Access The Last Thing He Wanted Generated By Joan Didion Displayed In Manuscript

Cleland Captain: A friend who knows my literary predilections recommended a spy novel earlier this month, I was shocked to learn it was by Joan Didion, I had somehow missed the memo on The Last Thing He Wanted, When I looked for her work on the shelf, I always went strait for some vintage copy of Play It as It Lays or to the early nonfiction, always passing over her last novel because the title was too vague, the cover image of file folders not helping the case against its dimness.
But this book is anything but dull, The story of a daughter and father and the arms deal that brings them somewhat together is told at such a clip that I was forty pages deep before I had the thought that, damn, this is Didion at her best.
Unsentimental and terse, she leans against the traditional architecture of the thriller and then slowly chips away at the foundation, inventing something the likes of which I have never read before.
I love how nonjudgmental this work is, How there are no easily identifiable good or bad characters, There is just the world, the people in it, their actions and the consequences of them, Heartbreak masks itself as politics, Love comes in the form of a doublecross, Like a good spy, Didion has created a perfectly executed persona with The Last Thing He Wanted, She has disguised her genius in genre, Este livro fez me sentir que pouco inteligente , muito sinceramente nunca consegui acompanhar a história nem perceber patavina!
O livro tem :
imensos nomes de políticos americanos já é difícil acompanhar o nome dos portugueses
imensas abreviaturas e termos militares
salta no tempo e de personagens em que nem percebia quem estava a relatar a história
Por tudo isto nunca consegui ficar ligada à história e não gostei da maneira como está escrito.
There are those writers who write well about life and then there are those writers like Didion who excel in documenting the inbetweenness of life.
The ambience of being between careers, between relationships, estranged from families and those folks who happen to be where they are less by choice and more by resigned indifference to elect to go anywhere else make up her characters' milieu.




She is in her element with vanquished characters who are jaded, spent and unable to gain entry back to the status quo.
With The Last Thing He Wanted Didion's plays with the hardboiled parlance and atmosphere of a thriller with mixed results, While you'd think her distinctive wry style would easily translate to the reportage of a thriller, it tends to overwhelm what she tries to convey.
You can see where she is entertained by the lingo of governmentspeak, the absurd quality of official reports design to reveal little while presenting the complete accounts of events and the ratatat of interrogation banter, but after a while the narrative and character development being to suffer as Didion's treatment of revisiting scenes, as well as retelling moments tends to obscure the immediacy of the scene in favor of word play.




The protagonist Elena McMahon at first is rendered as a classic Didion character who disconnects from her career in PR for a presidential campaign.
The most compelling aspect of this narrative is Elena's initial attempts to regain familial ties with her estranged father and daughter, The question of her father's dementia as opposed to possible duplicity is great, But, as the book descends into the the plot of a thriller, all the characters including Elena begin to talk alikethey all begin to sound like Didion speaking in wry detectivespeak.




By the time you realize the tale has a romantic angle and begins to evolve beyond ironic stylized description, Didion disposes with the narrative post haste as if to say the tale isn't as important as the way as it is being presented.
And because we quickly lose our connection to Elena as she descends into intrigue, and the other characters are interchangeable, the plot becomes secondary to the arch, hardboiled atmosphere that so entertains Didion, but eventually wore thin on this reader.
Originally published sitelinkhere.

The dull and overwrought title, the fuzzy monochrome cover art dominated by letters, not to mention the plot and published datedelineates this book as a certain kind of novel, native to the lates ands.
The politicalthriller involving shady arms deals and some person or persons just caught inbetween, The American government is corrupt, Parts of it anyway. But its a sophisticated handsoff puppetmaster corruption, Bad things happen. People in third world countries die, American power and its politicians personal wealth increases,

Yet, this story is hardly rote or typical, Joan Didion wrote it. The writing, as always, is superb, Even through the cynical lense of, the events ofas translated throughare truly abominable, That the topic feels slightly dated may not be because it is a conception of American imperialism circa, but that we have seen the process played out so often in the interim that it has become obvious and everyday.


The writing itself, told through a framing story of a reporter putting together the story many years later, is sparse and enamored with repetition.
Didion observes the doublespeak and murky insubstantiality of political speak in interviews and speeches, Then repeats segments of it, over and over, She may go a little overboard, but the effect and pacing gives the novel a recursive feel, All of this has happened / is happening / will happen, Again and again.

Like sitelinkPlay it as it Lays, and, I suspect, mostifnotall of Didions novels, the protagonist, Elena McMahon, is a woman becoming unhinged.
The writing conveys an overpowering anxiety, whilst Elena maintains an aura of perfect control, Didion uses tricks like telling us when she Elena has stopped crying without ever telling us she had began, Or giving us a running record of how many hours it has been since she has last eaten, Again, like Play it as it Lays, the protagonist confronts a personal emptiness they try to invoke meaningfulness through their family, their daughter, their exhusband.
Largely unsuccessfully. They have become too isolated by society, too absorbed with the abyss,



As the novels central scandal is the IranContra affair, this isnt just cheap drama but an affirmation of the truth sitelinkThere were virtually no consequences to all involved, and least of all to those in the highest positions.
I read this specifically because of the Netflix movie, The movie looked interesting in the trailer, so I wanted to read the book first, Even having read the book, I'm not totally sure what happened in the movie, I love Didion's nonfiction, this was the first novel I've read by her, The plot is both more complicated and more simple than the book makes it seem, The arms dealing is fairly easy to grasp if you are aware of the history the book is based on, but the weirdness of the main character having to stay in Central America is like.
what. I don't know, I can't figure out if I'm putting too much thought into it or if I am missing something, Didion's technical writing is always good to read though, The wait was long especially if one had already read most of the nonfiction pieces collected in's "After Henry" and this novel, like "A Book of Common Prayer" and "Democracy," is spare while somehow coming across as strangely heavy.
The opening few paragraphs are a stunning work of synthesis about thes from a

certain point of view shrouded, spooky literally, in the CIA sense of the word.
From there, a tedium sets in,

I don't consider this novel one of Didion's successes, but I remember being so elated when it hit the stores that was one of my rare experiences of letting my anticipation anxiety and fanboyness get the best of me.
Usually I keep that shit in check, Confinata su un'isola con l'unico scopo di riuscire a capire se avere le capacità di smascherare il suo paese e gettarne in pubblica piazza i panni sporchi sia la sua unica ragione di vita oppure se scappare da questo vortice sia la cosa giusta da fare: azzardare e venire risucchiati o scappare e non essere avvolti dalle tenebre

Se non ti succede una cosa te ne succede un'altra, nessuno ne esce illeso.
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