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Failed Cultural Narratives: America in the Postwar Era and the Story of Democracy

Joan Didion begins Democracy by describing the novel she had started to write but which no longer seems tenable. As she develops her notes out of the "jettisoned cargo" (a recurrent image in the book) of her unfinished narrative, we learn that the story she intended to write focused on the family and affairs of Inez Christian, who grew up on Hawaii just after World War II, where her family ("in which the colonial impulse had marked every member"1) had become prosperous, involved primarily in real estate and construction. In 1955, Inez married Harry Victor, a sort of Kennedy Democrat, who became a United States Senator and then a failed presidential hopeful toward the end of the Vietnam era. This marriage uniting the Christians and the Victors, with their interests in the Pacific perimeter, had allegorical potential, underscored by the fact that prior to her marriage Inez had had an affair with Jack Lovett, a CIA operative also specializing in Pacific operations, and during the course of her marriage had kept in distant contact with him. The crucial event anchoring these fictions was