“Her phone chimed; a text from Donald. I’m leading in the latest poll.”

July 2, 2016 2:20 PM

‘The Arrangements’: A Work of Fiction by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie [The New York Times] The New York Times Book Review asked the acclaimed novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to write a short story about the American election. A second work of election fiction — by a different writer — will follow this fall.

Adichie on Mrs. Trump: [The New York Times]

Adichie’s interest began with Ivanka Trump, who “seems to me too thoughtful and too intelligent to truly believe that her father’s erratic, ungrounded policy positions would genuinely be good for the United States. And so I imagined her as a kind of unknowable character, and I needed a foil of sorts for her, which is how Melania Trump became the center of the story.” “Fiction can remind us — and because of the blood-sport nature of politics, we constantly need reminding — that the players in politics are first human beings,” Adichie said.

Related:

- What Do This Season’s Political Books Tell Us About the Election? [The New York Times]

As citizens, not just voters, we demand to know: Why is this all happening now, and what does it mean? The questions are too big to answer at a time already dense with chatter — the instantaneous eruptions on social media, the daylong spectacle of cable news, the steady drone of talk radio. Worse, our diagnosticians themselves often sound like patients, shouting from the gurney as they’re being rushed into intensive care, or like bemused visitors from another planet. With books, there is the added complication of faulty timing. Election-year analyses always seem to arrive too late or too soon. They are useful nonetheless. The mistakes and misapprehensions — what the authors thought they knew — mirror the broader thinking of their moment. They may not tell us exactly where we are, but they remind us where we seemed to be not so long before. They help measure the distance we’ve traveled and illuminate the route we’ve been inching or barreling along.

- 8 Books To Help You Get Through The 2016 Election Season [Bustle]

If you still hold any doubt that election season 2016 is in full swing, you won’t be able to for much longer. With the Iowa Caucuses just days away (February 1, for those of you who aren’t keeping track) what has, up until now, looked like a whole lot of goofy political posturing will soon turn into a full-blown race to the White House. And what better way to celebrate the highs and lows of the American electoral process than cozying up with some books that make the best election season reads? Because really, there are just so many highs and lows.

Day-to-day campaign coverage can get kind of confusing, to say the least — at least in the beginning, before each party has sussed out their chosen front runner. That candidate you weren’t so sure of yesterday is totally winning today, and could just as easily be relegated to the annals of long-forgotten campaign history tomorrow. But if one thing’s for sure, it’s that election seasons are best analyzed from a distance; like that of the election-season-worthy books on this list.

1. Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America by Ari Berman
2. Political Fictions by Joan Didion
3. Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 by Hunter S. Thompson
4. Front Row at the White House: My Life and Times by Helen Thomas
5. Madam Secretary: A Memoir by Madeleine Albright
6. Hartsburg, USA: A Novel by David Mizner
7. Losers by Michael Lewis
8. Miami and the Siege of Chicago by Norman Mailer

- The Best Books To Get You Ready For The 2016 Election [Literally, Darling]

In addition to the debates, political adverts, and celebrity endorsements, there are a barrage of books rolling out (some that have been staples in homes for the past few years) hoping to shine a brighter spotlight on candidate’s ethics and the role of big government in Washington. This is a list of the non-fiction books ready to physically (some are very effective paperweights) and mentally prepare you for the 2016 election:

1. “Clinton Cash” by Peter Schweizer
2. “Living History” by Hillary Rodham Clinton
3. “Objective Troy” by Scott Shane
4. “Bernie Sanders: The Speech” by Bernie Sanders
5. “A More Perfect Union” by Ben Carson
6. “The Conservative Heart” by Arthur Brooks
7. “Dissent and the Supreme Court” by Melvin I. Urofsky

- 25 Books to Help You Understand America in 2016 [Penguin Random House]

Election season is in full swing. Educate yourself on the United States, our politics, culture, and topics of discussion with these mindful books.

1. Making Our Democracy Work by Stephen Breyer
2. Rights at Risk by David K. Shipler
3. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
4. A Climate of Crisis by Patrick Allitt
5. Taking on Diversity by Rupert W. Nacoste
6. New American Stories by Ben Marcus
7. We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
8. Undocumented by Dan-El Padilla Peralta
9. The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
10. Black Flags by Job Warrick
11. Objective Troy by Scott Shane
12. The Book of Unknown Americans by Christina Henriquez
13. Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz
14. The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
15. Carbon Democracy by Timothy Mitchell
16. Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol
17. The Shame of the Nation by Jonathan Kozol
18. America’s Bitter Pill by Stephen Brill
19. Disaster Capitalism by Antony Lowenstein
20. Household Workers Unite by Premilla Nadasen
21. Ally by Michael B. Oren
22. Beginners by Raymond Carver
23. All the Truth Is Out by Matt Bai
24. The Brothers by Masha Gessen
25. The Twilight War by David Crist

posted by Fizz (21 comments total)

In this case, more so than any other, the truth is stranger than fiction.
posted by Splunge at 2:47 PM on July 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

In this case, more so than any other, the truth is stranger than fiction.

