresi, so come non dirvi quello che voi non volete ancora sapere.
[Non è puro cinema questo?]
Poi, certo, oltre l’amore (oltre!), c’è tanto altro: anche ‘Democracy’ ci porta indietro agli anni Settanta, alla fine della guerra del Vietnam (l’evacuazione americana di Saigon, la più grande evacuazione della storia compiuta con gli elicotteri, è del marzo 1975) e ci fa viaggiare per il Pacifico e il sudest asiatico, in paesaggi pieni di isole e palme e mare e cieli cangianti (anche per gli esperimenti atomici).
Pagine che fanno riferimento alla politica dell’epoca, alle campagne presidenziali, alle proteste studentesche, ai magheggi della politica e dell’industria delle armi, ai servizi segreti, forse deviati sicuramente contorti, ai rapporti familiari, alle università, alla droga, a ….
Sempre del tutto interna e contemporaneamente esterna ai fatti che narra, criptica, misteriosa, enigmatica, forse anche reticente e ambigua, distante e vicina, fredda e appassionata, Didion costruisce attesa e suspense, comunica una sensazione di ghiaccio bollente, di tango glaciale, di Grande Bellezza.
La storia d’amore di Inez con Jack è un esempio illuminante: non si parla mai dei corpi, del sesso, la stessa parola amore non sono certo venga mai espressa - eppure, la loro è una storia incandescente, piena di sensualità, al calor bianco.
Come altri, mi sono trovato a fare ricerche su Google per saperne di più sui personaggi e scoprire che sono creature di fantasia e finzione, mai realmente esistiti.
Romanzo perché i personaggi sono inventati, pur risultando più veri del vero? Memoir perché l’autrice è parte della storia? In stile New Journalism, o autofiction?
A me sembra talento: uno splendido talento.
L'11 luglio del 2013 Barack Obama ha consegnato a Joan Didion una onorificenza per la sua attività nel campo delle arti.
Pubblicato nel 1984, ‘Democracy' è il quarto romanzo di Joan Didion, da molti considerato il suo migliore.
Forse il migliore lo è davvero, ma è comunque una bella gara, sono uno più bello dell’altro.
Scrive Edoardo Nesi:
Non sono mai stato capace di decidere se dell'opera narrativa di Joan Didion ammiro più l'esattezza chirurgica dello stile o il distante calore delle lievi, sospese trame; le esemplari descrizioni dei cieli e del sole e delle albe o la glaciale delicatezza con cui sa raccontare il dolore che riempie le tenere e durissime storie d'amore perduto che sempre riempiono e definiscono le sue eroine - perché, com'è giusto, è sempre una donna il personaggio più importante dei suoi romanzi.
Isole e palme e mare e cieli cangianti (non solo per i tramonti, anche per gli esperimenti atomici).
Condivido pienamente l’entusiasmo di Nesi per questa scrittrice, per questa artista il cui stile è come il canto di una sirena, con la sua insistita incessante riscrittura, alla ricerca della parola perfetta (le mot juste, avrebbe detto Flaubert), con quel suo incedere da mantra in effetto stereofonia.
In fondo (in fondo!) si tratta di storie d’amore, per lo più amore perduto, amore sofferto, amore incerto, amore incompreso, amore combattuto. Tragedie romantiche.
E, sempre, al centro dell’obiettivo, perfettamente a fuoco, c’è una donna.
O due, come qui, come anche in ‘Diglielo da parte mia’, la protagonista e la narratrice.
In questo caso, la narratrice è proprio Joan Didion: si presenta, si annuncia, rende esplicito che sta scrivendo un libro su Inez e la sua lunga storia con Jack, interviene, commenta, è presente all’interno della storia, incontra i protagonisti, li intervista, o meglio, li ascolta parlare, e li ascolta tacere, esprime la sua incertezza nel riempire le informazioni e i dettagli mancanti.
Conosco le convenzioni e so rispettarle, so riempire il canovaccio che io stessa ho preparato; so come raccontarvi cosa disse lui e cosa disse lei e soprattutto, dato che il cuore del racconto è un’ellissi calcolata, un contratto tra lo scrittore che promette di sorprendervi e i lettori che accettano di essere sorpresi, so come non dirvi quello che voi non volete ancora sapere.
[Non è puro cinema questo?]
Poi, certo, oltre l’amore (oltre!), c’è tanto altro: anche ‘Democracy’ ci porta indietro agli anni Settanta, alla fine della guerra del Vietnam (l’evacuazione americana di Saigon, la più grande evacuazione della storia compiuta con gli elicotteri, è del marzo 1975) e ci fa viaggiare per il Pacifico e il sudest asiatico, in paesaggi pieni di isole e palme e mare e cieli cangianti (anche per gli esperimenti atomici).
Pagine che fanno riferimento alla politica dell’epoca, alle campagne presidenziali, alle proteste studentesche, ai magheggi della politica e dell’industria delle armi, ai servizi segreti, forse deviati sicuramente contorti, ai rapporti familiari, alle università, alla droga, a ….
Sempre del tutto interna e contemporaneamente esterna ai fatti che narra, criptica, misteriosa, enigmatica, forse anche reticente e ambigua, distante e vicina, fredda e appassionata, Didion costruisce attesa e suspense, comunica una sensazione di ghiaccio bollente, di tango glaciale, di Grande Bellezza.
La storia d’amore di Inez con Jack è un esempio illuminante: non si parla mai dei corpi, del sesso, la stessa parola amore non sono certo venga mai espressa - eppure, la loro è una storia incandescente, piena di sensualità, al calor bianco.
Come altri, mi sono trovato a fare ricerche su Google per saperne di più sui personaggi e scoprire che sono creature di fantasia e finzione, mai realmente esistiti.
Romanzo perché i personaggi sono inventati, pur risultando più veri del vero? Memoir perché l’autrice è parte della storia? In stile New Journalism, o autofiction?
A me sembra talento: uno splendido talento.
L'11 luglio del 2013 Barack Obama ha consegnato a Joan Didion una onorificenza per la sua attività nel campo delle arti.
March 21, 2011
Damn, so many of the reviews for this book are terrible. I kind of want to get a gazillion votes for this review just so that it will come before some of the nonsense in the other reviews. Any talk of post-modernism or meta-fiction or there being too many characters in this novel (there aren't that many, more than say the one in certain Beckett works, but less than in a Dickens or Pynchon novel), also plug the ears in your head that listen when you are reading to any of cries that the book is dull or that harp too heavily upon the plot for better or for worse. Just ignore all that stuff (and probably most of what I'm going to say too, but not really because I want you to read this and I want your vote, it's important to me to get ahead of these other reviews). The only thing you need to know about this book is that it is crushingly beautiful. Not flowery pretty, or the literary equivalent of some replaceable blond starlet that graces the cover of gossip mags; but awkwardly gorgeous, insert your own parallelism to the blond starlet here.
The book starts:
The light at dawn during those Pacific tests was something to see.
Something to behold.
Something that could almost make you think you saw God, he said.
He said to her.
Jack Lovett said to Inez Victor.
Inez Victor who was born Inez Christian.
These short sentence long paragraphs could have been condensed into something like, "The light at dawn during those Pacific tests was something to see. They were something to behold and almost make you think you saw God," Jack Lovett said to Inez Victor (nee Christian). Instead, Didion pulls the reader immediately into an intimacy between the two characters. Without having to say it the signals are present that these people share a closeness, it's like some of the great opening sentences from Raymond Carver stories that paint whole nuanced paintings with broadly sparse paint strokes. It's never said where Jack Lovett says these words to Inez Victor, who was born Inez Christian, but the repetitions that move slowly in on to the subjects being said feel like an intimacy of two people laying close to one another, as opposed to the simple way I rewrote this section to read like something someone is saying to someone someplace that could be anyone and anywhere.
