About this episode

Ben Fountain discusses his novel 'Rasputin Swims the Potomac' and its parallels to contemporary American politics.

“The hyperreal is the real. The surreal is the real in The United States. We’ve reached that point. The absurd is the real. And so that’s what I was trying to capture in the book.” — Ben Fountain Our absurdist-in-chief wants a $250 banknote with his face on it. But the satirist Ben Fountain gives the President something even more valuable. In his new novel Rasputin Swims the Potomac , Fountain delivers something quite priceless: a book that Trump deserves. In Fountain’s novel, a sitting president, running for a third term, enlists a world champion professional wrestler, Grigory Yefimovich Rasputin, to help secure his re-election. Born Patrick Walsh Strickland in Buffalo, New York, Rasputin served in special forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, spent six years in a monastery, became fluent in Russian, and claims to be a real Russian monk. Evangelicals start defecting to Rasputin. A pandemic of “weeping sickness” sweeps the nation. It’s almost as unbelievable as a sitting President wanting a $250 banknote glowing with his orange face. Fountain’s parallels with late Tsarist Russia are hard to miss — the chasmic wealth inequality, the impossible get-rich schemes, the quack religions, the…

People in this episode

Host: Andrew Keen

Guest: Ben Fountain

Topics covered

• satire
• politics
• absurdism
• literature
• presidency
• wealth inequality

Keywords

• Trump
• Ben Fountain
• satire
• Rasputin
• politics
• absurdism
• wealth inequality

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Rasputin Swims the Potomac

Places: United States, Buffalo, New York

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