The Presidents of American Fiction brings together American literature, history, and political science to explore the most influential fictionalized accounts of the presidency from the early 19th century to the time of Trump. Of late, popular understandings of the presidency are being radically re-written-consider, for example, the distinctive myths that accompanied the ascent of the Obama and Trump administrations-and many readers of all stripes are radically reimagining the office and its holder. Placing these changes within a broader cultural context, Michael J. Blouin investigates narratives involving fictional presidents, from the supposedly factual to the outright fantastical, within their distinct literary and historical moments. The author considers representative texts including works penned by James Fenimore Cooper from the Jacksonian moment, Gore Vidal in the age of Nixon and Vietnam, and Philip Roth in the neoliberal period. Through detailed readings that question how American presidents function as characters within the popular imagination, this book examines the presidency as a complex, ever-evolving trope, and in so doing enhances our appreciation of American literature's inextricable link with American politics.

AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Moving Portraits of the President 1. James Fenimore Cooper's Exceptional Presidents2. George Lippard and the Gothic President3. Williams Wells Brown and the Disembodied President4. The President in Books for Boys5. The President in Books for Girls6. Hamlin Garland, Ulysses S. Grant, and the Tortured Heart of American Realism7. Gore Vidal and the Performative Presidency8. The Imperial Presidents of American LiteratureEpilogue: George Saunders and Presidential Melancholia ReferencesIndex