Notice bibliographique
- Notice
Type(s) de contenu et mode(s) de consultation : Texte noté : sans médiation
Auteur(s) : Didion, Joan (1934-2021)
Titre(s) : Joan Didion, the 1980s & 90s [Texte imprimé] / David L. Ulin, editor
Publication : New York : The Library of America, 2021
Description matérielle : 840 pages ; 21 cm
Collection : The library of America ; 341
Lien à la collection : The library of America
Note(s) : Includes chronology and note on the texts. - Includes bibliographical references (pages 798-823) and index. - Réunit : "Salvador" ; "Democracy" ; "Miami" ; "After Henry" ; "The last thing
he wanted"
"In the 1980s and 1990s, even as successive administrations hailed "morning in America"
and "a thousand points of light," Joan Didion brought her brilliant and impeccably
stylish prose to bear on the darker truths of American empire. Gathered here for the
first time in this second volume of Library of America's definitive edition are her
masterful novels and nonfiction from this period, five complete book-length works.
"Terror," Didion writes in Salvador (1983) at the height of that country's civil war,
"is the given of the place. . . . Bodies turn up in the brush of vacant lots, in the
garbage thrown down ravines in the richest districts, in public rest rooms, in bus
stations." Her powerful and incisive reporting measures the perverse distance between
such abstractions as Communism, human rights, and democracy in Central America and
the senseless violence she is witness to. Often considered Didion's finest novel,
Democracy (1984) tells a story of Inez Victor, daughter of an old money Honolulu dynasty,
glamorous wife of a prominent politician, and sometime lover of a hardboiled intelligence
officer, who is roused from a listless life of drinking and photo opportunities by
her father's murderous insanity and her daughter's heroin addiction. Into this mix
steps a narrator, "Joan Didion," who pieces Inez's story together with a sharp and
often comic eye. More than an urban portrait, Miami (1987) is a deep dive into the
violent heart of the Magic City's unwritten history. The "underwater narratives" Didion
pursues take her not only through diverse and vibrant neighborhoods but into the clandestine
operations and internecine rivalries of organized crime bosses, cocaine traffickers,
CIA operatives, exiled Cuban counterrevolutionaries, and White House insiders. The
essays in After Henry (1992) capture the zeitgeist of the 1980s and early '90s as
surely as Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album did for the 1960s and '70s.
Alongside signature reflections on life in California, including a trenchant account
of the scourge of wildfires, are provocative examinations of the 1988 presidential
campaign and an in-depth look at New York City and the notorious case of the Central
Park Five. The Last Thing He Wanted (1996) turns Didion's fascination with the Iran-Contra
affair into a tense, intricately plotted, inimitably atmospheric thriller. In the
middle of the 1984 presidential campaign, Elena McMahon leaves her job as a reporter
for The Washington Post to care for her ailing but secretive father--only to find
herself on a late-night flight to Costa Rica, bound for a morally compromised world
"on the far frontiers of the Monroe Doctrine," full of spies, ideologues, mercenaries,
and assassins."
Autre(s) auteur(s) : Ulin, David L.. Éditeur scientifique
Indice(s) Dewey : 818.54 (23e éd.) = Écrits divers américains de langue anglaise - 1945-1999 [oeuvre]
Identifiants, prix et caractéristiques : ISBN 9781598536836. - ISBN 1598536834 (rel.)
Identifiant de la notice : ark:/12148/cb468761465
Notice n° :
FRBNF46876146
(notice reprise d'un réservoir extérieur)
Table des matières : Salvador -- ; Democracy -- ; Miami -- ; After Henry -- ; The last thing he wanted.
