Joan Didion is one of those writers—Norman Mailer, Mary McCarthy, and Gore Vidal are others—who are so good at the higher journalism that their status as novelists may sometimes seem insecure. Do they, we may wonder, keep writing fiction out of professional pride, as if only the novel could truly certify their literary talent and seriousness? Are not their novels, however fine, shadowed by a suspicion, however baseless, that the form is not quite the best form for such powers?

Certainly Democracy, Didion's new novel, opens with an ominously awkward display of self-consciousness about the basic moves of fictional narrative:

                  The light at dawn during those
                Pacific tests was something to see.
                  Something to behold.
                  Something that could almost make
                you think you saw God, he said.
                  He said to her.
                  Jack Lovett said to Inez Victor.
                  Inez Victor who was born Inez
                Christian.

This self-revising...