The Trump presidency has spawned a minor publishing boom. We’ve had tell-alls and behind-the-scenes exposures, the most recent being Crime in Progress: The Secret History of the Trump-Russia Investigation by Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch (Allen Lane), Inside Trump’s White House by Doug Wead (Biteback), and A Warning by Anonymous (Little, Brown). Underlying all such titles is the conviction that the 45th president of the US is an unabashed moron.
And thereby hangs a problem: is satire possible, or even useful, with Donald Trump? There is, of course, much in the way of low-hanging fruit here — the tiny hands, the orange skin, the “hair”, the rampant misogyny, the toxic narcissism, the lying, the staggering stupidity — and yet previous attempts at parody have failed because Trump is, well, parody-proof. He is, simply, beyond a joke — as the British writer Howard Jacobson found when he rushed into publication his 2017 novella, Pussy (Jonathan Cape).
Certainly, all the Swiftian elements were there: Jacobson’s central character is, according to the bumf, “Prince Fracassus, heir presumptive to the Duchy of Origen, famed for its golden-gated skyscrapers and casinos, who passes his boyhood watching reality shows on TV, imagining himself to be the Roman Emperor Nero, and fantasising about hookers. He is idle, boastful, thin-skinned and egotistic; has no manners, no curiosity, no knowledge, no idea and no words in which to express them. Could he, in that case, be the very leader to make the country great again?”
When there was no reason to lie, he lied. He lied about the time of day while standing under a clock.
— David Eggers
But it didn’t work. That is exactly how Trump’s supporters see their president — and it doesn’t matter, because that’s exactly what they want: he may be a buffoon, but he’s their buffoon.
Now David Eggers is having a bash at it with The Captain and the Glory (Hamish Hamilton), in which the lunacy of the Trump presidency is presented as an entertaining parable about a calamitous cheeseburger-chomping skipper steering his ship, Glory, towards certain disaster. “When there was no reason to lie,” Eggers writes, “he lied. He lied about the time of day while standing under a clock.”
In her review in the Times, Johanna Thomas-Corr notes, “You could call it a satire, but this 114-page novella reads more like a nautically themed summary of the past three years.”
And then some. The captain here is described as a “large and lumpy” idiot with no qualifications but demands to take over the ship when its previous skipper retires. Though he has no qualifications whatsoever, many of the passengers believe it “refreshing” that a “known moron” is in charge of the vessel, as it proves that any imbecile can be a captain in this classless society.
Within the space of a few short pages, the captain is revealed as a groper, a fantasist and a coward. He hides in the bowels of the ship when it is attacked, flicking through porn magazines and fantasising about his daughter. When she suggests that, perhaps, maybe, they consult the ship’s manual, he throws it into the sea.
And here then is the crux of the matter: in this captain’s world, books are the enemy. According to the gang of con artists and thieves who make up the captain’s advisers, books are objects read by the captain’s enemies, who thrive on the “elitist lies” they contain. His most trusted confidante, a voice emerging from the air vent in his bedroom, tells him that men who read books cannot get erections. The voice adds:
“The ship’s most essential passengers are you and your daughter and your daughter’s doll, and also cops and soldiers, and pornographic models, and your lawyers. That’s pretty much it, and everyone else can go f... themselves.”
As much as we revel in this sort of comedic fury, Thomas-Corr reminds us, however, that most satire preaches to the converted. But Eggers, she adds, has targeted not just the culprit here, but the society that has enabled him to thrive as well. “His real target,” she writes, “is moral hypocrisy. Many of the captain’s supporters see what a despicable human he is. But he serves their interests. And Eggers doesn’t miss a chance to take a dig at the Democrats either. Known as ‘the Kindly Mutineers’, they dither about putting themselves on the line to save the Glory. Eggers doesn’t have to exaggerate, he just has to pick and choose his details. The Captain and the Glory is funny because it’s true.”
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