Trump-Inspired Novels

Yesterday, I blogged about the book deal Barack and Michelle Obama have made with Penguin Random House, the world’s largest publisher.  Details of the agreement have not been disclosed but interest in their books reportedly sparked a record-setting $60 million bidding war.

Perhaps Donald Trump should be told since he always boasts about doing everything so much better than Former President Obama; however, Trump can take credit for inspiring at least two works of fiction. 

On February 8, (http://schatjesshelves.blogspot.ca/2017/02/what-to-read-during-trumps-presidency.html), I mentioned that Howard Jacobson has written a comic fairytale novella which will be published in April.  Apparently, the novella, entitled Pussy, “tells the story of Prince Fracassus, heir to the Duchy of Origen, famed for its golden-gated skyscrapers and casinos, who passes his boyhood watching reality TV shows and fantasising about sex workers.  Idle, boastful and thin-skinned as well as ignorant and egotistical, Fracassus seems the last person capable of leading his country. But what seems impossible becomes reality all too readily” (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jan/24/howard-jacobson-writes-donald-trump-novella-pussy?CMP=twt_books_b-gdnbooks).

Now it has been announced that Alec Baldwin, famous for his Donald Trump impression on Saturday Night Live, and Kurt Anderson, editor and co-founder of Spy magazine, are writing a parody political memoir lampooning Trump’s first year in office called You Can’t Spell America Without Me: The Really Tremendous Inside Story of My Fantastic First Year as President Donald J. Trump.  The book is currently set for publication in November, around the first-year anniversary of Trump’s surprise victory over Hillary Clinton. There will also be an audiobook version, to be read by Baldwin in his Trump voice (http://ew.com/books/2017/03/01/alec-baldwin-trump-book/).

Neither man is new to writing.  Anderson has written both fiction and non-fiction; his three novels are True Believers and Heyday and Turn of the Century.  In 2008, Baldwin wrote a book A Promise to Ourselves: A Journey Through Fatherhood and Divorce, and last year, Nevertheless: A Memoir.