''Democracy'',
Joan Didion
Joan Didion (; December 5, 1934 – December 23, 2021) was an American writer. Along with Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson and Gay Talese, she is considered one of the pioneers of New Journalism. Didion's career began in the 1950s after she won ...
's fourth novel, was published in 1984. Set in
Hawaii
Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only state ...
and
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical south-eastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of mainlan ...
at the end of the
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam a ...
, the book tells the story of Inez Victor, wife of
U.S. Senator and one-time presidential hopeful Harry Victor, and her enduring romance with Jack Lovett, a
CIA
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
agent/war profiteer whom Inez first met as a teenager living in Hawaii.
''Democracy'' is unusual in that its narrator is not a character within the novel's world but a voice whom Didion identifies as herself, a writer self-consciously struggling with the ambiguities of her ostensible material, the ironies attendant to narration, and the inevitable contradictions at the heart of any story-telling. Didion's deft and economical use of this conceit allows her to comment not only upon the novel she chose to write, a romantic tragedy, but also upon the novel she chose ''not'' to write, a family epic encompassing generations of Inez's wealthy Hawaiian family, artless emblems of the colonial impulse.
At the time ''Democracy'' was published, the work was widely recognized as Didion's best novel to date for the skillful way she combined reportorial skill with literary style. However, some critics felt the book's realism undercut its overall achievement as a novel.
References
External Links
Book page on official website
1984 American novels
Novels by Joan Didion
Metafictional novels
Novels set in Hawaii
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