Melanie
by Melania Trump
Skyhorse, 256 pp., $40

THAT THE TRUMPS, UNTIL THE APPEAL, were a main pillar of the New York Times The Styles section is a fact — embarrassing to various parties for various reasons — that Melania Trump’s new memoir won’t let us forget. The book’s photographs, which make up a substantial section of an already slim tome, include a glamazon pregnancy photo shoot by Annie Leibovitz and a Vogue wedding cover story. In Melanie’s story, Anna Wintour herself flew to Paris with her to help her choose her wedding dress.

These photographs come from a cultural landscape that has since been significantly rearranged but is impossible to fully escape from memory—one in which the main male love interest is Sex and the City has been characterized (positively) as “the next Trump.” The brand used to be inescapable as aspiration, not just as a range of negative polarization.

You might assume that Melanie is its author’s attempt to survive the current fall from grace by inflating her own brand of soft landing bag. The book announces itself with drama (and a tribute to Tom Ford $140 board book): a monochrome black dust jacket from which the white letters MELANIA shine. Faint strains of Kraftwerk play whenever I look at it.

Visually, the book suggests a bid for icon status. Icons like Cher or Big Dom don’t need surnames (or, for that matter, the conflicted spouses who bestowed them). Icons are bright images, disturbing and powerful in their ambiguity, like a biblically accurate angel. They may provoke hatred, but they transcend judgment. If you’re an icon, for every screener making TikToks about the complicity of white women, there’s going to be another calling you an unprintable, adorable variation of “mom.”

The bizarre, arresting images were already one of the most memorable features of Melania’s tenure at the White House: breezy villain outfits; her cryptic “I really don’t care, do I?” jacket; her ominous, sculptural, Christmas-in-the-disco decorations. So if you liked Melania’s image but loathed First Lady Melania, Melanie may seem promising. Perhaps this is her opportunity to show us how the disparate sharp points we glimpsed during her husband’s administration belong to the same continuous edge of her personality. Is it finally time to release Melania, spill the tea, don the blue Tiffany gloves and embrace the ominous red cone Christmas?

Unfortunately, THIS IS FALSE hope, for two reasons.

The first is that once you get past the cover, you’ll find that the book contains disappointingly little drama. MelanieMelanie’s treatment is consistently closer to a first draft of a cover letter than a juicy revealer. Consider this passage, which I have selected at random:

In the first half of 2017, I split my time between New York, Washington, and Mar-a-Lago, managing my duties as First Lady and supporting my husband’s administration. From waking Barron up in the morning to attending rallies and meeting foreign leaders, every moment was full of purpose and excitement. Juggling two full-time roles in different locations was tiring but rewarding and I embraced the challenge wholeheartedly.

The whole book reads like this.

The second reason is that the memoir is clearly a campaign book.

During Trump’s presidency, the role of sweetening, translating and advising him has visibly fallen somewhat unsettlingly to Ivanka. Melania has taken over, it seems. Her account of the border controversy, in which her deep concern for detained children helps prompt an executive order reversing family separation, seems primarily an attempt to erase her own legacy. Her comments on abortion, ELAPSED before the book was published, to create a sense of ideological distance from her husband, while also imbuing him with pro-choice sympathies that are plausibly deniable (while at the same time, to his pro-life supporters, he assumes repeatedly credited for the overthrow Roe v. Wade). Again, the ambiguity is strong: the motivated reader can read it in any way they prefer.

But Trump comes in for his fair share of outright praise and defense, a decision hard to analyze in a detached setting. And why, except for the pressures and exigencies of a campaign, would you make the dizzying attempt to paint Trump as a thoughtful family man, the head of a recognizably nuclear family and the hero of their shared love story?

One of Melania’s first grudges against the media stems from her courtship: “They couldn’t see past our 24-year age difference. The gossip columns labeled me a ‘gold digger’, implying that my affection for him was motivated solely by his wealth.”

This is probably fair enough. Perhaps no man is so unqualified as to be married only for his money. But the recrimination itself is more important here than the original incitement. Melanie it may be a campaign book, but attentive readers will see the places where the personality of its author could not be suppressed.

IF YOU HAVE A DISPASSIONATE INTEREST in public figures, Melania has always been an interesting specimen — a model who appears stiff and repulsive on camera; a signatory to the cool but relatively moderate trophy-wife deal who seems to have gotten a lot more than he thought he bargained for. As a personality, Melania appears directly in Melanie only here and there, between noisy lists of heads of state greeted with decorum, duties performed and actions correctly executed.

