You don’t have to read through too much of this particular review to get to the obvious conclusion – The Faking of the President is a terrific burning barn of a book. Focused on the potential realities in past American presidencies (and a future glimpse) and written by 19 talented mystery writers who really know their American history, these great fictional takes on what could have happened, might have happened, and didn’t happen are really deep-dive marvels and often breathtaking wonders to take in. Then the real mind-bending occurs when you are inspired by the stories in The Faking of the President to imagine what directions we might have instead taken, and often tragically did not, particularly in the continuing saga of the most genetically twisted presidency we’ve yet experienced.
Published by longtime stalwart indie publisher Three Rooms Press, in New York City, The Faking of the President was just released last month. In it you’ll find JFK assassination theories and the not-so-dearly departed Lee Harvey Oswald, 9/11 plausible alternate realities, time travelers, Elvis, John Wilkes Booth’s haunting, ninja Dan Quayle, wooden robot hearts, and the secret lives of a nice selection of the most well-known presidents and a few of the lesser known historical figures. The task of the writers herein appears to be to deconstruct and reverse engineer the times and spaces of American presidential history. Calling it a noir anthology is fitting because of the persistent darkness of the U.S. presidential job and the dark heart of American “exceptionalism.” Or as Bob Dylan called what we live through, the “dark land of the Sun”, that alternate version of reality that we force ourselves to believe, despite the evidence and/or new facts emerging. And now our American lies from on high have continued and have manifested as the orange crush, art of the deal presidency implosion.
In The Faking of the President, you’ll have a look at the supposed very close friendship between Elvis Presley and Dick Nixon and whatever Elvisgate was–how to maintain a relationship of sorts with Ron Reagan–what could possibly explain George Bush the Elder–the myth of Huey Long’s early Bernie manifestation in the 1930’s–how well did Al Gore steer the country during his first term just before September 11–who’s that young man who looks vaguely like Billy Clinton–and which first lady has the strongest jaw and can take a direct hit. They’re stories you never knew happened, maybe they did, maybe they didn’t. That’s immaterial. The breadcrumb trail goes right to the top and then back down into the swampy spirits of dead presidents. It’s hard to tell if it was the second lady behind the chief pulling the levers we can blame, the big elected goon himself, or if the machine was intentionally designed without an off switch to confuse, deflect, and chaotically spray history with fake news and conspiracies so unlikely that no one would believe them even if they were true.
Obviously, this is an apt and too-close-to-the-bone group of presidential tales for an election year and one definitely learns a lot about the real history of this American country’s inner workings and potential futures. This is not the first presidency that has gone awry and has subsisted largely on a steady diet of untruth and insanity (although it could very well be the deepest ditch), so the perspective granted upon reading this book edited by contributing writer Peter Carlaftes is survival angles for us to gain and utilize, despite all this deep shit. What are we going to do after all these decades and a couple of centuries? What did we do and how did yet another shill gain office? Could we have done more than mostly sit here like lambs to the slaughter? Um, is it funny? Or not? There’s something about the subtext of the book that suggests that we always have and always will fall for the same cheap old tricks from this rogues’ gallery of opportunists, nitwits, mutants, and Dick Tracy villains. There’s a future chapter in the book that suggests a potentially nightmarish sequence of events we could try to avoid and, well … fair warning.
What did this country achieve through replacing kings with presidents and switching us from smaller fiefdoms over in England only to create one giant all-encompassing fiefdom. Notice, it’s not really a question anymore. More of an elegy. Or an epitaph. What did you do to ward off the zombies. Same decade, different idiots. Ouroboros.
This fast, fun, and loose book takes what might have been a depressing task and turns it into some strategically demented surreal grand guignol political satire splatter. Presidents have always been lightning rods for the pointless bullshit, which suggests that maybe the intention and design of the presidency has always been for presidents to be, not leaders and visionaries, but distractingly magnetic figureheads while the loot is moved swiftly out the back door. In the end, it didn’t matter if the presidents were aliens, androids, clods, “fucking morons”, or scheming masterminds. We all got taken. And mostly by buffoonery, lousy salesmen, snake oil pitches, and glorified carnival barkers.
But maybe we’ll muddle through these dark ages to an actual future and the semblance of a functional civilization, IF people keep sounding the alarm in various ways (like this book does) and the slow incremental adaptations are aided eventually by a quantum leap. Or we’ll just be footnotes of a puzzling lost civilization, excavated by distant space travelers someday. “Who were these lemmings and why did they willingly run over the cliff?” Either way, facing such stark circumstances currently on Earth, it’s good to still have a book here and there that can make you laugh like The Faking of the President. It may not be only laughs as the main purpose, but the gallows humor is all we got left sometimes. And the next round of presidential election year torture can only be survived with a “YUGE” dose of rich and loamy gallows humor.
* “The Faking of the President” Authors:
Eric Beetner, Peter Carlaftes, Christopher Chambers, Sarah M. Chen, Angel Luis Colon, S. A. Cosby, Nikki Dolson, Mary Anna Evans, Kate Flora, Adam Lance Garcia, Danny Gardner, Alison Gaylin, Greg Herren, Gary Phillips, Travis Richardson, S. J. Rozan, Alex Segura, Abby Vandiver, and Erica Wright.
* “The Faking of the President” is 320 pages. Check this one out and all the other Three Rooms Press titles at www.ThreeRoomsPress.com. You can also email info@ThreeRoomsPress.com *
* Peter Carlaftes and Kat Georges are the co-directors of Three Rooms Press. *
Peter Carlaftes, writer and editor from Three Rooms Press.