Absolutely. Some of the stories about the candidates and the types of things that are being said feel like I'm watching a Monty Python sketch.

Horrible/Irony 2016
posted by Fizz at 2:52 PM on July 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

If you still hold any doubt that election season 2016 is in full swing, you won’t be able to for much longer havent been reading the front page of MetaFilter.

Fixed that for the whole damn world.
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:55 PM on July 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

With regards to fiction and politics. I also feel like Warren Ellis' Transmetropolitan should be up in that list someplace. Here's a good article that shows how relevant it is: Transmetropolitan: the 90s comic that's bang up-to-date on Donald Trump [The Guardian]

The 90s comic-book series that nailed the 2016 US presidential election, Transmetropolitan, is set two centuries in the future – but its speculations took only two decades to come true. Published in 1997 – just as the radical energy in comics began to dissipate, and when the internet and the growing attentions of Hollywood tempted away then-small creators to more prestigious, better-paid gigs – writer Warren Ellis and illustrator Darick Robertson’s story was an example of pure, radical energy, more overt than any other comic of its day.

Almost 20 years later, amid the primaries of the most absurd, brutal and pivotal US presidential election in recent history, Transmetropolitian has only grown more prescient, and a story set two centuries in the future seems in many ways to be coming true already.

Get ready to have your stomach turned by the picture of our political life Transmetropolitan offers. Spider Jerusalem is the antihero: a shaven-headed, heavily inked journalist who spends much of the story wearing only pants (he’s not an easy character to forget). Jerusalem is something of a homage to Hunter S Thompson, but also a portrait of his creator Warren Ellis – a political activist who can’t resist calling out the powers that be on their brands of bullshit.

posted by Fizz at 3:01 PM on July 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

This felt so real and true. I had to keep reminding myself it was fiction.
posted by sutel at 3:02 PM on July 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm a terrible person, because I'm pretty sure I decried real-person fiction here last week, but now I want all of my favorite authors to take a turn at imagining the internal workings of the Trump family. I honestly am vaguely fascinated by Ivanka Trump. She's like a Gossip Girl character come to life! She's like if Chelsea Clinton were forced to pretend to be Paris Hilton!

Anyway, "The Arrangements" was great, and now I want more.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 3:10 PM on July 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

This felt so real and true. I had to keep reminding myself it was fiction.

Indeed. Particularly this first part of the story:

Melania decided she would order the flowers herself. Donald was too busy now anyway to call Alessandra’s as usual and ask for “something amazing.” Once, in the early years, before she fully understood him, she had asked what his favorite flowers were.

“I use the best florists in the city, they’re terrific,” he replied, and she realized that taste, for him, was something to be determined by somebody else, and then flaunted.

It is a perfect distillation of what/who Trump is as a person and as a brand.
posted by Fizz at 3:28 PM on July 2, 2016 [16 favorites]

Melania decided she would order the flowers herself.

Excellent Virginia Woolf shout-out.
posted by jokeefe at 3:51 PM on July 2, 2016 [9 favorites]

I cannot wait for the John Heilemann and Mark Halperin book on the 2016 election. (Don't know that there's necessarily going to be one but geez, how could they not?)
posted by fuse theorem at 3:56 PM on July 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

This is the definition of normalization, but I love it.
posted by cell divide at 5:09 PM on July 2, 2016

Excellent Virginia Woolf shout-out.

The Ivanka/Elizabeth attraction to an inappropriate cause (Clinton/Miss Kilman) was a nice touch as well.
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:26 PM on July 2, 2016

I'm a terrible person, because I'm pretty sure I decried real-person fiction here last week,

posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:10 PM

Eponysterical.
posted by Uncle Ira at 6:04 PM on July 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

The Trump Syllabus II is pretty excellent for contextualizing this ridiculous, shameful, presidential candidacy.
posted by ChuraChura at 6:41 PM on July 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

One paragraph of the Trump/Transmetropolitan article made it all fall apart for me.