I love the way she opens this book, and I'd go quoting a bit more, but at the next line she pulls back the perspective a little and gives a longer paragraph describing parts of the scene surrounding a the atomic bomb tests, and I don't really like quoting long blocks of text. Throughout the book, Didion moves between different perspectives, controlling them through the way she chooses to write, instead of always having to explicitly state what she is trying to achieve. She does get explicit at times, and some reviewers seemed to find this annoying since she inserts herself, as the author, into the work, but I'd argue it isn't a literary trick she's pulling but uses it as a way to move about the themes of the novel. If the story were told from a traditional third person point of view quite a bit would be lost. Partially this is a novel about perspective, about the past and history and stories and it's about myths, and where the truth lies between all of what I just rambled out like a grocery list. I feel like I'm sort of rewriting my defense of the narrator for the YA book, The Book Thief. I guess I am. Good read that review for some more on this I guess.
This isn't an exciting book. The basic plot of the whole novel is given in the first couple of chapters. Most of the story the reader knows before the book is half-way through. Roughly it's about some events that happen in the Spring of 1975 as the United States is preparing to evacuate from Vietnam. The historical events taking place are mixed with the personal lives of the characters and the reader is left to draw the lines between macro and micro happenings and can use the books title Democracy as an ideal and an irony when applied to an export to third world countries at the barrel of a gun to construct a myriad of themes. There are quite a few different readings this book could be given, and for such a short novel Didion manages to pack a lot of big Ideas into the work. Even though there are a lot of big Ideas at work Didion never grabs the reader and forces him or her to have to confront them. The novel could be enjoyed as a love story, or a family tragedy; or as a slightly more humanist perspective to the world that James Ellroy's Blood's a Rover frolics in.
But none of that last paragraph is really that important to know. What is important to know is that the book is gorgeous. It's the kind of book that can be savored for the way the author deftly moves along, I guess like literature for literatures sake. I'd almost not want to recommend other people to read it, I might feel hurt if they didn't find it as good as I did, but I will recommend it. But only to readers who I know aren't reading novels just to get from point A to point B.
P.S. I kind of want to read everything by Joan Didion now. I think she might even move into my favorite writers category. Sort of like Don DeLillo and Cynthia Ozick, I just didn't pay much attention to her and now I think I might have been depriving myself of something awesome. I'm going to cautiously call her an up and coming favorite of mine until I read a couple of more books. It makes me so happy when I realize there are great writers whom I never paid much attention to and now I can look forward to reading them.
The book starts:
The light at dawn during those Pacific tests was something to see.
Something to behold.
Something that could almost make you think you saw God, he said.
He said to her.
Jack Lovett said to Inez Victor.
Inez Victor who was born Inez Christian.
These short sentence long paragraphs could have been condensed into something like, "The light at dawn during those Pacific tests was something to see. They were something to behold and almost make you think you saw God," Jack Lovett said to Inez Victor (nee Christian). Instead, Didion pulls the reader immediately into an intimacy between the two characters. Without having to say it the signals are present that these people share a closeness, it's like some of the great opening sentences from Raymond Carver stories that paint whole nuanced paintings with broadly sparse paint strokes. It's never said where Jack Lovett says these words to Inez Victor, who was born Inez Christian, but the repetitions that move slowly in on to the subjects being said feel like an intimacy of two people laying close to one another, as opposed to the simple way I rewrote this section to read like something someone is saying to someone someplace that could be anyone and anywhere.
I love the way she opens this book, and I'd go quoting a bit more, but at the next line she pulls back the perspective a little and gives a longer paragraph describing parts of the scene surrounding a the atomic bomb tests, and I don't really like quoting long blocks of text. Throughout the book, Didion moves between different perspectives, controlling them through the way she chooses to write, instead of always having to explicitly state what she is trying to achieve. She does get explicit at times, and some reviewers seemed to find this annoying since she inserts herself, as the author, into the work, but I'd argue it isn't a literary trick she's pulling but uses it as a way to move about the themes of the novel. If the story were told from a traditional third person point of view quite a bit would be lost. Partially this is a novel about perspective, about the past and history and stories and it's about myths, and where the truth lies between all of what I just rambled out like a grocery list. I feel like I'm sort of rewriting my defense of the narrator for the YA book, The Book Thief. I guess I am. Good read that review for some more on this I guess.
This isn't an exciting book. The basic plot of the whole novel is given in the first couple of chapters. Most of the story the reader knows before the book is half-way through. Roughly it's about some events that happen in the Spring of 1975 as the United States is preparing to evacuate from Vietnam. The historical events taking place are mixed with the personal lives of the characters and the reader is left to draw the lines between macro and micro happenings and can use the books title Democracy as an ideal and an irony when applied to an export to third world countries at the barrel of a gun to construct a myriad of themes. There are quite a few different readings this book could be given, and for such a short novel Didion manages to pack a lot of big Ideas into the work. Even though there are a lot of big Ideas at work Didion never grabs the reader and forces him or her to have to confront them. The novel could be enjoyed as a love story, or a family tragedy; or as a slightly more humanist perspective to the world that James Ellroy's Blood's a Rover frolics in.
But none of that last paragraph is really that important to know. What is important to know is that the book is gorgeous. It's the kind of book that can be savored for the way the author deftly moves along, I guess like literature for literatures sake. I'd almost not want to recommend other people to read it, I might feel hurt if they didn't find it as good as I did, but I will recommend it. But only to readers who I know aren't reading novels just to get from point A to point B.
P.S. I kind of want to read everything by Joan Didion now. I think she might even move into my favorite writers category. Sort of like Don DeLillo and Cynthia Ozick, I just didn't pay much attention to her and now I think I might have been depriving myself of something awesome. I'm going to cautiously call her an up and coming favorite of mine until I read a couple of more books. It makes me so happy when I realize there are great writers whom I never paid much attention to and now I can look forward to reading them.
July 10, 2017
At first sight the words charm and harm differ in one letter only but the contrast in their meaning is dramatic. Strangely enough, 'Democracy' by Joan Didion has charmed me and harmed me at the same time.
‘Democracy’ has charmed me.
The first thing that enchanted me instantly was Joan Didion’s writing style. I’ve never experienced anything like that before. The unsettling, highly addictive rhythm of her sentences, with many cadenced repetitions and anaphoras, resonated with me like music which goes smoothly straight to your heart.
I was flabbergasted by Didion’s ability to affect me so much with so few words. Isaac Babel points out, 'No iron can stab the heart with such force as a period put just at the right place' and it seems so true in Joan Didion's case also.
Although 'Democracy' provokes strong emotions, it’s far from sentimental. Her style is harsh at times, like her characters. Ah, the way she depicts the feelings flowing between Inez and Jack every time they meet! It made me think of 'Casablanca': scarce words, extreme tension.
The descriptions in "Democracy' are concise but the world she paints with words bursts with colours and smells: 'When Inez remembered that week in Jakarta in 1969 she remembered mainly the cloud cover that hung low over the city and trapped the fumes of sewage and automobile exhaust and rotting vegetation as in a fetid greenhouse. She remembered the cloud cover and she remembered lightning flickering on the horizon before dawn and she remembered rain washing wild orchids into the milky waste ditches.'
Trying to analyze the mechanisms Joan Didion uses to make her prose so original and mesmerizing, would be like catching her words in the net and pinning them like exotic butterflies. Sorry, I’m not going to do that. I prefer to let them float around me and watch them in awe and just sense them with delight.
