books

Surviving Autocracy Masha Gessen Penguin Random House June 2020

Growing up in the Soviet Union and living in Russia off and on until relocating to the United States permanently in 2013, Masha Gessen has seen autocracy in action. Working as a journalist and LGBTQ+ rights activist, Gessen has been an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin, most notably in The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. In Surviving Autocracy, the author draws from a wealth of personal and professional experience to analyze the steps Donald Trump has thus far taken to undermine democracy and achieve as close an approximation of absolute power as the few institutions he has not yet managed to sabotage will allow.

There have been numerous narratives of the Trump presidency published in recent months that simply rehash the major events of the past four years and offer aggrieved commentary on various injustices but little else of substance. Gessen does recount some of these events (in a time frame spanning Trump’s election up to the impeachment hearings), but also presents a compelling thesis, that the president is intentionally working to erode public faith in any facet of government that is not him, and then meticulously supports it with evidence.

What makes Trump an interesting case is that he makes no effort to hide his naked ambition toward absolute power. The author points out that his lawyers argued during the impeachment hearing that essentially he couldn’t be charged with a crime because he was the president. Gessen contends that with this notion, “Washington split into two camps, one that inhabited the reality of a representative democracy and one that lived in an autocracy.” This is one of Trump’s most dangerous methods of control: he makes you question what is true or real and what isn’t. And if you disagree with his version of the truth, you’re simply wrong, because he is president. If the president and his various mouthpieces claim it was sunny on the day of his inauguration and that the crowd assembled was record-breaking in size, these are just “alternative facts.”

Throughout, the author draws from the work of thinkers and dissidents who have direct experience with autocracy, such as former Hungarian Minister of Education Bálint Magyar, who once described his country’s post-Communist government as a “mafia state.” Gessen elaborates on this term’s meaning, declaring it a “clan-like system in which one man distributes money and power to all other members.” Shortly thereafter, the book draws a parallel between Magyar’s comment and Trump’s initial cabinet appointments, many of whom were wildly unsuited for their jobs and were clearly being repaid for their campaign support.

Gessen powerfully rebukes critics who have claimed at various points that Trump might mature into his role or that he might be too incompetent to do any lasting damage to the country, declaring, “Trump’s incompetence is militant. It is not a factor that might mitigate the threat he poses: it is the threat itself.”

So what can we do about it? Gessen has some astute and concrete ideas about that too. For starters, journalists should loosen the strictures of their deference to impartiality. In the interests of appearing unbiased, the media too often fails to call the president out on his lies, or gives him the benefit of the doubt when he is undeserving of it.

For people in leadership and public service roles, Gessen notes that Trump’s Achilles heel is his complete lack of a moral code. This could be seen in Trump’s bitter reaction to Rep. John Lewis’ boycott of his inauguration. In lashing out at lifelong civil rights activist Lewis on Twitter for being “All talk,” Gessen claims, the president demonstrated a total lack of moral understanding or authority. This moral code is what we have that he doesn’t, and never will, and as long as we continue to insist, loudly, that Trump’s actions are morally wrong and contrary to the spirit of America, we have a fighting chance at warding off autocracy.

Readers of Surviving Autocracy may be left somewhat dissatisfied because more questions are posed than answers given, but this is not necessarily an issue of authorial shortcomings. Throughout, Gessen struggles on the page to identify events, concepts and terms without the benefit of very much hindsight, and with the subject of the book being a notorious liar and gaslighter. The author does give us a legitimate framework—autocracy— with which to analyze the present situation, though, and perhaps most importantly, assures us that we don’t have to live in Donald Trump’s pseudo reality just because he lives there. For that reason, the book is as validating as it is informative .

Reviewed By Lisa Butts

Inland Téa Obreht Penguin Random House May 2020 (Paperback)

It’s 1893 and the sparsely populated settlement of Amargo, deep in the Arizona Territory, is experiencing a severe drought. With the town’s water supply fast depleting, headstrong frontierswoman Nora Lark finds herself withstanding a further bombardment of pressing concerns. Her husband Emmet, editor of The Sentinel newspaper, has gone missing during a water-run, and anxious that their father has been ambushed and left for dead, eldest sons Rob and Dolan have set off in his pursuit. None have left word of their whereabouts. Nora eagerly awaits the return of the Lark men while also trying to quell the fears of her guileless, spirit-communing ward Josie and youngest boy Toby, who are convinced there’s a dark beast prowling the land at night.

Nora’s narrative subtly intertwines with that of Lurie, an orphaned outlaw wanted for murder who falls in with the Camel Corps (see Beyond the Book). As this unruly band of migrant cameleers makes its way across the treacherous West, Lurie is haunted by the ghosts from his lawless boyhood and forms a touching kinship with the unlikeliest of companions.

In truth, attempting to encapsulate Inland’s many sprawling storytendrils within a neat synopsis is to do this bewitching novel a great disservice. We may only follow two central protagonists, but from the get-go Obreht gives voice to a legion of lives and spirits that put flesh on the bones of a majestic, untamed American West unburdened by stale cowboy-andIndian tropes. Sure, this is a sunbaked, hardpan land of sheriffs, natives and outlaws; but Obreht’s West equally belongs to Muslims and heathens, ghosts and waterwitches, carnies and camels, and more besides.

The denizens of this West (both living and deceased) are granted coherently complex personalities. Even bit-part players, such as steadfast Sheriff Harlan Bell and altruistic Doc Almenara, are spared any cookie-cutter two-dimensionality. Within pages, sometimes paragraphs, of being introduced, they bloom into fully-realized beings who struggle to walk the line between their principles and the harsh realities of life on the frontier. But to hint at more would perhaps spoil the novel’s magic.

Nora in particular is an irresistible Rubik’s Cube of a woman. She pours scorn on teenage Josie’s claims to spiritualism while she herself converses with her deceased infant daughter Evelyn, who over the years has continued

“Every time you think you have a handle on Nora, she lets slip another nugget of a secret that forces you to reconfigure her in a new light.”

to grow into a young woman in her mother’s mind. Every time you think you have a handle on Nora, she lets slip another nugget of a secret that forces you to reconfigure her in a new light. But for all her shortcomings, you can’t help but side with this lone woman as she fights for Amargo amid an ongoing newspaper debate for residents to abandon their drought-ridden settlement for the better resources of nearby Ash River County.

Episode after suspenseful episode fizzes with life thanks to shimmering prose and rippling turns of phrase. Obreht has an uncanny ability to conjure up singular imagery with the panache of an illusionist—”screams lit up like candles around us”—and even the most everyday of goings-on she can render ethereal—”She nudged the door with her foot, and a triangle of sun yawned across the springhouse floor.”

By the end, Inland’s miscellany of slow-burn mysteries—how Nora and Lurie’s lives connect, the fate of Emmett and sons, the unidentified dark beast, the future of Amargo— begin to unravel in wholly unexpected ways, delivering a tour de force climax that will haunt you for days.

Reviewed by Dean Muscat