The Donnie Diaries: Regurgitated

5 Star Review

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Editorial Book Review:

By Sebastian Mercado

James F. Mueller has timed The Donnie Diaries: Regurgitated to land five days before the midterm elections, and the gesture is entirely in keeping with a series that has always understood comedy and democracy as closely related endeavors: both require a willing audience and both depend, ultimately, on someone actually showing up.

Regurgitated is the fourth and final installment in Mueller’s satirical examination of Donald Trump and the culture that made him possible. The series has moved through Halloween, April Fools’ Day, and the Fourth of July, each volume calibrated to its occasion. This final entry turns toward the ballot box, closing with a line from its fictional narrator, Dr. Phineas T. Redwell, that is as pointed as anything in the preceding pages: “Now the voters get the last word.”

Mueller is not simply a political satirist. He is an artist in the older, capacious sense of the word: a painter and portraitist whose commissions have included a portrait of Richard Nixon, a writer whose other work includes a literary fiction trilogy, and someone who spent a decade living alongside the Yavapai-Apache Nation in Arizona. All of that shows in Regurgitated and in the series as a whole. His satire draws freely on theology, philosophy, history, and art history, and the chapter titles alone, “Power Corrupts,” “The Man Who Would Be King,” “Toxic Masculinity,” “Wounded Knee,” suggest a writer interested in the long view rather than the daily news cycle.

What makes The Donnie Diaries series distinctive in the crowded field of Trump-era political humor is Mueller’s genuine interest in the cultural and moral forces that produced the moment. He is irreverent, but he is also serious, which is the combination that separates lasting satire from the kind that ages badly.

Regurgitated completes the project with exactly the wry, searching energy it deserves. The voters, as Redwell says, get the last word. The rest, Mueller leaves to history.