A Comparative Book Review

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Tuesday’s election was just practice for the real race coming up next week. Former First Lady Michelle Obama and former Vice President Mike Pence are both releasing memoirs on Nov. 15:

“The Light We Carry” vs. “So Help Me God.”

It hardly feels like a fair contest: Michelle Obama is one of the most popular and dynamic public figures in the world. Mike Pence once lulled a fly to sleep on his own head.

Even the titles — Obama’s misty spirituality and Pence’s patriotic theology — suggest the differences between these two authors. But both their books are fundamentally a response to the same tragedy: the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.

Obama has said that watching the insurrection on TV inspired her to find ways to cope with “uncertain times.” Pence’s title alludes to his pledge to defend the Constitution when President Trump incited a gang chanting, “Hang Mike Pence.”

This week, Obama and Pence have cranked up publicity directed at their respective audiences – groups that can be represented by a Venn diagram containing one circle the size of the sun and another one, outside of it, the size of a golf ball. In 2018, Obama’s memoir “Becoming” sold an astonishing 2 million copies in its first 15 days, and she launched a worldwide book tour involving conversations with various celebrities. Today, Obama is the subject of a hard-hitting interview with People magazine where she explains the challenges of being incredibly beautiful, rich and famous. In this “exclusive” story, she reveals that she knits, watches HGTV and nurtures a circle of women friends “even when it’s uncomfortable.”

As Trump’s hood ornament for four years, Pence is unlikely to generate much enthusiasm from Democrats; and as the man who resisted the Big Lie, he can’t count on heavy promotion from Fox News. But in the Wall Street Journal, Pence is running a 2,500-word excerpt of “So Help Me God” — and not just any excerpt: For the first time, the former vice president reveals his thoughts and actions before, during and after the Jan. 6 insurrection.

As a sales strategy, giving potential readers a preview of his narrative skills is a risky move. Despite protecting the Union from its greatest threat in 160 years, Pence describes that calamity with all the verve and insight of a man telling us how he loads the dishwasher. It’s a peculiar act of historical revisionism — as though the paragraphs have been sprayed with a mixture of fire retardant and Ambien. So powerful is the life-sapping force of his prose that, so help me God, even his descriptions of Trump sound dull.

But regardless of what you think of either of these authors, the publishing world needs some big hits. An industry analyst at NPD BookScan warns that this holiday bookselling season is shaping up to be significantly slower than last year’s. So, please, buy books like you vote — early and often!