Billy Stormfield’s Visit to Hell: A Novel by Stan Rice, part six. Recurring Prototypes

 

Stan Rice as just published another novel, Billy Stormfield’s Visit to Hell. It is based on Mark Twain’s classic book about Captain Stormfield’s visit to Heaven. Here is the author’s description from Amazon:

Billy Stormfield, descendant of Captain Stormfield in Mark Twain’s book, wakes up in Hell. He meets Mark Twain, who takes him on a tour. All the interesting people are in Hell: Moses, Karl Marx (who is funny only when he quotes Groucho), Joe the Cherokee, the Apostle Andrew, and Pope Francis, because they were all what the fundamentalists called communists; Noah, because he was an environmentalist; General Douglas McArthur, because he forgave the Japanese rather than slaughtering them as the Old Testament commanded; and of course Charles Darwin. Thomas Jefferson, united at last with Sally Hemings, tells them how biologically stupid racism and oppression are. The only people in Heaven are the white supremacists and the jihadists, who spend all their time killing each other over and over forever. The young white supremacist Stonewall escapes to Hell, where he meets and loves the Black history teacher Philomena.

Between Heaven and Hell, Jesus eternally suffers the way Job did, dogs licking his wounds. With His friend the Prophet Mo, He watched His mother Mary helping people sneak into Heaven. Together with the crew from Hell, and led by the school girl Malala, Jesus and Mo storm the assembly in Heaven, kicking Henry VIII and Donald Trump (who look almost alike) down to Earth. Stonewall and Philomena celebrate their wedding feast.

There are two important figures in Rice’s novel who seem to be almost the same person. They could be considered historical prototypes. One of them is King Henry VIII of England, and the other is Donald Trump. Not only do they talk and act alike, with similar delusions of total power, but they even look alike.

In another Rice novel reviewed in this blog, a third person also closely resembles Donald Trump. He is Andrew Jackson, the president who instigated the Trail of Tears. Not only in behavior and delusions, but even in appearance, Jackson and Trump (who has a portrait of Jackson in the Oval Office) are nearly alike, especially in their disdain for Native Americans.

In Rice’s novel, it does not end well for either Trump or Henry.