A Writer Introduces Himself: The First Novel of the Trump Era

Well, that I know of. I'll start my first Steemit post by saying that I'm not big on long introductions. Long essays? That's another matter, and another story. I'm a writer, and I've written a novel. I've decided to share at least some of it here. Just to test the waters, given the obvious brainpower on this site. If the response is good, maybe I'll post all of it (who knows). Looking for a New York agent, but so far no one has responded. Kind of surprising, given that I am marketing it as The First Serious Novel of the Donald Trump Era. (Yeah, with the caps.) I'd think that would attract attention, but who knows?

Anyway, a few things about me. According to my late parents I've been writing since I was this high (picture me with my hand maybe two feet off the ground). My interests: science, political economy, psychology, philosophy and religion, and all their interactions. I'm going to stay mum about where I am on the ideological spectrum and whatnot, because I just want you to read this with an open mind and not be distracted by the author's presence. I'll stay in the background, like a shadow, off stage if you will, and just let my characters speak for themselves. Sorry if this seems mysterious, but it really is better this way.

The novel is called REALITY 101. I started writing it on the night of November 7, 2016, and finished it almost a year later to the day. There's a little intentional irony surrounding that choice of a title. The novel's main setting, at least for the first few chapters, is a Midwestern university campus in a college town that was also a small manufacturing center hit hard by globalization. In walks a guy who defends it. Globalization, that is. Not manufacturing. Completely. Unabashedly. Wholeheartedly. The time is mid-September, earlier this year, the start of fall term in this place....

Okay, enough from me. It's time for my narrator to speak. If you like this, please favor me with upvotes! (If anything looks funky, please forgive me. Still trying to figure out how this thing works.)

REALITY 101 - a novel of the Trump era.

The usual disclaimers: this novel is a work of fiction etc., etc., etc. You know the drill.

Dedication: to my wife Gisela whose patience with me has known no bounds.

Potent quotes:

"Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous; it is civilized; it is Christianized; it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For every thing that is given, something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance”

“O perfect masters.
They thrive on disasters.
They all look so charming,
‘Til they find their way up there.”
—Brian Eno, “Dead Finks Don’t Talk"

"The pygmies … or the Mindoro of the Philippines, do not want equal rights — they just want to be left alone."
--Paul Feyerabend, Farewell to Reason

CHAPTER ONE: A DRAMATIC ENTRANCE

“That’s him!”

We turned at the sound of the swinging doors at the back of the auditorium. The speaker had entered. Most of the 40 or so onlookers looked up from their phones or Tablets and watched. The air seemed chillier. 

    He didn’t look anything like I’d had him pictured. Loose, silvery, and somewhat scraggly hair, just short of shoulder length, flowed from under the leader’s jet-black hat. The man looked to be in his mid to late sixties. He wore thick-framed sunglasses, a gray plaid suitcoat over a black turtleneck and neatly-pressed matching slacks. The sunglasses made me think of that ditty from my childhood, Future’s So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades. My father had owned a copy of that record— 

Dad …  

I pushed thoughts of my father — James Tyler Cole Jr. had been his full name — what had happened to him and what he’d done, to the darkest corner of my mind where I wouldn’t see them, at least for now. 

On either side of the man in the center, a third behind him, were three men who had private security written all over them. His left hand gripped a clipboard bearing file folders and a thick, hardbound book, its cover lime green. His companions all carried long and narrow cases. 

“Are those guns?” whispered my girlfriend Stefani from behind me, her words like bullets. They did that when she was nervous or anxious or upset. 

“I don’t know,” I said. 

We watched from our second-row seats as the four marched around video equipment, digital camera on tripod ready to record, and to the stage. Corinth Economics Club president Cal Currie awaited at the large oaken lectern, its microphone poised and ready. He had just switched on the overhead projector, inside the lectern. What appeared on the silver screen:

WELCOME
CORINTH STATE UNIVERSITY ECONOMICS CLUB
(Making the Science Less Dismal)
Fall Semester
Thursday, September 21, 2017
Tonight’s Guest Speaker:
“W.T. Stone”
Author, Retired from Wall Street

On the front of the lectern itself, engraved in gold lettering: KING AUDITORIUM, BYRON KING SCHOOL OF BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS, CORINTH STATE UNIVERSITY, CORINTH, OKLA.

I reflected momentarily on the prominence of the King name around here. The King family had built the county — last name Anglicized from König. Jacob King Sr.: founder of King Oil. His scion, under his dad’s lordly supervision, builder of King Enterprises. The second son of the first Jacob King endowed this university and served as its first president. And then there was Jake III, but that was, well, another story. Didn’t any medium-sized town’s most elite family have at least one black sheep? How did I know all this? Born and raised here, for one thing. More specifically, my grandmother had been the one to write the official history of the county and its founding family. So we Coles weren’t complete nobodies. I’d grown up around King family and Yacapone County lore. Who were the Yacapone? The indigenous people who’d lived here before us, who else? That, too, was another story. The Kings, having taken their land, tossed them a bone by naming the county for them. That was something. 

     Stefani’s features — brown eyes, naturally bronzish skin, with straight and very dark but not quite black hair which fell to the small of her back — marked her as Yacapone. I’d chosen to date outside my tribe. What of it? She and her family had accepted me because I was a Cole — the grandson of a white woman who was kind to them and listened to them and recorded their narratives. 