As for topics and genres, “Democracy” reminds me of a multilayered cake. Don’t expect any sweetness though! It’s more like a strong espresso which will burn your lips and make your heart pulsate faster. You will discover many floors of Didion's amazing construction. Politics, modern history, family, love, writing a novel, being a writer, to name just a few.
It’s a novel, a love story, a crime story, a reportage and an essay at the same time. The narrator is Joan Didion herself who happens to know some characters in person and who shares thoughts about creating this novel and writing in general. The structure of 'Democracy' made me also think of a film. Gosh, the scene in the bar could be dazzling, with Inez dancing not as 'you or I or the agency that regulated dancing in bars might have defined dancing'.
My experience with this novel proves that reaching out of comfort zone can be extremely rewarding. It was Orsodimondo, who got me interested in Joan Didion’s works, and I am very grateful for his encouragement.
‘Democracy’ has harmed me.
Everything I try to read now seems tasteless and colourless compared to Joan Didion’s novel.
‘Democracy’ has charmed me.
The first thing that enchanted me instantly was Joan Didion’s writing style. I’ve never experienced anything like that before. The unsettling, highly addictive rhythm of her sentences, with many cadenced repetitions and anaphoras, resonated with me like music which goes smoothly straight to your heart.
I was flabbergasted by Didion’s ability to affect me so much with so few words. Isaac Babel points out, 'No iron can stab the heart with such force as a period put just at the right place' and it seems so true in Joan Didion's case also.
Although 'Democracy' provokes strong emotions, it’s far from sentimental. Her style is harsh at times, like her characters. Ah, the way she depicts the feelings flowing between Inez and Jack every time they meet! It made me think of 'Casablanca': scarce words, extreme tension.
The descriptions in "Democracy' are concise but the world she paints with words bursts with colours and smells: 'When Inez remembered that week in Jakarta in 1969 she remembered mainly the cloud cover that hung low over the city and trapped the fumes of sewage and automobile exhaust and rotting vegetation as in a fetid greenhouse. She remembered the cloud cover and she remembered lightning flickering on the horizon before dawn and she remembered rain washing wild orchids into the milky waste ditches.'
Trying to analyze the mechanisms Joan Didion uses to make her prose so original and mesmerizing, would be like catching her words in the net and pinning them like exotic butterflies. Sorry, I’m not going to do that. I prefer to let them float around me and watch them in awe and just sense them with delight.
As for topics and genres, “Democracy” reminds me of a multilayered cake. Don’t expect any sweetness though! It’s more like a strong espresso which will burn your lips and make your heart pulsate faster. You will discover many floors of Didion's amazing construction. Politics, modern history, family, love, writing a novel, being a writer, to name just a few.
It’s a novel, a love story, a crime story, a reportage and an essay at the same time. The narrator is Joan Didion herself who happens to know some characters in person and who shares thoughts about creating this novel and writing in general. The structure of 'Democracy' made me also think of a film. Gosh, the scene in the bar could be dazzling, with Inez dancing not as 'you or I or the agency that regulated dancing in bars might have defined dancing'.
My experience with this novel proves that reaching out of comfort zone can be extremely rewarding. It was Orsodimondo, who got me interested in Joan Didion’s works, and I am very grateful for his encouragement.
‘Democracy’ has harmed me.
Everything I try to read now seems tasteless and colourless compared to Joan Didion’s novel.
December 31, 2021
When I first read this book in 1984 I was absolutely staggered. Immediately, I flipped back to the beginning and read it again. I'm sure I've read it a couple of more times since, and this latest re-read has merely confirmed that this must be my all-time favorite book. Although I've been land-locked for the past number of years, I am -- in essence -- a person of the Pacific, and Didion's book IS the Pacific.
Still, it's a complicated little book and demands more from the reader than most. One must pay attention to all the tiny details and have more than a passing knowledge of the locales -- from Hawaii, to Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, the Philippines, and the scattered islands in between (Guam, Kwajalein, Johnston) -- including the names of the airports, the capitals and the history of these places in the 50s, 60s, 70s.
The title is curious. I've never heard a definitive explanation for it, only hints of it being compared to Henry Adams' book of the same title. My take is that it's an ironic title. The book is actually about American colonialism -- our original takeover of Hawaii and our hubris in thinking a war in Vietnam was 1) winnable and 2) appreciated by that country.
[2021 edit -- the pink cover of the dust jacket gives it away -- a book of colonialism, pink being the navy blue (fashion-wise) of India and Inez's sister Janet having a closet-full, more than a dozen pink dresses. Especially when juxtaposed (in Jakarta) to Frances Landau's outfit that mimicked military fatigues.]
But mostly I love this book for the sound of it -- the prose is like poetry and begs to be read aloud. It is, in fact, a mystery, a romance, and a political critique -- but clothed in shear elegance.
Still, it's a complicated little book and demands more from the reader than most. One must pay attention to all the tiny details and have more than a passing knowledge of the locales -- from Hawaii, to Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, the Philippines, and the scattered islands in between (Guam, Kwajalein, Johnston) -- including the names of the airports, the capitals and the history of these places in the 50s, 60s, 70s.
The title is curious. I've never heard a definitive explanation for it, only hints of it being compared to Henry Adams' book of the same title. My take is that it's an ironic title. The book is actually about American colonialism -- our original takeover of Hawaii and our hubris in thinking a war in Vietnam was 1) winnable and 2) appreciated by that country.
[2021 edit -- the pink cover of the dust jacket gives it away -- a book of colonialism, pink being the navy blue (fashion-wise) of India and Inez's sister Janet having a closet-full, more than a dozen pink dresses. Especially when juxtaposed (in Jakarta) to Frances Landau's outfit that mimicked military fatigues.]
But mostly I love this book for the sound of it -- the prose is like poetry and begs to be read aloud. It is, in fact, a mystery, a romance, and a political critique -- but clothed in shear elegance.
November 19, 2021
This book is so strange, but if you're a writer you should read it.
May 1, 2015
The first meeting of Inez Christian and Jack Lovett at the ballet - the beginning of Lovett's "grave attraction" that would last over twenty years - is the sexiest scene I've read in a while:
Cissy Christian smoking a cigarette in her white jade holder. Inez, wearing dark glasses...pinning and repinning a gardenia in her damp hair. This is our niece, Inez, Dwight Christian said. Inez, Major Lovett. Jack. Inez, Mrs. Lovett. Carla. A breath of air, a cigarette. This champagne is lukewarm. One glass won't hurt you, Inez, it's your birthday. Inez's birthday. Inez is seventeen. Inez's evening, really. Inez is our balletomane.
"Why are you wearing sunglasses," Jack Lovett said.
Inez Christian, startled, touched her glasses as if to remove them and then, looking at Jack Lovett, brushed her hair back instead, loosening the pins that held the gardenia.
Inez Christian smiled.
The gardenia fell into the wet grass.
"I used to know all the generals at Schofield," Cissy Christian said. "Great fun out there. Then."
"I'm sure." Jack Lovett did not take his eyes from Inez.
"Great polo players, some of them," Cissy Christian said. "I don't suppose you get much time to play."
"I don't play," Jack Lovett said.
Inez Christian closed her eyes.
Carla Lovett drained her paper cup and crushed it in her hand.
"Inez is seventeen," Dwight Christian repeated.
"I think I want a real drink," Carla Lovett said.
Cissy Christian smoking a cigarette in her white jade holder. Inez, wearing dark glasses...pinning and repinning a gardenia in her damp hair. This is our niece, Inez, Dwight Christian said. Inez, Major Lovett. Jack. Inez, Mrs. Lovett. Carla. A breath of air, a cigarette. This champagne is lukewarm. One glass won't hurt you, Inez, it's your birthday. Inez's birthday. Inez is seventeen. Inez's evening, really. Inez is our balletomane.
