A Plot In Search of a Novelist
I want to find out the ending!
NOTE: This unusual post is not misinformation. It’s just fiction.
The other day I got an email from someone who lives overseas and reads my Postcards. I’ll call him Lucas. He had always wanted to write a novel about a tragic hero in politics, and thought America’s history made our country a good setting for a complex main character.
(He might have been thinking of Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, which I myself read in college. I can still feel the chill on Big Bittern Lake.)
So Lucas came to the United States in 2012, got a masters degree in English Fiction, then went back home to work at his day job.
He told me in the email that when Trump ran for President in 2015, Lucas knew the model for his main character had arrived. Unfortunately, at the university he had learned that
a tragic hero must have a tragic flaw that will eventually lead to their undoing. Some common examples are Othello's jealousy or Hamlet's indecisiveness.
This definition of tragic hero doesn’t fit Trump, who is a man made entirely of fatal flaws, not just one.
Still, Lucas was inspired by the strange fact that so many Americans love Trump’s flaws. It gave him the idea that, in the presence of this bizarre politician, our country itself is a kind of tragic hero.
It was a terrific creative opportunity.
Lucas works for a state library in an unsettled country and can’t afford to be known for his politics. So decided to look for an American blog where he could post his idea for a novel anonymously, and perhaps find a writer for it.
He wrote to me:
I keep thinking of a plot for this character Trump. As an amateur novelist, I’m not sure I can do it justice but maybe someone else can.
Since 2015, I’ve thought Shakespeare could make the most of it. Robert Penn Warren (All the King’s Men) could do the politics. John Grisham (The Pelican Brief) could make legal sense of it. Stephen King would make the most of the horror of it. Maybe you can think of others.
In case any (living) author were to ask me for a plot idea for this man whose hands must be kept off mankind’s box of matches, I have one ready.
I read the other day that the corporate types in America support Trump again for President in spite of the mess he’s making of the Republican Party. I think they just want the usual low taxes and no regulations. The novelist could research this.
Wait a minute - Trump? It’s obvious that an inept, fully self-absorbed dictator like Trump would be bad for business.
However … now that I think about it, I might see the method in their madness.
Here’s my plot:
Through public disinformation and private political threats, the world’s oligarchs and dictators work together to keep Trump popular in the American polls - and they make sure that his Vice Presidential candidate is someone on their team who is more useful than Trump.
Then, they think, as soon as Trump is back in office on Day One, what if he … disappeared?
Voila! America will then have a dependable Republican as President and the raucous U. S. House MAGAs will be out of the way. Back to business as usual.
Just before the election, though, Trump catches on. (That should be fun to write.) His panic over being a mobster’s target shows in the ways we’re actually seeing now with his garbled rally speeches and social media rants.
There’s no place for Trump to hide. Putin won’t take him because Putin is the one oligarch who knows that Trump is more trouble than he’s worth.
Trump tweets an SOS to the world about his fate. But by now his credibility is so low that nobody who matters takes him seriously. And disinformation from Russia and China easily wipes out his claims. Even Hannity is confused.
Trapped, Trump is desperate to quit his Presidential campaign; he might be safer in prison. But he’s equally desperate for the safety of the White House.
Suspended between the two with peril on either side, he goes through with the campaign, trying every trick to stay on the run.
And then on Tuesday, November 5, Election Day … what happens?
Here I am, looking with Lucas for a novelist to write the story that I can’t wait to read!
P. S. Lucas has emailed me again to say he’s just learned that big corporations don’t support Trump after all. What he had heard before was misinformation.
Still, I told him, it’s a good plot.
Deda--how fun and intriguing!!