“It’s an interesting truism that fascists hate satire. They are incredibly paranoid about being laughed at.”
Broadly speaking, there are three types of Donald Trump book. The first are the furious political deep dives, called things like Fire and Fury and Fear and It’s Even Worse Than You Think, written by respected journalists who find themselves at a loss to explain exactly how America did this to itself. The second are books written by – and presumably exclusively purchased by – members of the Trump family, which probably don’t deserve any more explanation than that. And then there is the third type.
The third type of Trump book is my favourite, because they are the satirical ones. They are the books that hoist Donald Trump up by his knickers and throw sausages at him. They are just as angry as the other books, but understand the cleansing power of mockery.
Right now we’re in the middle of a satirical Trump book boom. Stephen Colbert has written one, Whose Boat Is This Boat: Comments That Don’t Help in the Aftermath of a Hurricane. Trevor Noah has written one, The Donald J Trump Presidential Twitter Library. There are Donald Trump annuals. There are Donald Trump intelligence tests.
And now there is a Donald Trump poetry book. Dumpty is a collection written by John Lithgow, illustrated by the actor’s own beautiful drawings. In it, Stephen Miller is “The Little Man Who’s Not All There”. John Bolton finds himself the star of a Lewis Carroll-inspired verse entitled “The Walrus and the Kleptocrat”. My favourite poem, entitled “A Liberal’s Complaint”, goes after Fox News in the most delightful way imaginable; “Sean Hannity, Sean Hannity, You tidal wave of vanity! … Your brain is mashed bananity! You’re such a horse’s fannity!”
But Trump is the central figure here, presented as Dumpty, a lumbering, slow-witted oaf who trudges through the book, intermittently stopping to wreak further unthinking damage on a world that deserved better. However, this wasn’t always the plan.
“My first impulse was to write a book only about the cast of characters in the Trump administration and leaving him out entirely, almost as a way of insulting him,” says Lithgow. “Because it is the most amazing rogues gallery. But, you know, after I’d written four or five poems, I realised I’m not really writing about them. I’m writing about Trump.”
The gamble paid off, not least because, as Lithgow puts it: “By the time I finished the book, about 80% of these people had already been fired or resigned or walked off the job. So it was ancient history.” It’s a quandary I can relate to. I also spent this year writing a collection of satirical short stories, entitled Bedtime Stories for Worried Liberals. And writing anything vaguely topical in a year as breakneck as 2019 has proved to be completely exhausting. Brexit was supposed to happen – twice! – before the book even came out. Boris Johnson became prime minister a week before my copy deadline.
John Lithgow. Photograph: Lisa O’Connor/AFP via Getty Images
Lithgow, at least, took solace in the fact that the Trump administration has contained some historically awful people. “They’re very theatrical,” he points out. “And one thing that I find remarkable is that people are kind of startled. They’re startled by the fact that they hadn’t thought about Jim Mattis for eight months. Or John Kelly or Harold Bornstein or Tom Price and Ronny Jackson.”
The size of these characters might go some way to explaining the current satire boom. It isn’t just that times are bad and our need for catharsis is urgent; it’s that all of these figures are cartoons. They’re so out of touch, so one-dimensional in their pursuit of power at any cost, that they have become ripe targets for parody.
But to what end? What’s the point of satire in an age like this?
Lithgow pauses, and points me towards a quote by Peter Cook, who once said that he modelled his satirical 1960s club The Establishment on “those wonderful Berlin cabarets that did so much to stop the rise of Hitler”.
“Colbert and Seth Meyers and Samantha Bee and Noah are all incredible, and yet they are not changing the course of human events,” he goes on. “Trump is. It’s the satirist’s dilemma, I guess. Are you only solidifying people’s opinions rather than changing them? Because God knows, the reaction to satire by people who are politically opposed to the satirist is just more entrenched than ever. They are enraged by satire. And I think it’s an interesting truism that fascists hate satire. They are incredibly paranoid about being laughed at.”
Lithgow admits that this was the marketing strategy behind Dumpty. “We were all secretly hoping that Trump would tweet about Dumpty, but maybe he’s got too much on his mind,” he says. “Besides, I don’t think he’d get any of the jokes.”
This reblogged terrific piece was written by
STUART HERITAGE for THE GUARDIAN
American Poetry Today 