Juan Villoro
In 2016, during the campaign for the US presidency, I recalled in this space a novel that anticipated Donald Trump’s triumph: It Can’t Happen Here, by Sinclair Lewis, published in 1935, while Mussolini was invading Ethiopia and Hitler was suspending the civil rights of the Jews. Louisiana Governor Huey Long launched a crusade against the Roosevelt administration in the United States. Lewis warned of the threat looming over his country: a right-wing candidate dazzled voters because he was perceived as an outsider who criticized conventional politicians without reserve or decorum. A chauvinist and discriminatory demagogue, in love with power and money, could become president.
Inspired by Huey Long, Lewis wrote in two months his novel It Can’t Happen Here about a politician who in 1936 wins the presidency, promising instant welfare. Once in power, he eliminates civil liberties, announces that Mexico and Russia are a threat, shields the border, proclaims martial law, assassinates dissidents, and tragically consummates the desire to end the system.
The parallels with the 2016 election were staggering. The threat was back in the figure of Trump. But few cared. Milan Kundera points out that we live on the “planet of inexperience” because we rarely abide by what has already happened. The past has become a job for specialists. This explains why the failures of other times are presented as novelties. Eight years later, astonishingly, Trump may once again become president of the United States.
I resort to another novel by an American who anticipates not only Trump but his followers: The Liar, written by Henry James in 1888.
The story is about the long-suffering painter Oliver Lyon, who, in his youth, courted Everina Brant. She rejected him and married another, Colonel Capadose. Years later, Lyon meets the couple at one of those society gatherings, full of ambiguities and underlying understandings that used to intrigue James. With his trained eye, the painter studies his rival. The colonel is a handsome, charismatic man who excels at hunting and conversation. But his charm includes a vice: he is a compulsive liar. At this reunion, Everina gives Lyon a consolation prize; she tells him she admires his paintings. He, of course, would prefer that she admire his person. The tension between life and art, so prevalent in James, dominates the story.
Lyon sets out to unmask his rival through art. He talks to the colonel and proposes to portray him. He wishes to make a painting capable of capturing not only his attractive features but also his temperament, that is, his deceitful spirit. He succeeds, and to such a degree that the colonel stabs the painting. As a good mythomaniac, he invents an excuse not to be blamed, but his wife knows he caused the mess. Finally, the opportunity arrives for her to condemn her husband’s hypocrisy. Thanks to his brushes, Oliver Lyon feels he is on the verge of winning his bride back, but she takes sides with the man she loves: she knows he is lying, but she doesn’t care.
There are many who prefer to preserve the deception that determines their lives; if the blindfold covering their eyes were removed, that would not necessarily be a relief.
James wrote The Liar without knowing that his country would be ruled by someone similar to Colonel Capadose. Interestingly, he sketched the story in his notebooks with another ending: Everina supports her husband’s lie but then detests him. The masterful twist consisted in making the woman complicit in the swindle: she not only tolerates but, in a way, needs to be lied to.
“Truth is always revolutionary,” Gramsci wrote, which means it is rarely exercised by a politician. In his first year in office, Trump told 2,140 lies recorded by the Washington Post; he “corrected” each falsehood with another falsehood: from relative truth, he moved to the empire of post-truth.
The media “unmasked” him repeatedly, but it mattered little. His followers did not want the truth. Hence, in full exercise of his megalomania, the Republican candidate said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue without losing votes.
The truth has not ceased to be revolutionary. The problem is that it is located in a sphere that matters less and less: reality.
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