Political Fictions

by Joan Didion

Knopf, 352 pp., $25

Joan Didion’s Political Fictions gives a wry, astute look at the American political process — how it’s run by a highly insular group of politicial insiders and the Washington media. According to Didion, the result is “a self-created and self-referring class” and a process that reflects not true American public sentiment but “a series of fables about American experience.” Initially begun as an assignment for The New York Review of Books, Didion’s essays range from the 1988 Bush/Dukakis race up to Monica Lewinsky and the 2000 presidential election. Their titles alone indicate the cutting, intelligent irony with which Didion writes: “Insider Baseball,” “The West Wing of Oz,” “Newt Gingrich, Superstar,” “Political Pornography,” “God’s Country.” Her eye is scrutinizing and devastating, the details she upturns complicated and charged.

This article appears in September 21 • 2001.

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