The Way We Live Now--post election day

By a rather random series of events, I've had a lot of chance to ponder Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now over the last few years. I read it for a small book group I'm in, and reviewed it at Escape Into Life. Then I happened to catch the Masterpiece Theatre series done on it, starring the superb and very transformed David Suchet. Wrote another little piece on that. In March of this year, I
started to see a certain resemblance between Trump and the novel's center stage monster, Melmotte. I thought I'd reprint this short reflection in its entirety, with an important postscript. Spoiler alert: the postscript gives some of the novel's plot away.

The Way We Live Now, again

Far be it from me to turn this book review blog into a political commentary, but after just watching a segment on Lawrence O'Donnell on a shady Trump deal in Mexico, I just have to say that a Donald Trump was foreseen by Anthony Trollope in The Way We Live Now when he created the character Melmotte, who enters the political realm in England from a vague but somehow glamorous business past. Everyone is enamored with his wealth, but  he eventually learns that politics may be a step too far. He even has a shady railroad deal out in the American West, which proves to be more than questionable.

 

Postscript: What I didn't tell readers then was that Melmotte, despite or because of all his chicanery, actually attains a place in parliament. But as I hinted, it is a bridge too far. He is ill-equipped for that august body and is soon laughed off the stage, to his ruin. Ridicule is a powerful weapon and normally I am not in favor of it. But I think it's very fair play for someone who has used it mercilessly against others to his own advantage.

 Read your classics, people. It could serve you in good stead in areas you least expect it...