"Why are you wearing sunglasses," Jack Lovett said.
Inez Christian, startled, touched her glasses as if to remove them and then, looking at Jack Lovett, brushed her hair back instead, loosening the pins that held the gardenia.
Inez Christian smiled.
The gardenia fell into the wet grass.
"I used to know all the generals at Schofield," Cissy Christian said. "Great fun out there. Then."
"I'm sure." Jack Lovett did not take his eyes from Inez.
"Great polo players, some of them," Cissy Christian said. "I don't suppose you get much time to play."
"I don't play," Jack Lovett said.
Inez Christian closed her eyes.
Carla Lovett drained her paper cup and crushed it in her hand.
"Inez is seventeen," Dwight Christian repeated.
"I think I want a real drink," Carla Lovett said.
December 19, 2019
Chinetosi
Guarda, Joan Didion la dice meglio di tutti, questa cosa, mi pare in Democracy... La so a memoria, senti... Comunque siamo stati insieme. Siamo stati insieme tutta la vita. Se conti anche tutto il tempo che abbiamo passato a pensarci. (La mia ombra è tua - E. Nesi)
Ecco, questa è la mia carta d’imbarco, Edoardo Nesi mi ha preceduto a bordo. Già all’inizio non ero contento del dialogo che l’autrice dava adito di voler tenere con i lettori interrompendo la narrazione per spiegare come intendeva condurla (Kundera fa qualcosa di simile ne “L’insostenibile leggerezza dell’essere” ma con ben altra dialettica). Andando avanti ho accusato i primi sintomi di mal di mare, un sacco di chiacchiere a vuoto, lo sfoggio dei personaggi e degli avvenimenti a gimcana. Il malessere è aumentato man mano che scorrevano le pagine. Ma di che cosa parla? Candidati alle elezioni americane, Vietnam. Lei (Joan) è uno dei personaggi? Inez e Janet Christian sono donne realmente vissute? Un aspetto di questo libro iper politicizzato ricorda il tratto peggiore de “Le Correzioni” di Franzen: la puntigliosità. Con lo stomaco in subbuglio mi son sorbito trattati su questioni trascurabili a scapito di qualsiasi ritmo e piacevolezza di lettura. All’ennesimo inserto in cui inscenava un dialogo con il lettore
Conosco le convenzioni e so rispettarle, so riempire il canovaccio che io stessa ho preparato; so come raccontarvi cosa disse lui e cosa disse lei e soprattutto, dato che il cuore del racconto è un’ellissi calcolata, un contratto tacito fra lo scrittore che promette di sorprendere e i lettori che accettano di essere sorpresi, so come non dirvi quello che voi non volete ancora sapere. Comprendo il ruolo che i particolari giocano in questo tipo di racconto: non è solo il pasticcio di pollo o il tempo (a me piace il tempo, ma il tempo è facile)..
ho sbottato e mi sono appuntato:
Finiscila di farci capire quanto sei brava ed adoprati per esserlo, togli tutti quei dettagli inutili, perché troppi particolari giocano a sfavore come pochi particolari. Raccontacela questa storia invece di raccontartela.
Una scrittrice piena di sé, se non altro in questo romanzo, dove anche la citazione pilota riportata da Nesi, una volta contestualizzata, perde buona parte del suo fascino perché non è una dichiarazione diretta ma una riflessione ad alta voce. Joan Didion fa in modo di divenirne depositaria anziché inserirla in un dialogo fra i due protagonisti.
Nella postfazione ci sono alcune direttive per inquadrare meglio la scrittrice
-Joan Didion è considerata universalmente la più grande giornalista americana vivente e una delle voci più importanti del New Journalism.
-Il rapporto della Didion con la politica fu travagliato. Da giovane pare abbia votato per i repubblicani (più avanti negli anni avrebbe sostenuto i democratici)
Ho letto Norman Mailer, giornalista anche lui, la Didion deve esser la più grande solo perché lui è deceduto nel 2007 (c’è un abisso fra loro). Ho visto che nella produzione di Joan spicca il memoir “L’anno del pensiero magico”, chissà se in futuro gli darò una chance, al momento scendo con lo stomaco rovesciato e non ho intenzione di risalire.
Guarda, Joan Didion la dice meglio di tutti, questa cosa, mi pare in Democracy... La so a memoria, senti... Comunque siamo stati insieme. Siamo stati insieme tutta la vita. Se conti anche tutto il tempo che abbiamo passato a pensarci. (La mia ombra è tua - E. Nesi)
Ecco, questa è la mia carta d’imbarco, Edoardo Nesi mi ha preceduto a bordo. Già all’inizio non ero contento del dialogo che l’autrice dava adito di voler tenere con i lettori interrompendo la narrazione per spiegare come intendeva condurla (Kundera fa qualcosa di simile ne “L’insostenibile leggerezza dell’essere” ma con ben altra dialettica). Andando avanti ho accusato i primi sintomi di mal di mare, un sacco di chiacchiere a vuoto, lo sfoggio dei personaggi e degli avvenimenti a gimcana. Il malessere è aumentato man mano che scorrevano le pagine. Ma di che cosa parla? Candidati alle elezioni americane, Vietnam. Lei (Joan) è uno dei personaggi? Inez e Janet Christian sono donne realmente vissute? Un aspetto di questo libro iper politicizzato ricorda il tratto peggiore de “Le Correzioni” di Franzen: la puntigliosità. Con lo stomaco in subbuglio mi son sorbito trattati su questioni trascurabili a scapito di qualsiasi ritmo e piacevolezza di lettura. All’ennesimo inserto in cui inscenava un dialogo con il lettore
Conosco le convenzioni e so rispettarle, so riempire il canovaccio che io stessa ho preparato; so come raccontarvi cosa disse lui e cosa disse lei e soprattutto, dato che il cuore del racconto è un’ellissi calcolata, un contratto tacito fra lo scrittore che promette di sorprendere e i lettori che accettano di essere sorpresi, so come non dirvi quello che voi non volete ancora sapere. Comprendo il ruolo che i particolari giocano in questo tipo di racconto: non è solo il pasticcio di pollo o il tempo (a me piace il tempo, ma il tempo è facile)..
ho sbottato e mi sono appuntato:
Finiscila di farci capire quanto sei brava ed adoprati per esserlo, togli tutti quei dettagli inutili, perché troppi particolari giocano a sfavore come pochi particolari. Raccontacela questa storia invece di raccontartela.
Una scrittrice piena di sé, se non altro in questo romanzo, dove anche la citazione pilota riportata da Nesi, una volta contestualizzata, perde buona parte del suo fascino perché non è una dichiarazione diretta ma una riflessione ad alta voce. Joan Didion fa in modo di divenirne depositaria anziché inserirla in un dialogo fra i due protagonisti.
Nella postfazione ci sono alcune direttive per inquadrare meglio la scrittrice
-Joan Didion è considerata universalmente la più grande giornalista americana vivente e una delle voci più importanti del New Journalism.
-Il rapporto della Didion con la politica fu travagliato. Da giovane pare abbia votato per i repubblicani (più avanti negli anni avrebbe sostenuto i democratici)
Ho letto Norman Mailer, giornalista anche lui, la Didion deve esser la più grande solo perché lui è deceduto nel 2007 (c’è un abisso fra loro). Ho visto che nella produzione di Joan spicca il memoir “L’anno del pensiero magico”, chissà se in futuro gli darò una chance, al momento scendo con lo stomaco rovesciato e non ho intenzione di risalire.
