Joan Didion is that rare thing: an American woman of letters whose pronouncements on that country’s way of life are considered to bear great weight. Journalist, essayist, novelist and columnist, her intelligent and perceptive observations have probed her nation’s psyche for three decades.In this, her 10th book and fifth novel, she turns a fictional probe on the machinations of American politics in the Orwellian significant year of 1984. The story takes in the workings of US central administration and international diplomacy, as well as the American media and the shady operators who work on the fringes of State corruption.Elena McMahon is a journalist reporting on the presidential election campaign when, to oblige her father, Dick, who “does deals”, she goes to Central America in his stead. There she find herself adrift, a pawn in a game with rules she can only begin to grasp, at the heart of an arms trafficking operation and a political conspiracy around Treat Morrison, American Ambassador-At-Large.Elena’s story is related by an unnamed, “not quite omniscient author... who wanted the story to materialise for you [reader] as it did for me [narrator]”. The novel employs such tricks throughout, calling attention to an awareness of its own methods and questioning the conventions of all modern narrative forms - fiction, journalism, thriller writing, reportage, even film scripts. “What we want here is a montage, music over,” begins one chapter. “Angle on Elena. Alone on the dock... taking of her scarf and shaking out her hair.” Didion is a superb stylist with a number of signature techniques, the most characteristic being the way she repeats key phrases with minute but important variations. With each repetition a seemingly innocuous phrase - “Christ, what business are they all in?” or “My understanding is that Dick McMahon will not be a problem” - becomes ever more significant. Beginning with Elena’s meeting with Treat Morrison, the narrative moves forward and back in time, layering phrases and events on top of each other with an incancatory rhythm. The effect is to engender in the reader first suspicion, then dread, and finally understanding. The climax of the novel - the last outcome, Treat Morrison tells us, that he would have wanted - is not unexpected, it has in fact been flagged for us on page 15. But the reasons that it happens are presented through a finely woven web of intrigue and counter-intrigue. Through dark details, quiet understatement and subtle ironies Elena’s entrapment within this complex web is revealed.Nobody could fault Didion’s technical skill. But this reader was left with a “so-what” feeling on finishing this book. Yes, American politics is rotten. Yes, what happened to Elena is terrible. But we are no more moved by her fate than we would be by an in-depth newspaper report.In her journalism and essays, Didion’s techniques are illuminating, her intelligence flashing light on the murkier corners of American life. But fiction can deal only secondarily with the national character; its first duty is to its own characters, and in the best fiction characters are more than just vehicles for ideas, which is essentially what Elena, Treat and the rest turn out to be. Didion’s technical brilliance may disguise this but ultimately does not compensate for it. Here, rather than illuminating, it obscures.This novel is a cold and clever exploration of the USA's heart of darkness but those who expect novels to also reveal something of the human heart will be disappointed.
There are those writers who write well about life and then there are those writers like Didion who excel in documenting the in-betweenness of life. The ambience of being between careers, between relationships, estranged from families and those folks who happen to be where they are less by choice and more by resigned indifference to elect to go anywhere else make up her characters' milieu. She is in her element with vanquished characters who are jaded, spent and unable to gain entry back to the status quo. With The Last Thing He Wanted Didion's plays with the hardboiled parlance and atmosphere of a thriller with mixed results. While you'd think her distinctive wry style would easily translate to the reportage of a thriller, it tends to overwhelm what she tries to convey. You can see where she is entertained by the lingo of government-speak, the absurd quality of official reports design to reveal little while presenting the complete accounts of events and the rat-a-tat of interrogation banter, but after a while the narrative and character development being to suffer as Didion's treatment of revisiting scenes, as well as retelling moments tends to obscure the immediacy of the scene in favor of word play. The protagonist Elena McMahon at first is rendered as a classic Didion character who disconnects from her career in PR for a presidential campaign. The most compelling aspect of this narrative is Elena's initial attempts to regain familial ties with her estranged father and daughter. The question of her father's dementia as opposed to possible duplicity is great. But, as the book descends into the the plot of a thriller, all the characters including Elena begin to talk alike--they all begin to sound like Didion speaking in wry detective-speak. By the time you realize the tale has a romantic angle and begins to evolve beyond ironic stylized description, Didion disposes with the narrative post haste as if to say the tale isn't as important as the way as it is being presented. And because we quickly lose our connection to Elena as she descends into intrigue, and the other characters are interchangeable, the plot becomes secondary to the arch, hardboiled atmosphere that so entertains Didion, but eventually wore thin on this reader.
What do You think about The Last Thing He Wanted (1997)?
The wait was long (especially if one had already read most of the non-fiction pieces collected in 1992's "After Henry") and this novel, like "A Book of Common Prayer" and "Democracy," is spare while somehow coming across as strangely heavy. The opening few paragraphs are a stunning work of synthesis about the 1980s from a certain point of view -- shrouded, spooky (literally, in the CIA sense of the word). From there, a tedium sets in. I don't consider this novel one of Didion's successes, but I remember being so elated when it hit the stores; that was one of my rare experiences of letting my anticipation anxiety and fanboy-ness get the best of me. Usually I keep that shit in check.
—Hank Stuever
I have been a fan of Joan Didion since college where I discovered books like Slouching Toward Bethlehem, The White Album, and After Henry. I recently read the moving The Year of Magical Thinking. But I had never read one of her novels until I saw The Last Thing He Wanted recommended by Ben Fountain in his list of book recommendations in the PS section of Brief Encounters With Che Guevara. So I searched it out and found it to be an intriguing tale of troubled family history, banana republics, arms trading, getting in over your head, and deals gone bad. However, I found the back and forth narrative plot structure from multiple character points of view somewhat hard to follow. I guess there’s a compelling thriller ripe for adaptation by Hollywood, somewhere in this novel.
—Patrick McCoy
A Joan Didion crime novel?What an unexpected gem! Or expected? Her style easily lends itself to the genre. Plain, unobtrusive, never overstating or embellishing. It all comes together to create a truly satisfying novel. But beyond just her style, what made this such a satisfying read for me was that it felt like the joining of all things Didion. The house in Malibu, the daughter, the life of a journalist, the knowledge of the tropics and especially the knowledge of the Bay, we've gotten that before in what she's revealed in her previously published nonfiction. It's amazing to be able to trace that back, see what it is to "write what you know."I would recommend this to any Joan Didion fan. Easily. Enjoy the beauty of her final romance, friends."Maybe she told him who she was because he ordered Early Times. Maybe she looked at him and saw the fog off the Farallons, maybe he looked at her and saw the hot desert twilight. Maybe they looked at each other and knew that nothing they could do would matter as much as the slightest tremor of the earth, the blind trembling of the Pacific in its bowl, the heavy snows closing the mountain passes, the rattlers in the dry grass, the sharks cruising the deep cold water through the Golden Gate. 'The seal's wide spindrift gaze towards paradise.'Oh yes.This is a romance after all. One more romance."
—Beatrice
