Election story in current Newsweek

The 7-part story on the Election in the current Newsweek, "How He Did It, is a surprisingly good read. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the story has a gripping, novelistic quality to it. The story takes all of the little threads and fragments from the last 22 months and weaves them together into a narrative. Reading it this morning, I thought about how familiar, and yet gripping this narrative of recent events seemed to me. Then I realized that this is the same effect that realist fiction had in its heyday. It took what was a more or less recognizable reflection of the world and made meaning out of it, turned it into a story. But the crucial component, for me, was the sense of investment that I had as a reader in the recounting of events. I was reading both about external events, but also about internal states--my internal state. And yet as I did this, I suddenly felt the experience of this external device (the narrative) working itself over and through me, so I suddenly experienced the unfolding of my internal states as an external phenomenon, as something quasi-objective and removed from myself. It was a strange and interesting experience.