February 18, 2021
In a review of another book by Joan Dodion, I said if one was willing to go back and re-read parts of the book that didn't make much sense, or simply re-read the entire book one might truly realize how great a book it was. The same can be said for her book, "Democracy." The first fifteen to twenty pages of this book were quite confusing, made especially so by the author switching from first person to third person narrative.
But once this reviewer went back and re-read those pages, I was surprisingly enlightened by the author's approach. There are other difficult passages throughout the book, but I simply went back and re-read them and understood their importance. Now, this might seem a little too much for a lot of readers and I totally understand.
Yet, for me, the inconvenience was worth the reward, and in the end I loved this book and the craftsmanship and the scope of the book I found fascinating. She deftly connects the political, with the military, and the corruption, and the black market used to peddle drugs and weapons toward the end of the Vietnam war. The characters are somewhat offbeat, but that is how they are able to survive in this devious world and in the professions they have chosen. There are code names for everyone and everything and nothing appears completely transparent. A Fascinating Book.
But once this reviewer went back and re-read those pages, I was surprisingly enlightened by the author's approach. There are other difficult passages throughout the book, but I simply went back and re-read them and understood their importance. Now, this might seem a little too much for a lot of readers and I totally understand.
Yet, for me, the inconvenience was worth the reward, and in the end I loved this book and the craftsmanship and the scope of the book I found fascinating. She deftly connects the political, with the military, and the corruption, and the black market used to peddle drugs and weapons toward the end of the Vietnam war. The characters are somewhat offbeat, but that is how they are able to survive in this devious world and in the professions they have chosen. There are code names for everyone and everything and nothing appears completely transparent. A Fascinating Book.
March 7, 2024
Notes on a Novel: A Novel
A Romance of the Islands
A Love Story, sort of.
Jack and Inez.
Older man, younger woman.
With plenty of Vietnam-era politics woven in.
Following the same blueprint as both A Book of Common Prayer and The Last Thing He Wanted but more conventionally novelistic than either.
And more emotionally present.
Domesticated.
Motivivations aren't so mysterious.
Family drama peppered with vicious barbs worthy of August: Osage County.
This time the familiar narrator, the "I" cobbling the story together, is identifed as Joan Didion herself.
Reminded me of Spark's The Public Image, which also deals with a life in the public eye.
My third Joan Didion novel.
The second I devoured within 48 hours.
In first place remains The Last Thing He Wanted, with its urgency/unknowability.
A Romance of the Islands
A Love Story, sort of.
Jack and Inez.
Older man, younger woman.
With plenty of Vietnam-era politics woven in.
Following the same blueprint as both A Book of Common Prayer and The Last Thing He Wanted but more conventionally novelistic than either.
And more emotionally present.
Domesticated.
Motivivations aren't so mysterious.
Family drama peppered with vicious barbs worthy of August: Osage County.
This time the familiar narrator, the "I" cobbling the story together, is identifed as Joan Didion herself.
Reminded me of Spark's The Public Image, which also deals with a life in the public eye.
My third Joan Didion novel.
The second I devoured within 48 hours.
In first place remains The Last Thing He Wanted, with its urgency/unknowability.
February 15, 2019
At nearly the halfway point (the Intermission?) of Democracy Didion, in a meta moment warns (or reminds) the reader with "I am resisting narrative here." She's not lying. Actually, the reader is placed on notice as early as chapter 2 where the author seems triggered by some images from a Wallace Stevens' poem toward writing, in a half assed way, a novel. But, "[c]ards on the table," she informs the reader she's at a point in her life where she (Didion) lacks "certainty." But Vietnam, even ten years out (Democracy came out in 1984) would be hard to sort out. Maybe it was writer's block, maybe she was hoping to write another zeitgeist novel, like her terrific send-up of the sixties, Play It as It Lays. Who knows?
All of that said, Didion then launches the construction of her main characters, soldier of fortune type, Jack Lovett and (the very Didion-like) Inez Victor, wife of a failed politician. She actually gets off to an interesting and evocative start with family history, money, clothes (lots of them), but as this short novel unfolds Didion relies more and more on fast-moving dialogue (she's a master), and quickly changing events without the necessary connective tissue of narrative. There's a murder or two, and on the periphery of things the fall of Vietnam (it's 1975). I suppose there could be a metaphor in there, but I don't really care. The novel fails, and if it wasn't for Didion's name and fame, this book would have long faded from memory as an out-of-print item. Yes, I did give it two stars. Didion is a first-rate writer with a bad novel. You can still find some great moments and conversations, even if as a whole the novel is thin and unsatisfying. If you want a savage and excellent home-front book on Vietnam and its moral costs, I recommend Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone.
All of that said, Didion then launches the construction of her main characters, soldier of fortune type, Jack Lovett and (the very Didion-like) Inez Victor, wife of a failed politician. She actually gets off to an interesting and evocative start with family history, money, clothes (lots of them), but as this short novel unfolds Didion relies more and more on fast-moving dialogue (she's a master), and quickly changing events without the necessary connective tissue of narrative. There's a murder or two, and on the periphery of things the fall of Vietnam (it's 1975). I suppose there could be a metaphor in there, but I don't really care. The novel fails, and if it wasn't for Didion's name and fame, this book would have long faded from memory as an out-of-print item. Yes, I did give it two stars. Didion is a first-rate writer with a bad novel. You can still find some great moments and conversations, even if as a whole the novel is thin and unsatisfying. If you want a savage and excellent home-front book on Vietnam and its moral costs, I recommend Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone.
June 23, 2018
This is a novel about memory, personal and political. It is a masterpiece. Democracy is Joan Didion’s fourth novel, preceded by Run River, Play It As It Lays and A Book of Common Prayer. It was published in 1984. The novel takes place between Honolulu and Jakarta at the hemorrhaging end of the Vietnam War.
It is written as a kind of memoir of Inez Victor, wife of U.S. Senator Harry Victor, told from the perspective of a peculiar narrator. The narrator is none other than Joan Didion.
She is also the self-conscious author of the novel and explains to the reader how this narrative could have been written differently, interjecting the authorial voice within its narrative.
It is a stunning literary achievement and this device is remarkably effective. I found myself reading passages twice as she talks about how they were constructed and why. The technique is so effective that you’ll be craving its craftiness in whatever you read next.
It is written as a kind of memoir of Inez Victor, wife of U.S. Senator Harry Victor, told from the perspective of a peculiar narrator. The narrator is none other than Joan Didion.
She is also the self-conscious author of the novel and explains to the reader how this narrative could have been written differently, interjecting the authorial voice within its narrative.
It is a stunning literary achievement and this device is remarkably effective. I found myself reading passages twice as she talks about how they were constructed and why. The technique is so effective that you’ll be craving its craftiness in whatever you read next.
February 18, 2021
4.5 rounded up
One to re-read and re-visit for sure, but I found Didion's 1984 novel Democracy to be smart, perceptive and more multilayered than it perhaps first comes across. Apparently the novel takes it's name from Henry Adams novel of the same title which tackles corruption under the second Adam's administration, and I think if you're familiar with the political climate of 1970s America and the Vietnam War then you'll likely "get" this novel more than I did. Regardless, Didion's writing shines, and because of this and the clever structure it's possible to get enjoyment out of the Democracy without this knowledge.
One to re-read and re-visit for sure, but I found Didion's 1984 novel Democracy to be smart, perceptive and more multilayered than it perhaps first comes across. Apparently the novel takes it's name from Henry Adams novel of the same title which tackles corruption under the second Adam's administration, and I think if you're familiar with the political climate of 1970s America and the Vietnam War then you'll likely "get" this novel more than I did. Regardless, Didion's writing shines, and because of this and the clever structure it's possible to get enjoyment out of the Democracy without this knowledge.
