Political Fictions is a 2001 book of essays by Joan Didion on the American political process. Written for The New York Review of Books between October 1988 and October 2000, the collection includes three essays previously published as the "Washington" section of After Henry. Didion records the election of George H.W. Bush and his defeat by Bill Clinton, the Republican takeover of Congress in the 1994 elections, Clinton's impeachment, and the 2000 race between George W. Bush and Al Gore. President Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky, the intern's association with Linda Tripp, and their... entanglement with Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr provides the book's central material. Didion evolves this into a close dissection of how the press casts and shapes the news, and helps promote a scandal. It is, as Didion writes, a story of "that handful of insiders who invent, year in and year out, the narrative of public life." The narrative, she writes, "is made up of many understandingsto overlook the observable in the interests of obtaining a dramatic story line.
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