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.
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.
What do You think about Democracy (1995)?
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.
—Eric
This book put my brain into meta-brain mode for the whole read. To me, this book was metafiction about metafiction, as well as about meta thoughts and meta speech. The fiction has an awareness of narrative that kind of made my brain hurt, but was interesting to think about. I really liked the thoughts about the complexity of creating a narrative, which are seen in several lesser themes. For example, the idea of public v private image which is seen in the character of Joan Didion v the author herself, as well as Inez and Harry's public v private images. These contrasting images create contrasting perspectives because the story is different depending on who it is according to. Along with the complexity of creating a narrrative, there is an interesting struggle between memory/recollection and imagination/storytelling.
—Denya
Joan Didion is very impressed by high society, and maybe wants you to think she hung out with the Kennedy's without every coming right out and saying it. She uses a line in here about "let me die and go to sleep in the ground" that she explains in Blue Nights (i think...) is actually something her daughter Quintana used to say. So that was kind of cool in a depressing way. Despite the metafiction/postmodern trappings, at its heart the book is a romance about two star-crossed lovers. This doesn't have to be a bad thing.
—Zan