March 26, 2019
Solitudine emotiva
Dal punto di vista estetico, il libro è piacevolissimo, scritto in modo ricercato ma molto scorrevole. Le frasi sono brevi e quella che segue spesso definisce meglio la precedente, lasciando il tempo al lettore di assaporare l'immagine o l'idea.
Si vede bella gente che si muove in splendide ville con giardini e piscine o alberghi di lusso, su sfondi tropicali.
Le difficoltà della vita sono smussate da amici e collaboratori che offrono drink e cercano voli e sistemazioni discrete. Tutto gradevole e garbato. Mi è piaciuto. Mi sono sfuggite completamente le intenzioni dell'autrice. Come mai mescola il ritiro USA da Saigon con una storia di sguardi fra una giovane possibile first lady e un affascinante uomo d'affari che conosce tutti e del quale sembra che non ci sia nulla da sapere. Perchè ci propone il deus ex machina della signora Inez Victor, nata Christian, come un sobrio gentleman pieno di ottime qualità organizzative e relazionali, come se noi potessimo immaginare un trafficante d'armi solo in abiti stazzonati, avvolto nel fumo del sigaro e dai modi grossolani? Noi non lo pensiamo. Poi addirittura mi viene in mente un altro libro ambientato a Saigon, Niente e così sia, e il minimo che io possa dire è che c'è una certa diversità di spessore, ma sono sicura che Didion ha scritto quello che voleva scrivere. Non un reportage ma una storia che raccontasse uno stato d'animo di distacco, post smobilitazione di Saigon, post tutto. Probabilmente a suo modo aveva intenti provocatori, dato che in piena era No nukes ricorda con elegia il rosa del cielo sugli atolli prima degli esperimenti atomici: nel corso degli anni gli intenti sono un po' svaporati, lasciandosi dietro un'idea di americano sull'albero. Ho dimenticato di chiederle perchè Democracy: il contenuto suggerisce di più Oligarchy. Forse, i postumi del sarcasmo.
Dal punto di vista estetico, il libro è piacevolissimo, scritto in modo ricercato ma molto scorrevole. Le frasi sono brevi e quella che segue spesso definisce meglio la precedente, lasciando il tempo al lettore di assaporare l'immagine o l'idea.
Si vede bella gente che si muove in splendide ville con giardini e piscine o alberghi di lusso, su sfondi tropicali.
Le difficoltà della vita sono smussate da amici e collaboratori che offrono drink e cercano voli e sistemazioni discrete. Tutto gradevole e garbato. Mi è piaciuto. Mi sono sfuggite completamente le intenzioni dell'autrice. Come mai mescola il ritiro USA da Saigon con una storia di sguardi fra una giovane possibile first lady e un affascinante uomo d'affari che conosce tutti e del quale sembra che non ci sia nulla da sapere. Perchè ci propone il deus ex machina della signora Inez Victor, nata Christian, come un sobrio gentleman pieno di ottime qualità organizzative e relazionali, come se noi potessimo immaginare un trafficante d'armi solo in abiti stazzonati, avvolto nel fumo del sigaro e dai modi grossolani? Noi non lo pensiamo. Poi addirittura mi viene in mente un altro libro ambientato a Saigon, Niente e così sia, e il minimo che io possa dire è che c'è una certa diversità di spessore, ma sono sicura che Didion ha scritto quello che voleva scrivere. Non un reportage ma una storia che raccontasse uno stato d'animo di distacco, post smobilitazione di Saigon, post tutto. Probabilmente a suo modo aveva intenti provocatori, dato che in piena era No nukes ricorda con elegia il rosa del cielo sugli atolli prima degli esperimenti atomici: nel corso degli anni gli intenti sono un po' svaporati, lasciandosi dietro un'idea di americano sull'albero. Ho dimenticato di chiederle perchè Democracy: il contenuto suggerisce di più Oligarchy. Forse, i postumi del sarcasmo.
June 28, 2016
Aloha oe
Sofisticata, enigmatica, esotica, raffinata.
Questa potrebbe essere la descrizione di Inez Victor, la protagonista di «Democracy».
Ma si potrebbe dire le stesso di Honolulu, teatro di gran parte della storia.
O di Saigon.
O di Giacarta.
O anche, per certi versi, di Joan Didion.
O della sua scrittura.
Affascinante, affascinanti.
Succede a Honolulu, dunque, ma non solo, e la sensazione predominante, quella che resta, quella che lascia un retrogusto amaro, è di aver assistito a una rappresentazione da dietro le quinte, di aver osservato dal backstage il muoversi degli attori, e di aver alzato, Joan Didion per noi, un velo.
L'epoca è quella, enigmatica anch'essa, in cui in Vietnam, come in Cambogia, come a Giacarta, alle ingerenze nelle questioni di politica interna, nelle guerre civili o negli interventi ufficiali, gli Stati Uniti affiancano l'intervento, nell'ombra, di strani faccendieri, forse agenti segreti, che ufficialmente si occupano di "estrarre" i cittadini USA da nazioni ormai diventate pericolose, per riportarli in patria, mentre nella realtà (ma sapremo mai, noi, la realtà delle cose, chi era veramente Jack Lovett e qual è la realtà in questa storia?) trafficano (in armi, in denaro), forse, intrigano con il governo (ma quale governo e da che parte stanno?) e poi, come ogni spia che si rispetti finiscono per innamorarsi della persona sbagliata (ma poi qual è la persona giusta?).
E poi c'è Inez Victor, protagonista defilata, centro decentrato, ma luminoso e sfaccettato diamante dell'universo di «Democracy», moglie di Harry Victor, senatore del congresso, eterno candidato alla presidenza; irrequieta, defilata, inseguita dalla stampa alla quale riesce quasi sempre a sottrarsi: bella, conturbante, figlia di una ricca famiglia di Honolulu, la cui storia è altrettanto conturbante, irrequieta, inseguita dalla stampa.
Joan Didion irrompe nel romanzo sin dall'inizio con un coup de théâtre, esibisce da subito gli strumenti del mestiere, mette le carte in tavola, le scopre, e poi abilmente le scombina con il suo disordinato andare avanti e indietro nel tempo, facendole apparire e scomparire dove il lettore non si aspetterebbe di vederglielo fare; si diverte (già, chi non ha aperto Google in cerca di notizie su…dove...quando?) a mantenere la storia in equilibrio fra fiction e non fiction, fra romanzo e reportage, a creare l'illusione, nel lettore, di essere finalmente riuscito a svelare un mistero, di avere assistito a una parte di storia fino a quel momento negata a tutti. A tutti coloro che non fanno parte della storia, quella dei cocktail e delle luci a bordo piscina, degli aerei privati che decollano nelle notti profumate delle Hawaii, delle residenze coloniali dove arrivano attutite le notizie di fughe, di incendi, di esplosioni, di morte, dietro quella patina fatta di abiti leggeri e impalpabili, di sorrisi tirati, di verità conosciute da nessuno ma sussurrate da tutti.
E poi vira, Joan Didion, vira sul porpora, quando racconta di Inez e di Jack Lovett, di quel magnetismo che solo le sue parole, e i loro sguardi, riescono a narrare, regalando alla storia una storia d'amore (o di magnetismo?) che ha il profumo di gardenie e jacaranda, la carezza dei venti tropicali, il respiro di una passione che, come già quella che Graham Green raccontava in Un Americano Tranquillo, ha i colori cupi di una fine che sembra già annunciata.
Ma con Joan Didion ormai, l'ho capito, l'abbiamo capito, non c'è mai niente di veramente annunciato, nemmeno quando la storia inizia dalla sua fine: perché la fine è nota, ma non è detto.
