OK, I couldn't resist.
I've made mention of a recent New York Times review of Mark Singer's Character Studies. In it, reviewer Jeff MacGregor writes:
The only instance in which Singer throws and lands a sucker punch is in a 1997 profile of the pre-''Apprentice'' Donald Trump, in which his tone becomes a little arch. That Trump is already a caricature of a caricature makes him too easy a target, with neither the foot speed nor the wit to defend himself. A harder thing to do, perhaps impossible, would have been to find the one lonely component of Trump's character that wasn't manufactured as a brand strategy. It is a small quibble, certainly, as most New Yorkers, including me, would readily climb the arch in Washington Square to drop a flowerpot filled with nasturtiums on Trump's astonishing head if given half a chance to do so.
Now as we know, D. Trump has roughly a gazillion dollars (that's his pocket change, I mean) and a TV show and a procession of blonde lovelies to his marital credit, and so you would think that Singer's book, and even more so a review of Singer's book, would be as a mere trifling gnat to the man, but no. The Donald Strikes Back, in a letter to the NYT Book Review this past Sunday, in which he assures us, "I've read John Updike, I've read Orhan Pamuk, I've read Philip Roth" (OK, maybe he'll assign this season's apprentices a book report), and suggests that Mark Singer "try to develop himself into a worldclass writer, as futile as that may be, instead of having to write about remarkable people who are clearly outside of his realm," adds, "I've been a best-selling author for close to 20 years," before winding up with his parting shot: "I have no doubt that Singer's and MacGregor's books will do badly — they just don't have what it takes. Maybe someday they'll astonish us by writing something of consequence."
Really, you need to read the letter.
And the blog world weighs in: Edward Champion's Return of the Reluctant takes on this topic, first here, then here. Gawker has a say on it as well.
Just as a side note to the complex wheels-within-wheels of it all, Trump does have a warm word for Joe Queenan:
The highly respected Joe Queenan mentioned in his article Ghosts in the Machine (March 20) that I had produced "a steady stream of classics" with "stylistic seamlessness" and that the "voice" of my books remained noticeably constant to the point of being an "astonishing achievement." This was high praise coming from an accomplished writer. From losers like Jeff MacGregor, whom I have never met, or Mark Singer, I do not do nearly as well. But I'll gladly take Joe Queenan over Singer and MacGregor any day of the week — it's a simple thing called talent!
Queenan, you may recall, is the one who savaged A.J. Jacobs's The Know it All in the NYTBR, which prompted the full-length essay response "I am not a Jackass" from Jacobs on the back page of the NYTBR.
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