The Last Thing He Wanted [Paperback]

Joan Didion, author of Slouching Towards Bethlehem (FSG Classics), and several others, is one of America's most incisive contemporary novelists. She wrote this novel in the late `90's; the setting is in the previous decade, and concerns the actions of a few individuals working in conformance with America's unofficial policies of maintaining pliable power elites in the countries of "mare nostrum," the Caribbean. When "the cover" was blown on some of the most egregious of these actions, in the `80's, the media adopted the label "Iran-Contra" for them. That label covered the selling of arms to Iran, America's purported enemy of the time (and still?), and channeling the proceeds to fund the "Contras," call them rebels, terrorists or freedom-fighters, take you pick based on your political persuasion, who were trying to overthrow the government of Nicaragua, run by Daniel Ortega and the "Sandinistas." Ortega was "unfriendly" to the interest of America's power elites, which all too often means giving a fair shake to the non-power elites in his own country.

Didion's novel is a depiction of that dark underbelly of American foreign policy (for sure, carping about "human rights" plays no part) "necessary" to maintaining "friendly" governments. There are the machinations of the CIA; there are the "free-market" hustlers that are the arms dealers, still hoping to draw that card so high and wild they'll never have to deal another. There are the surreal conversations about the market falling on the price of anti-personnel mines (`69's) from three dollars to two, each. There is the complicity of our embassy personnel in all these activities, the clock and dagger actions that take place in transit lounges, the crosses and double-crosses. There is Treat Morrison, drawn to the action for the adrenalin rush, with a chip on his shoulder for the "Harvard guys who never listen." There is the pony-tailed guy "on his way home from Angola" who was once in the 25th Infantry Division, "Tropic Lightning." And there is the principal character, Elena McMahon, who as a journalist walked away from covering the '84 campaign, and got sucked into helping dad close his "million dollar deal." Overall, a real "witch's brew."

And the author demonstrates such deft mastery in handling this "witch's brew." Her prose is lean. She "backs and fills" her story, a foreshadow here, a reminder there where the pieces of her tale are. She has an uncanny ear for dialogue, capturing the essentials to reveal character. She maintains dramatic tension throughout, of a "thriller" variety, but with far more insights. I'm amazed that she has drawn some 1-star reviews, which only proves she is not for everyone. She has famously embraced much of what is referred to as a "southern California lifestyle," yet is a critical observer not only of that "scene," but ones seemingly far removed, including the inner working of government, whose "players" value opacity, and speak in the conditional mood, or, as she says: "...entire layers of bureaucracy dedicated to the principle that self-perpetuation depended on the ability not to elucidate but to obscure."

Comparisons with Graham Greene are more than appropriate, particularly the character Alden Pyle in The Quiet American: Centenary Celebration 2004. Consider: "Not dishonest in the sense that he `lied,' or deliberately misrepresented events as he himself construed them...but dishonest in the more radical sense, dishonest in that he remained incapable of seeing the thing straight." On the other hand, a jab at fixating on the wrong historical analogy: "After that you move past it. You know who the unreported casualties of Vietnam were? Reporters and policy guys who didn't move past it." And, apocryphal, or no, loved her jabs at the Rand Corporation, with their "the Del," that is, the Delphi Method, for predicting future events, and even the study group on "Ap Tech--Uses and Misuses" (i.e., no technological transfers to the Third World since they wouldn't understand them!)

It is another great work from Ms. Didion. A great "thriller," yes, but far more so, probably more "truth" about Iran-Contra, one more aspect of America's "bad faith" dealing with Latin America, than we will ever get from 10 Congressional investigating committees. It was a wonderful re-read; 5-stars plus.

(Note: Review first published at Amazon, USA, on February 07, 2011)