«Comunque siamo stati insieme» disse. «Siamo stati insieme tutta la vita. Se conta il pensiero.»
https://youtu.be/XZiX0oO_3Ls
Sofisticata, enigmatica, esotica, raffinata.
Questa potrebbe essere la descrizione di Inez Victor, la protagonista di «Democracy».
Ma si potrebbe dire le stesso di Honolulu, teatro di gran parte della storia.
O di Saigon.
O di Giacarta.
O anche, per certi versi, di Joan Didion.
O della sua scrittura.
Affascinante, affascinanti.
Succede a Honolulu, dunque, ma non solo, e la sensazione predominante, quella che resta, quella che lascia un retrogusto amaro, è di aver assistito a una rappresentazione da dietro le quinte, di aver osservato dal backstage il muoversi degli attori, e di aver alzato, Joan Didion per noi, un velo.
L'epoca è quella, enigmatica anch'essa, in cui in Vietnam, come in Cambogia, come a Giacarta, alle ingerenze nelle questioni di politica interna, nelle guerre civili o negli interventi ufficiali, gli Stati Uniti affiancano l'intervento, nell'ombra, di strani faccendieri, forse agenti segreti, che ufficialmente si occupano di "estrarre" i cittadini USA da nazioni ormai diventate pericolose, per riportarli in patria, mentre nella realtà (ma sapremo mai, noi, la realtà delle cose, chi era veramente Jack Lovett e qual è la realtà in questa storia?) trafficano (in armi, in denaro), forse, intrigano con il governo (ma quale governo e da che parte stanno?) e poi, come ogni spia che si rispetti finiscono per innamorarsi della persona sbagliata (ma poi qual è la persona giusta?).
E poi c'è Inez Victor, protagonista defilata, centro decentrato, ma luminoso e sfaccettato diamante dell'universo di «Democracy», moglie di Harry Victor, senatore del congresso, eterno candidato alla presidenza; irrequieta, defilata, inseguita dalla stampa alla quale riesce quasi sempre a sottrarsi: bella, conturbante, figlia di una ricca famiglia di Honolulu, la cui storia è altrettanto conturbante, irrequieta, inseguita dalla stampa.
Joan Didion irrompe nel romanzo sin dall'inizio con un coup de théâtre, esibisce da subito gli strumenti del mestiere, mette le carte in tavola, le scopre, e poi abilmente le scombina con il suo disordinato andare avanti e indietro nel tempo, facendole apparire e scomparire dove il lettore non si aspetterebbe di vederglielo fare; si diverte (già, chi non ha aperto Google in cerca di notizie su…dove...quando?) a mantenere la storia in equilibrio fra fiction e non fiction, fra romanzo e reportage, a creare l'illusione, nel lettore, di essere finalmente riuscito a svelare un mistero, di avere assistito a una parte di storia fino a quel momento negata a tutti. A tutti coloro che non fanno parte della storia, quella dei cocktail e delle luci a bordo piscina, degli aerei privati che decollano nelle notti profumate delle Hawaii, delle residenze coloniali dove arrivano attutite le notizie di fughe, di incendi, di esplosioni, di morte, dietro quella patina fatta di abiti leggeri e impalpabili, di sorrisi tirati, di verità conosciute da nessuno ma sussurrate da tutti.
E poi vira, Joan Didion, vira sul porpora, quando racconta di Inez e di Jack Lovett, di quel magnetismo che solo le sue parole, e i loro sguardi, riescono a narrare, regalando alla storia una storia d'amore (o di magnetismo?) che ha il profumo di gardenie e jacaranda, la carezza dei venti tropicali, il respiro di una passione che, come già quella che Graham Green raccontava in Un Americano Tranquillo, ha i colori cupi di una fine che sembra già annunciata.
Ma con Joan Didion ormai, l'ho capito, l'abbiamo capito, non c'è mai niente di veramente annunciato, nemmeno quando la storia inizia dalla sua fine: perché la fine è nota, ma non è detto.
«Comunque siamo stati insieme» disse. «Siamo stati insieme tutta la vita. Se conta il pensiero.»
https://youtu.be/XZiX0oO_3Ls
January 29, 2012
As much as I am a fan of "Slouching Toward Bethlehem," I think that this is my favorite Joan Didion book. It presumes so much on the part of the reader -- that we already know about the intricacies of the characters' lives and the underbelly of the Vietnam War, and more so, that we care about any of it. In this book, Didion does not seem to write at all for the reader. She seems to be writing to answer some question whispering to her inside her own thoughts. While the novel "The Descendants" (I read the book and saw the movie) clearly strives to explain/explore/speak to the bizarre aristocracy/social hierarchies of the Hawaiian Islands, "Democracy" is the book to turn to if a person wants a truly insightful view into this world (not to mention the worlds of politics and dysfunctional families). Because, as with any insider, this book does not give away all of its secrets. It builds a (very loose) foundation based on the murder of the daughter of a prominent Hawaii family (she is also the sister-in-law of a prominent senator), then skims and skirts around this event with a litheness and absolute disinterest in me as the reader that makes me green with envy.
June 20, 2022
Fascinující posun románu do reportážní polohy.
Jen mám dojem, že by si překlad zasloužil pečlivější redakci.
Jen mám dojem, že by si překlad zasloužil pečlivější redakci.
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March 1, 2021“fourteen pink dresses all hanging next to each other. didn’t anybody ever tell her? she didn’t look good in pink?”
June 17, 2016
I don't usually mind when writers insert themselves into their own work. I generally like postmodern fiction/metafiction. I also appreciate it when an author intentionally plays with the traditional "linear" narrative, when "plot" is not "beginning, middle, and end", in that order. Didion does all of those things in Democracy, and she is obviously a talented writer, yet Democracy just doesn't "do" it for me. In Democracy, she comes off as an egotist in her intrusions and ramblings, and she isn't really saying anything new here. Three stars might be generous.
August 23, 2018
I imagine the book was innovative and creative even when it was published, but it's still pretty creative and clever. Didion is a brilliant writer and a pleasure to read.
September 24, 2023
joan wrote this one especially for me
March 25, 2022
i read like mj from the spider-man trilogy: https://youtu.be/6H4iKjHSVgA
it took me some time to get into this one, but once i did i thoroughly enjoyed it. i especially liked the fact that our narrator was something of a character within the story themselves.
it took me some time to get into this one, but once i did i thoroughly enjoyed it. i especially liked the fact that our narrator was something of a character within the story themselves.
January 29, 2020
Ah...Joan Didion’s Democracy…opaque, discursive, mysterious, hums with a sense of quietly lurking menace, fragmented time, a time, Didion observes...as "Joan Didion," inserting herself into her work of fiction, an observer in this novel, who is relating her imaginative yarn as a journalist's quest for an assembled-and-organized meaning, a "Rosebud," to all these disparate snippets of time, place, personality, calling cards, rumors, last-minute flights to exotic destinations, press clippings, photos, oddly angled interviews, flash back, flash forward, all against the backdrop of the 1975 American evacuation from Southeast Asia...a time, a fantastic time, captured in the detached, almost surreal DidionVoice, observently, taking all into consideration as what one character notes as "'the long view' (by which) I (Didion) believe she meant history, more exactly the particular undertow of having and not having, the convulsions of a world largely unaffected by the individual efforts of anyone in it," a characterization various men and women of a certain disposition, including a central character, the well-heeled political wife Inez Christian Victor, tend to deny by virtue of their own experiences but yet are randomly, indiscriminately swept up in...
