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- Micro-Review #147: The Apprentice
Directed by Ali Abbasi Here’s the movie Donald Trump’s lawyers and campaign team tried to keep out of cinemas. Despite the news stories of gun-shy distributors and threats against the director, this movie isn’t salacious, doesn’t feel like a misrepresentation, and isn’t out to bury the former and (most likely) future president. It’s a straight-forward character study that draws a relatively restrained portrait of a very unrestrained man.
The story focuses on the young Trump’s ascension to the top of the real-estate world in the early 1980s. He learns the ropes from the infamous New York shark Roy Cohn and develops an ethos for business and life that’s familiar to anyone who’s dealt with high-functioning sociopaths. Morality isn’t a weakness; it’s beside the point. Ends justify means. Winning is, as they say, the only thing. All else is failure, worthy of contempt. End story. Roll credits.
This film could easily have piled on the young Trump—could have editorialized—but it doesn’t. Punches do get pulled. Infamous deeds and schemes are either mentioned in passing or ignored altogether. Most of Trump’s onscreen victims are, to a degree, culpable—many of them playing Trump’s game, just not as well. If viewed through the right kind of glasses (such as those worn by your average Trump rally-goer), the young Donald might even come across as laudable—just a big bad dog who bites harder than the other big bad dogs.
There’s not a lot in the movie that isn’t in the public record. There are no real surprises, but the acting is great and the lack of storytelling bombast is admirable. There’s no need for exclamation points when the facts themselves speak volumes.
- Micro-Review #146: The Facts
by Philip Roth Near the end of this autobiography, the author’s fictional alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman, says to Roth, “You make a fictional world that is far more exciting than the world it comes out of.” That’s not inaccurate. Roth was a better writer of fiction than of autobiography.
Or, rather, a more believable writer of fiction. This book, though short and readable, feels constrained, a 200-page exercise in too-careful self-analysis.
The writing, as usual with Roth, is brilliant. The half-page sentences, the forays into emotional minutiae, and the love-hate wrestling with Jewish identity are intellectually nutritious, but the sum total of the man’s evidence of himself—and of the women in his early years as a writer—is underwhelming. There’s a sense of a supremely talented wordsmith prosecuting his case without allowing a defense rebuttal. The questions sound truthful and emotionally intelligent, but some of them feel like one-way traffic. The book comes across as part of a larger, ignored whole.
- Micro-Review #145: Sparring Partners
by John Grisham Here’s a trio of novellas from the king of the legal thriller. The stories in this collection should appeal to Grisham’s fans. There’s a convicted lawyer-slash-thief trying to reconcile with his daughter, a death-row convict nearing execution, and small-town lawyers doing their damnedest to break the law without anyone noticing. On the downside for fans of commercial fiction, the stories are unconcerned with plot twists and surprising endings. On the upside, the thing that makes Grisham so readable—his love of the law and the flawed people who practice it—shines through and makes for an enjoyable reading experience.
- Micro-Review #144: The Smithsonian Institution
by Gore Vidal It’s 1939. Europe is heading toward war, and America is rushing to develop a nuclear bomb. Enter young T., a math genius who sees limitations in Einstein’s E=mc2 equation. T. has the mental capacity to develop all sorts of nukes—and to throw in time travel and trips through a colorful multiverse in the bargain. This earns him a summoning to the venerable Smithsonian, where the exhibits come to life after hours and T. crosses paths with everyone from Grover Cleveland to Native Americans who dub him “Veal” and want to eat him.
This is an amusing and engaging story, but it’s purely intellectual. The plot exists as a framework for Vidal to muse on all things American. If you’re not versed in, say, lesser-known U.S. presidents and K Street politics, the humor might fall flat. This is Night at the Museum for history nerds—fun and intelligent, but at times dry and a little arcane.
- Micro-Review #143: Blood Meridian
by Cormac McCarthy Wow. This 1985 novel about American expansion in the Old West is one of the most severe, violent and intense works of literature available. The story—about cowboys hunting the Apache without restraint or oversight—contains more unvarnished depravity than many (most?) of today’s readers will be able to stand. The writing style is spare and declarative, but also steeped in abstruse vocabulary. The story subverts conventions of both style and subject matter (in this tale, the cowboys aren’t the good guys; they’re just Americans doing horrifically American things). If you make it through this orgy of murder and moral perversion, you might want to scrub yourself clean with steel wool afterwards. You’ll also be thankful. This is a disturbing, difficult and brilliant book.
