Democracy (ii)

from the novelist Joan Didion and publisher Simon & Schuster

It’s a novel. It was new when it came out and remains fresh while its time has become antique.

233 tall, slim pages of text. Parts labelled One, Two, Three, and Four with 12, 14, 3, and 4 chapters.

One and Two are 1 half of the book’s parts but 3 quarters of the book in terms both of chapters and of pages: 2 of 4 parts but 26 of 33 chapters and 177 of 233 pages. One and Two moreover contain all 4 chapters that stand out in length, 3 of them at 11 and 1 at 14 pages.

All of the other 22 chapters in One and Two vary closely in absolute terms at 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 pages, a range of 7 with a difference between any 2 adjoining chapters usually of none to 3 with at most 5 pages except around the outliers.

So, this majority, the meat, of a novel looks like a book of anecdotes, or poems. It’s a novelty.

The novelist notes that she wrote for her murdered niece and her own daughter and for the friend who went without husband or child to devote herself to the relief of suffering among rich and poor on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of our nation. Joan Didion begins with a monologue,

well you could perform it as a monologue. Maybe I will. I have hated the speaker’s ilk over long years but now I could play one on TV. I find the national security transport executive Jack Lovett the most attractive and sympathetic character in the book,

including the author who I couldn’t stand forever, 1 of those intellectuals I hear as dependent and subordinated asserting opinion and taste with common sense in the reserved tones of a secure place in life. That was unfair. So I have made myself read this 1 seriously

and what do you know, I now like it and her. And I like this man Jack speaking from spring 1975 in Honolulu as the jets arrive with the departures from Saigon because he begins talking with tests on the atolls around 1952 then the Aleutians and sets down in 1969 at Jakarta as well as Bien Hoa on his way back to Oahu.

It’s not a stupid Viet Nam book. I hate stupid.

This was the second Viet Nam letter of 2 so far addressed to Democracy by Joan Didion. The first posted on July 30, 2022, then the third on November 5, 2023.

Viet Nam letters respects the property of others under paragraph 107 of United States Code Title 17. If we asked for permission it wouldn’t be criticism. We explain our fair use at length in the letter of September 12, 2022.

The colophon of these Viet Nam letters, directly above, shows the janitor speaking with poet David A. Willson on a Veterans Day.