For a president who does not read, or at least read books, Donald Trump has inspired an abundance of literary commentary. In this left-right media genre, critic after anti-Trump columnist recommends the books “essential” to understanding the political hour, like Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Origins of Totalitarianism, or The Magic Mountain. But the most suggestive addition to the syllabus is the Harry Potter franchise, with Trump cast as the dark lord Voldemort and liberals as the self-evidently righteous wizard boarding school that bands together to defeat evil. How fitting, somehow, that the same adults who knew Trump would lose, and then were emotionally damaged when he did not, would turn to books meant for children to apprehend reality. Sad!
This ages-nine-and-up coping mechanism does capture something significant about political and literary culture, circa 2017. Too much of politics, and of human experience, is being fitted into neat good–bad binaries that appeal to feelings and status, not to the accurate representation of the world. Nor is appreciation for contingency, complication, and the unexpected highly valued.
George Saunders is the Donald Trump of new fiction.
George Saunders is the Donald Trump of new fiction. Though the kind of people who revere Saunders love him almost as much as they are appalled by Trump, both figures provoke reactions far in excess of the merits. The short-story author and the president aren’t judged, disinterestedly, on their strengths, weaknesses, and ambiguities but according to preconceived narratives,
