Political Fictions

Joan Didion's essays reflect the years 1988 to 2000, and deal with such topics as Iran-contra, Newt Gingrich, the literary career of Bob Woodward, and the Lewinsky scandal.

"Didion's observations and analyses are plausible; they seem, at times, almost too familiar....Reading these essays can be a slightly unnerving experience. Didion presents, with some elegance, the suspicions that have already crossed your mind in moments of darkest cynicism. Then she doubles back, revealing that your cynicism is merely another element of 'the process.' Indeed, its cheapest necessary resource." - Sigfrid Fregert (Newsday (Long Island, N.Y.), 10/28/01)

"Didon's whole career has been a disenchantment, from which her pages fall like brilliant autumn leaves and arrange themselves as sermons in the stones....Didion [is] crouched like a desert lioness, a tawny Sphinx, on the fault lines of our culture, alert to every shiver of tectonic plates....But the policy wonks will want to know, where are her remedies, her five-year plan, her I.P.O.? Not her job." - Charles O. Jackson (New York Times Book Review, 9/23/01)

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