Democracy: A Novel [J0434]

1984 HCDJ 1st editioni, n nice clean condition except for foxing on text block edges. 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.

From recent-ish Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "Toward the end of the book, Didion, who references herself as the writer of Democracy a few times in the narrative, describes the book as a "novel of fitful glimpses." That's exactly what it is. The story is related to the reader, not dramatized for the reader. It's a journalistic approach that fits the plot and characters."; "The scene of Jack Lovett and Inez Victor meeting for the first time at the ballet is one of the best things i've ever read"; "A fascinating book. Didion's preoccupation with history and memory is on full display here. This reads as her wrestling with questions only known to herself, throughout the course of writing this novel."; 'Like a trip back in time to the 20th century... True Didion I actually passed it on to share it with friends. Odd this was not seized for a movie or or TV mini series at the time.'