Volume 31, Number 8 · May 10, 1984
An American Education
By Thomas R. Edwards
Democracy
by Joan Didion
Simon and Schuster, 234 pp., $13.95
Joan Didion is one of those writers—Norman Mailer, Mary McCarthy, and Gore Vidal are others—who are so good at the higher journalism that their status as novelists may sometimes seem insecure. Do they, we may wonder, keep writing fiction out of professional pride, as if only the novel could truly certify their literary talent and seriousness? Are not their novels, however fine, shadowed by a suspicion, however baseless, that the form is not quite the best form for such powers?
Review, 2488 words
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