Nothing trolls America in the age of Trump quite like Salman Rushdie’s latest novel, Quichotte. Everything and nothing is funny, from the entertainment industry to the hospitality industry to the autobiographical weight that writers place on their novels like a sloppy ransom note, written in cut-out letters from a magazine. The reader laughs out loud often and much reading this book, feels shame for doing so, and then remembers that the book is the only other entity in the room and continues to read, continues to laugh. Yes, there are tiresome moments of so many asides one wonders where the narrative went, but that tiresome nature spawns from trying to read the novel efficiently; one cannot read this novel efficiently. The reader has to give up and bask in it, embracing the laughter, and the word play, and the constant digressions.

Obviously, this is a book based on another lengthy prose work of similarly comic (though also sad in its delusions) meanderings, which is part of the fun. Sancho is played by a hungry and belligerent invention of the protagonist in the form of the teenage son Quichotte never had, and Quichotte is born of a brother the writer (writer in Rushdie’s image? Maybe) never had. Quichotte’s Dulcinea bears a feminized version of Rushdie’s name, and she is revealed with a great deal of insight. Insight bears not only the American satirical weight, but reveals what Salma R. (who is the object of Quichotte’s quest to New York City from the far reaches of the Southwest) craves from her past (make romance great again, perhaps). Salma is a superstar, film to talk show variety, and not many things in American culture give her wonder. But when Quichotte sends her a fan letter that nearly reads as an ode, we see what makes her world tiresome and sets off her radar on Quichotte in one page:

The messages arriving via her Twitter feed were mostly pseudonymous, the work of pimply fifteen- or forty-five-year-old male virgins living with their parents…All of them were on or over the edge of illiteracy. America no longer taught its lovers how to spell. Nor did it teach them joined-up writing. Cursive script was becoming obsolete, like typewriters and carbon paper. These lovers who wrote in block capitals would not be able to read the love letters of earlier generations. Cursive might has well be Martian, or Greek…Very, very occasionally, a letter arrived which was not like the others…the first letter from the person signing himself as “Quichotte” was one such missive…beautiful penmanship…copperplate lettering.

Rushdie may be making fun of the lack of American literacy here, but he is also finding the source for adoration. Salma doubts Quichotte’s intent with the letter when he spends so much time on its script and scratches it on hotel room stationery, but Rushdie has his doubts, too. There are so few sweeping stories in America these days, and so little left to believe, but Quichotte the protagonist helps us believe in this tale, if only by romantic proxy. There are awful characters in this book, funny and cruel, but Quichotte himself is not one of them, even if he is delusional.