ANOTHER DIP INTO Indiana's non-fiction--this one really made me miss Gore Vidal. One could always count on Vidal for a stream of well-aimed, elegantly-phrased contempt for whatever the most despicable recent abuse of power was, and Indiana's preface and first chapter rise to Vidal-like heights of scorn in analyzing the Bush II's 2004 presidential campaign. Indiana's scorn runs hotter and ruder than Vidal's patrician frost, but it is just as satisfying.
The larger part of the book, about Arnold Schwarzenegger's election as governor of California, is not quite as successful. The architecture of the book feels careless at times, and Indiana does not explain complex phenomena like California's recall procedures and its catastrophic deregulation of the energy industry quite as deftly as Vidal probably would have. When Indiana is in his wheelhouse, though, as when he takes apart the Schwarzenegger character as created by his film roles, he is his usual brilliant self.
The conclusion is a little disappointing, a pileup of long quotations...interesting quotations, but still.
Can't really complain about Indiana's prose, though--glistening and sharp as a scimitar all the way through.
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