What Will Survive Of Us Is Laughs

Jonathan Coe on the uses of satire

Jonathan Coe, whose What a Carve Up! belongs on any list of the 20th century’s funniest books, asks if satire will save us in the age of Trump. The answer, of course, is no. Nothing will save us in the age of Trump, not satire, not self-interest, not moral suasion, not proof that salvation is necessary nor prayer for its deliverance. None of us will be saved. Still, the idea brings a smile, and maybe that’s the point.

Jonathan Coe: will satire save us in the age of Trump?

Coe worked this same territory several years back while considering the career of Boris Johnson, and it is worth a read, as are all the books mentioned in Coe’s Guardian piece above, including his own, but particularly Joseph Heller’s Good as Gold. Satire won’t save us and nothing else will, but as someone else said recently, it will be good to have a couple a books by your side as you wait for the radiation poisoning to do its work.

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