This is a novel of ellipses. Things fall apart, but they also trail off… Haunting, with sentences so sharp and surprising and economical and hinting at such depths of facticity and reasoned consideration that I had to stop and stare at these...these...these gists of worlds below the surface, trying to imagine how Didion manages to thread so much together into tight, lucid epigrams and aphorisms.
That said, a Didion “like” does not mean “for every taste.” She seems to piss off as many people as she delights. I'm a Vietnam-era vet, and the evacuation is vivid in my memory, as is the surreality of Michael Herr’s Dispatches and Tim O’Brien’s Going After Cacciato, and there were still Jack Lovett-style cowboys/international men of mystery aboard when I joined the US intelligence community. I enjoyed—no, I delighted in--the book's patient, deflecting discursiveness more than most readers will. Reviewers go off on her for her seemingly random structures.
As some literatus has blurbed on the back cover, "Didion can dissect an entire society with a single phrase." Well, here, she dissects a world at a very specific moment in chaotic time. I’m absolutely stuck on Joan Didion and have begun ripping through her oeuvre, fact, fiction, essays and all. I really go for her gonzo style…
This is a novel of ellipses. Things fall apart, but they also trail off… Haunting, with sentences so sharp and surprising and economical and hinting at such depths of facticity and reasoned consideration that I had to stop and stare at these...these...these gists of worlds below the surface, trying to imagine how Didion manages to thread so much together into tight, lucid epigrams and aphorisms.
That said, a Didion “like” does not mean “for every taste.” She seems to piss off as many people as she delights. I'm a Vietnam-era vet, and the evacuation is vivid in my memory, as is the surreality of Michael Herr’s Dispatches and Tim O’Brien’s Going After Cacciato, and there were still Jack Lovett-style cowboys/international men of mystery aboard when I joined the US intelligence community. I enjoyed—no, I delighted in--the book's patient, deflecting discursiveness more than most readers will. Reviewers go off on her for her seemingly random structures.
As some literatus has blurbed on the back cover, "Didion can dissect an entire society with a single phrase." Well, here, she dissects a world at a very specific moment in chaotic time. I’m absolutely stuck on Joan Didion and have begun ripping through her oeuvre, fact, fiction, essays and all. I really go for her gonzo style…
September 14, 2021
An original, vividly written, taut, short novel about Inez Christian, the wife of Harry Victor, USA Presidential hopeful. Jack Lovett is Inez’s lover in the 1970s. Inez had known Jack twenty years ago. Inez and Harry have two adult children who cause them some anguish. Daughter Jessie, has a heroin habit. Jack Lovett is a schemer and shadowy fixer Internationally. He is a C.I. A. agent. There is some consternation when Inez and Harry’s scatterbrained daughter, Jessie, somehow without a passport, flies to Vietnam to find work at the time the USA are planning to withdraw from Vietnam! The novel pokes fun at political manoeuvrings, and the boundaries between one’s public and private personality.
This book was first published in 1984.
This book was first published in 1984.
June 6, 2018
Not to be a lesbian, but I love Joan Didion.
November 8, 2022
People rarely talk about Didion’s fiction, and considering the impact she had on the essay form, this makes a good deal of sense. But this is also a very rich novel. For all that it repeats a lot of her favourite tropes (enigmatic women who are attached to arms dealers and oblique criticisms of US imperialism/counterinsurgency efforts in Latin America and East Asia), it also experiments more with voice, form, and especially, narration, than some of her other novels. Joan Didion is herself present as author and these meta inflections are some of the most fascinating moments. She mobilises her acute sense for detail so sharply to create rich characters and worlds. Some of this is a little confusing at times—especially keeping track of who is who and where they are—but I caught up by the end.
April 26, 2024
Reread for the umpteenth time and continuously discovering insights about history, bound together with further character and plot revelations culminating in a story that is heartbreakingly revealing of a time and its people.
July 15, 2021
Ne diyim harikaydı
November 15, 2018
Sublime. Didion probably doesn’t know Marguerite Duras, and probably wouldn’t like her work if she did, but this is a gorgeous American palimpsest of Durasian ideas and styles: call it VIETNAM SONG.
December 19, 2021
Nominally, this is a novel about a senators wife.
In practice, it is also about American colonialism on a micro and macro scale. It is about Hawaii as a colonial state, and Vietnam as a colonial state, and about how national and corporate interests are effectively the same, and how thin and poorly veiled the narcissism of political actors is and how apt the phrase "political actors" actually is. It does this by telling a story about a senator's wife, in love with a spy.
It does this in 234 pages, which should not be enough. In the last few pages of the book, Didion describes it as a novel of "fitful glimpses," which is accurate but does not give due credit to the triumph of construction that Democracy actually is. The glimpses are fitful, but also crafted so beautifully that you do not realize how dense they actually are.
Whatever you feel about Didion, as an iconoclast, a leotards-and-bourbon packing list marketing tool, or peddler of a specific brand of feminist nostalgia, her ability to put words after other words until they are sentences, which she strings together to form paragraphs and ultimately, books, is unparalleled. The construction of this novel is only successful because every sentence she writes is heavy with information, offered lightly, as if it is told in passing. She manages to convey a feeling and a series of actions and a landscape and ultimately a whole personhood in a single turn of phrase because each word is carefully chosen and put after all the other words.
What am I trying to say is that this book took me ages to read because I kept doubling back to re-read whole pages and that each specific word so good that it made me angry.
In practice, it is also about American colonialism on a micro and macro scale. It is about Hawaii as a colonial state, and Vietnam as a colonial state, and about how national and corporate interests are effectively the same, and how thin and poorly veiled the narcissism of political actors is and how apt the phrase "political actors" actually is. It does this by telling a story about a senator's wife, in love with a spy.
It does this in 234 pages, which should not be enough. In the last few pages of the book, Didion describes it as a novel of "fitful glimpses," which is accurate but does not give due credit to the triumph of construction that Democracy actually is. The glimpses are fitful, but also crafted so beautifully that you do not realize how dense they actually are.
Whatever you feel about Didion, as an iconoclast, a leotards-and-bourbon packing list marketing tool, or peddler of a specific brand of feminist nostalgia, her ability to put words after other words until they are sentences, which she strings together to form paragraphs and ultimately, books, is unparalleled. The construction of this novel is only successful because every sentence she writes is heavy with information, offered lightly, as if it is told in passing. She manages to convey a feeling and a series of actions and a landscape and ultimately a whole personhood in a single turn of phrase because each word is carefully chosen and put after all the other words.
What am I trying to say is that this book took me ages to read because I kept doubling back to re-read whole pages and that each specific word so good that it made me angry.
August 15, 2023
I am slowly making my way through Joan Didion's oeuvre and Democracy (1984) is easily one of her best works of fiction. I think it incorporates many of her interests and themes. For example, Inez Victory is unhappily married to a politician and gets involved with a former lover, a behind-the-scenes fixer in faraway locales, Jack Lovett. She shuttles from Honolulu (Hawaii is special place for Didion), California, to distant capitals in SE Asia: Manila, Jakarta, and Kula Lumpur. The novel is set in 1975 as America disgracefully disengages from Vietnam and the repercussion that are felt in Cambodia and throughout the world. It is a turbulent time in world history as well as Inez's personal history. The story is being told by a confidant of Inez, a certain writer named Joan Didion. Some people might find the author inserting themselves into a novel as a character as narcissistic, but I find it interesting--creating a sort of meta-narrative. Inez's children also offer a insight into the troubled would of youth culture in the mid 70s: Jessie is a recovering heroin addict who seems adrift in the world and her son Aldali is idealistic and somewhat unfocused in his attempts to be political, but inherits his unconventionally from his politician father. This was a compelling and somewhat fractured chronicle of a the private life of a public person with complicated relationships with her family and the world in general.
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