Great Prizes

So America’s democracy, meant to pool its communities, has selected for leader a man you would not choose for dad, husband, brother, or friend, and we will think of him as much as we might hope to think of our loved ones; if we die at eighty Trump will have been president for a tenth of our days. I spent this week between New York, Yale, and DC, watching the election and reading the novels shortlisted for fiction’s high prize.