Memory Goes MIA

Political Storytelling and Didion's Democracy

“In an era when even the best informed among us can routinely be misled, democracy depends on our ability to actively decide what we can or should believe.”

This line wouldn’t be out of place in an Op-Ed about the dangers of deepfakes and their impact on current elections. But instead, it’s from a 1984 letter to the editor published in the New York Times, from one Florella Orowan of Brookline, Massachusetts, addressing criticism of Joan Didion’s Democracy: A Novel.