Today, we don’t have a Spider Jerusalem working for a major newspaper: we have an army of them causing trouble on social media. Criticised by writers and celebrities for its “mob mentality”, Twitter has taken on journalism’s job of speaking truth to power, precisely because it gives free rein to exactly the kind of passionate outrage shown by Spider Jerusalem. Those wanting it restrained should be very careful what they wish for.

Bull. Shit. On Twitter "speaking truth to power" is totally drowned out by "speaking lies for profit" and "making threats for LOLs". Twitter is the #1 enabler of "mob mentality" in our society today. It's the preferred format for Donald Trump, for goodness sake!!! The analogy has already broken down by pointing out that "The Beast" is already in power, and is Damien Walter even indirectly hinting that Hillary Clinton is "The Smiler"? Anyone NOT wanting Twitter restrained is either suffering from 3rd degree "mob mentality" or has most of their money invested in Unicorn Tech Inc. Maybe this newspaper columnist is just trying to make excuses for his abject failure at being as good as Spider J. himself. Categorize this as "much more Grauniad than Guardian".
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:05 PM on July 2, 2016 [5 favorites]

Those wanting it restrained should be very careful what they wish for.

Yeah, watch out America, or you might end up with a forum where a woman can have an opinion without being threatened with sexual violence.
posted by murphy slaw at 2:00 AM on July 3, 2016 [9 favorites]

The 90s comic-book series that nailed the 2016 US presidential election, Transmetropolitan, is set two centuries in the future – but its speculations took only two decades to come true.

Well, y'know, I'm still waiting for my upload into a nanomachine cloud orgy society, and for vat-grown human flesh restaurants, but yeah, the politics was pretty on-the-nose. But then Ellis' main point in Transmetropolitan was "technology changes, people don't", so in that sense he really only had to take a good look at the past and present and then project it forward. I've heard the Smiler compared to JFK and Bill Clinton, and the Beast pretty clearly owes some things to Richard Nixon.

Twitter has taken on journalism’s job of speaking truth to power, precisely because it gives free rein to exactly the kind of passionate outrage shown by Spider Jerusalem. Those wanting it restrained should be very careful what they wish for.

Bull. Shit.

And kind of against the grain of the comics, as well. One of the points of Spider Jerusalem as a character is that he's actually willing to do journalism, in an environment where, as he puts it in one of the main storylines, "journalism [for most of the media] means just reading press releases". He's a throwback, and the only times he takes to guerilla media is when he's locked out of the mainstream formats near the end of the series.
posted by AdamCSnider at 10:27 AM on July 3, 2016

The story by Adichie was so perfect, I want it to be real. Elements of the characters, like the way that the Melania character is perplexed by the fact that Trump's campaign is still going, the way he has pitted her against his daughter, the way he can't see past his pleasure at being the center of attention, feel as if they could be true. Of course the Trump in this doesn't seem quite as self-aware as I suspect he actually is. I would read pretty much anything by Adichie and I would read a whole series like this from her.
posted by arachnidette at 11:19 AM on July 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

Great story... and thinking about my favorite authors doing versions of the Trump Family, I'm especially curious what Kelly Link would make of that. And Jeff Vandermeer, of course, whose W. was amazing.
posted by overglow at 1:27 PM on July 3, 2016

With regards to fiction and politics. I also feel like Warren Ellis' Transmetropolitan should be up in that list someplace.

I recently tweeted him my worry that selecting him to script the entirety of 2016 was perhaps not ideal.

He didn't confirm or deny the charge, but he did retweet it.

Make of this what you will.
posted by howfar at 11:47 AM on July 4, 2016

There's a New Yorker piece on Trump supporters now, by author George Saunders. In terms of understanding America, this paragraph jumped out at me:

In the broadest sense, the Trump supporter might be best understood as a guy who wakes up one day in a lively, crowded house full of people, from a dream in which he was the only one living there, and then mistakes the dream for the past: a better time, manageable and orderly, during which privilege and respect came to him naturally, and he had the whole place to himself.
posted by maxsparber at 8:55 AM on July 5, 2016 [2 favorites]

anguspodgorny's post just got deleted since the link there should go here:

"I’ve never before imagined America as fragile, as an experiment that could, within my very lifetime, fail. But I imagine it that way now." A wise and unblinking look at the Trump phenomenon and the people who make up all those crowds. Genuinely worthwhile reading.


comment from the man of twists and turns in deleted post:

‘Could he actually win?’ Dave Eggers at a Donald Trump rally

on preview: maxsparber's comment
posted by numaner at 8:55 AM on July 5, 2016 [2 favorites]