     Cal was on stage greeting our visitors with a quick nod and handshake. The leader gave a quick, terse smile as he sat his materials on the lectern. The others took seats on a row of chairs back there, their cases beside them. 

     A guy in a white shirt appeared with a pitcher of icewater and a glass. “Thanks,” Cal said, taking the pitcher and glass and sitting them opposite the mike on the lectern. The fellow took his place behind the video equipment: an expensive-looking cam mounted on a tripod. After a moment, the fellow said, “We’re rolling.” 

The doors kept opening and closing as people entered and found seats: mainly university students but a few others that looked like business types from town, including a guy I recognized from the Wells Fargo branch where I kept my account. Curious, him being here….  At the other end of that spectrum was the girl with streaks of bright purple in her otherwise dishwater blonde hair — not a common sight on this campus or in this town, but one did see it.  

Conversations came and went as the minutes ticked by. The man on stage had his back turned and was giving hushed instructions to his companions. Many in the audience had returned to their phones and Tablets.

    After a while Cal went to the lectern and began adjusting the mike. The murmurs diminished. Roughly 60 of us were now scattered about, which made the auditorium about half full. Those of us who’d planned this event had hoped for better, but such were the t—   

A loud feedback whine blasted out. It lasted maybe two seconds, but that was long enough. At least it got attention. “Sorry about that,” said Cal sheepishly. He tapped it and it made a loud thump we felt as well as heard; it was now working properly. He looked up: “Hello, and thank you for coming. Welcome to the first fall semester meeting of the Corinth Economics Club. If you haven’t picked up a schedule of this semester’s activities they’re on the table outside. Also, you know to turn off your devices. The speaker wants just one official recording.” I glanced over at Stefani who’d been Whatsapping earlier. She’d stopped. My iPhone was in my pack under my seat.

“We have a special event tonight,” Cal went on. He turned briefly, glanced at the gray-haired man who had taken the farthest seat on our right. His hat was still on. No one had removed their shades. “Like the overhead says, this evening’s speaker calls himself W.T. Stone. I say calls himself, because W.T. Stone is a pseudonym. He’s not to my knowledge disclosed his real name.” Cal paused for effect, then added, “So, he’s no relation to I.F. Stone the radical journalist from decades past, or Roger Stone, the rabble-rousing Trump activist.” He looked over his shoulder. “Am I right?” 

“Absolutely no relation to either one,” the man said in a gravelly voice, his head turning from side to side so vigorously his hat nearly came off. He steadied it with one hand.   

“What he’s told us,” Cal continued. “is that he retired from a Wall Street firm two and a half years ago, hasn’t said which one or what his role was there. He’s the author of this book.” Cal raised the green volume, its title now conspicuous at the top. “It’s called The Oligarchy: From Whence They Came, Why They Are Here, and Where They Are Taking Us. It was published this past May, and it’s made a bit of a stir, as some of you know already. He’s touring the country to promote it. 

   “He calls his lecture tour Reality 101.” 

   With that, Cal clicked to the next slide, which showed the book’s front cover in more detail, its austere cover in three slightly different shades of green separated by black lines, title at the top, the slide captioned: 

W.T. Stone’s
REALITY 101
WORLD TOUR 2017

Like a rock star, I thought.

“Beyond that,” Cal was saying, “and beyond the fact that he says things I don’t agree with—” he chuckled uncomfortably “—I don’t know much else about him. So I can’t tell you what his credentials are — I’m assuming he has them — or whether he managed a hedge fund or became a Goldman Sachs billionaire or maybe both at different times.”

“I’m just over broke,” the speaker-to-be deadpanned, garnering chuckles from around the auditorium and even from a couple of the security guys. Maybe he wouldn’t be such a cold fish after all.  

“Sure you are,” said Cal without missing a beat. He continued, “We touched base with his publisher, Real World Press, one thing led to another, and here we are.” He turned again and nodded Stone’s way. Stone returned the nod. The security men had returned to the motionlessness of statues. 

“Copies of his book,” Cal continued, “will be on sale during the reception after the lecture out in the foyer for $20 a pop. Sounds like heavy duty stuff coming. I hope there’s some economics in it.” More chuckles from around the auditorium. “Without further ado, I present retired Wall Street man and pseudonymous author: W.T. Stone.” 

Light applause filled the room as the man stood and made his way to the lectern. Cal handed him the overhead projector control device, and retreated. Cal came down from the stage and took a seat to my left. His eyes had briefly met mine; in them I read something like, I hope this guy’s not a total loon. 

I had no idea. 

Stone finally removed his hat and smoothed down his silvery hair, then took off his glasses revealing eyes of oceanic blue. He gazed across the room without smiling, eyes moving here and there as he sized us up. He filled the glass with icewater and took a long, slow sip. It seemed appropriate. His demeanor now seemed commanding — less like a former Wall Streeter and more like someone ex-military, scruffy appearance notwithstanding. I glanced at Stefani and she looked back uneasily. I was uneasy as well, but couldn’t put my finger on why. Our speaker put down the glass, cleared his throat, and began to speak in that deep, husky voice — as if to take us to a depth he was sure we’d find new and bewildering.   

END (of Chapter One). I notice that the paragraphing didn't work. Maybe someone can pen a comment telling me how to do it. In any event, see you again soon. Right here. Yours in peace. SY.