We get to see her for a moment in the introduction of her family, which must be all Melania. On page 10, we hear about the famous Raka onion.

When (Melanie’s grandparents) returned to their village of Raka, nestled in the serene countryside just south of Sevnica, Anton wasted no time in following his passion for farming. Here a culinary masterpiece will continue to grow – renowned raska the sageor the Raka onion, a sweet red variety that quickly became a favorite among the Slovenian people.

No ghostwriter or campaign adviser would introduce that. Why would they care raska the sage? But Melania, it seems, is the kind of person who can be proud of an onion. I want to hear more! I want to sit down with her over an ice-cold bottle of plum rakija and have her tell me all about the family onion! Unfortunately, she immediately lets us go.

From fragments like this an indirect self-portrait slowly emerges. What we end up seeing is a mind like a set of gears, a mind that likes sports cars and industrial design and names like Citroën and Chanel; who derive satisfaction from duties set in trenches and well-marked rewards that you can see and touch.

It’s also a great mind to hold a grudge.

The first notable grudge comes just as the young Melania won an Italian modeling competition. (“And…I won”). Distracted by shouting photographers, she gives one of the pageant organizers the envelope containing her prize money to keep for herself. When he gets his things back, the money is gone.

As a renowned studio, Cinecittà should have maintained a higher standard of professionalism. The loss of money itself was insignificant compared to the breach of trust that occurred. . . . A week later, an organizer contacted me, extending an invitation to return to Rome and collaborate with their studio.

“We’d like you to come back,” he said. However, my answer was a resounding no. I had no desire to associate with persons of such a deceitful nature. The lesson I learned from that experience is far more valuable than any material reward. Such dishonesty does not occur in my life and never will.

There’s something almost admirable (or at least, if you’re in a mood to hold a grudge, very relatable) about the bizarre tenacity that would drive Melania to go out of her way to name names in print after a thirty-year-old injury years. , throwing a lead note into what is meant to be a triumphant montage of Melania’s steady rise. But clearly he can’t help himself. That first grudge is another Raka Onion – a moment where she emerges as a distinct personality and, in a way, a likable one. Like Taylor Swift, Melania can’t forget how she felt when she was on a precarious climb and can’t forgive the people who stepped on her toes.

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THE ONION TO COMMUNICATION RATIO, however, quickly becomes unbalanced. The same basic anecdote reoccurs. Melania climbs the hill of excellence with unparalleled professionalism, integrity, talent and prudence. Melanie’s confident nature betrays her in an unforeseen failure on the part of treacherous or incompetent others. Melania learns her lesson, rises above and lives to fight another day. Melanie’s caviar-based skincare line (yes) (don’t bother trying to find a sample on the internet, I’ve already looked) is going up in smoke because of it. disowning business partners. In Chapter 8, “Why Wasn’t the Speech Checked?”, her speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention becomes the focus of a plagiarism scandal thanks to the incompetence of speechwriter Meredith McIver (again, Melania is willing to name names). The media constantly promulgates lies about her.

For the reader, the effect is a growing discomfort, akin to listening to an acquaintance tell you at length how much she “hates drama.” That doesn’t mean all her grudges are undeserved. An incident in the 2016 election, in which nude photos from an out-of-print magazine were circulated in an apparent attempt to humiliate her and portray her as a vile creature of the underworld unfit for the White House, was an extremely ugly. .

Her two-step argument about photos provides another glimpse of personality. First of all, she defends herself on the grounds of art.

“The female form was once revered and honored in Western culture. Historically, artists have produced magnificent paintings and sculptures that exalt the beauty of the female figure. Nudity was a medium through which humanity was uplifted and celebrated.” Fair enough. But, as if unsure of this line of defense, she falls back into the territory where she feels most comfortable: not an intrinsic value, but a socially negotiated value.

“To me, those images were artistic and tasteful, suitable for a publication like MAXwhich featured many famous supermodels.” This is Melania’s home turf: prestige, name recognition, branding. No wonder she was drawn to modelling, which is a kind of pure careerism – a job whose only product is an image of glamour, whose sole objective is to reach and stay at the top of the people who produce images of glamour. No wonder she was drawn to Trump.

Petty vendettas, dirty profits, servile aspiration, brands without products: This is Melania Trump’s world, which is the world of the rich and fashionable. The Trumps have so far clearly demonstrated how well the skills inculcated in that world will serve you in the theoretically distinct world of politics. I suspect that for this visible blurring of the two worlds, in which so many ugly realities have escaped isolation, and not for their crimes and misdeeds, they will not be forgiven by either.