Democracy

Though Goodbye To All That felt like an instant classic, I’d never read any more Joan Didion until coming across a used copy of her 1984 novel Democracy. This had been sitting on the shelf for years, and can now return to the limbo of the cat bookstore. It’s not a bad novel. But it certainly isn’t great enough to reread or recommend.

Didion’s writing is sharp, with lots of amusing details and clever dialogue. Unfortunately she didn’t seem to quite know where she wanted to go with this story. It gets off the ground very slowly, with some ungainly postmodern flapping of wings, before settling into the conceit that Didion is a journalist chronicling the downfall of the politically connected Victor family following Harry Victor’s unsuccessful bid for the 1972 Democratic Presidential Nomination. The central character in this implosion is Irene Victor, the politician’s good wife, and a fictional friend of our equally fictional author-narrator. Of course, with a title like “Democracy” you will not be surprised to discover that the novel is also a political allegory for the American evacuation of Saigon. Oh, how naive we and the Victor’s were in assuming that being an American means always coming out on top through the force of sheer individual gumption, etc … It’s a fine realization, and one many Americans could still stand to revisit I suppose, but it’s hardly a message needed today as urgently it was in 1984. It seems like a tall task to write a political novel that ages well.