Well… now Faust in Love is published on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble (both priced at $9.99). It satirizes recent politics, but uses the different variants of the Faust legend to do so. I remember reading the original German legend; Marlowe’s play; Goethe’s play; and Thomas Mann’s novel. I also used–as back up–Homer’s epics, Lord Byron’s poetry and reputation; and Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. Built into the plot I used the form of a romantic comedy: unlike Goethe’s play, the relationship between my Aloysius Faust and Margaret Kavanagh was as much a love story as much as a story of “seduction.”
Of course, the plot of the book is also threefold: Donald Trump sold his soul to the devil to become president; America sold its soul to the devil by electing; and Aloysius Faust is seducing the virgin Margaret for the devil in exchange for the gift of eternal life. That last is where the “romantic” element comes in. I won’t leave any further spoilers about their love/sex story.
Well, there is one other: Aloysius Faust is promised Helen of Troy “the face that launch’d a thousand ships” (ala Marlowe) if he can seduce Margaret for the devil. Moreover, at one point the devil brings Lord Byron with the body of a Tom Cruise-look alike should Aloysius Faust fail to conquer the, er, heart of Margaret. (Tom Cruise is Margaret’s favorite actor.) Anyway: no more spoilers.
I set the story in Kansas, but I wonder in retrospect if I didn’t make the place possess a little more of the wild and wooly than is really even possible in the Republican “red state” I am from. However, for those who know Kansas: Fred Phelps (recently and thankfully deceased) appears as George Turnip with his family of picketers, and so also that awful restaurant Hooters (an embarrassment to humanity, let alone the state) is also in the book. A party school which is supposed to be a religious institution is at the center of the plot, too.
So I hope that this Blog has whetted people’s appetites for the actual characters and plot of the book… and not told too much.