Ivanka Trump, taken seconds before she received the heartbre4aking news that silcon would not make her a better writer

In 1926 F. Scott Fitzgerald published a long story, “The Rich Boy,” that included what Fitzgerald scholar Matthew Bruccoli called his “most promiscuously misquoted sentence”: After promising to “tell you about the very rich” Fitzgerald writes, “They are different from you and me.”

In his posthumously published memoir, A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway singles out “The Rich Boy” as a good story produced in spite of Fitzgerald’s struggle with alcohol and a wife who, in Hemingway’s view, was jealous of her husband’s writing. He doesn’t mention that the story had supplied Hemingway with an opportunity to jab at his erstwhile friend, editor, and promoter. 

When it appeared in Esquire, in 1936, Hemingway’s story, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” relates of the dying narrator,  ”He remembered poor Scott Fitzgerald and his romantic awe of them and how he had started a story once that began, ‘The very rich are different from you and me.’ And how someone had said to Scott, Yes, they have more money.”

Fitzgerald disclaimed any awe of the rich and demanded that his name be removed from subsequent printings. Today it is “Julian” who thought the rich “were a special glamorous race…”

This is still a widespread delusion, whatever Scott Fitzgerald really thought. Not least among the very rich themselves. But that they are different from you and me? Fitzgerald was right. And it’s more than just “more money.”

Today’s Very Short List (which I still receive and still open despite having unsubscribed) is accompanied by a “skyscraper” advertisement for Ivanka Trump’s new bookoid, The Trump Card, in which “The ultimate apprentice shares her secret to winning at work and life.” Now, there are two kinds of people in the world: those who know what Ivanka’s secret is without having to read her book, and those who do not.

Since it’s very late and I have a migraine headache that makes looking at the screen difficult and because it would take many thousands of words to properly deconstruct The Trump Card, I’m simply going to provide a few clues to Ivanka’s secret, for those of you still in the dark:

To begin with, there’s the advertisement on the Very Short List:

Ivanka, daughter of  real-estate blowhard Donald Trump, is married to Jared Kushner, son of real-estate billionaire Charles Kushner. Jared is the twenty-eight-year-old owner of The New York Observer, which in turn owns Very Short List. That’s just old-fashioned synergy.  (The small print reads “VSL is editorially independent. We never accept payment in exchange for editorial coverage.”)

On Saturday, October 17, 2009 (that was the week when Ivanka was blitzing the media; I missed all of it – thank god for VSL) Ivanka appeared on Hannity, where she told her host that “the happiest letters I get are from young girls who say that I’ve inspired them to go into real estate.”

HANNITY: I’m friends with your dad. I love your dad. 

TRUMP: He’s your hugest fan.

Roger Ailes is the president of Fox News Channel, through which Sean Hannity’s program is broadcast. Without Ailes, Richard Nixon may never have been elected (Ailes was Nixon’s media strategist). Between chapters of her book, Ivanka offers up “Bulletins from my BlackBerry,” pithy bromides from celebrity friends and assorted VIPs including the front-loaded Arianna Huffington. Roger Ailes presents his own bulletin: “On Being Positive.” (Please take a moment to let that sink in while remembering last year’s presidential election.) Donald Trump has stated on Fox & Friends that “Roger Ailes is a great genius…”

Near the bottom of her dedication page Ivanka gives thanks “To Mel Berger, Dan Paisner, Zachary Schisgal, Trish Todd, and Chris Morrow: Thank you for helping me make this book happen.”

Mel Berger is Ivanka’s agent at the William Morris Agency.

Zachary Schisgal is senior editor at Touchstone, an imprint of Simon & Schuster (also responsible for publishing, under its Fireside imprint, Paris Hilton.)

Trish Todd is an editor at Touchstone, probably the editor who performed, or delegated, the real work.

Chris Morrow is a ghostwriter. Russell Simmons’ bookoid Do You! 12 Laws to Access the Power in You to Achieve Happiness and Success is attributed to Simmons “with Chris Morrow.” Russell Simmons also appears in Trump Card, lending his name to the bulletin from Ivanka’s BlackBerry, “On Giving.”

Do You! Includes a Foreword from Donald Trump.

According to PW’s announcement  of the Ivanka Trump deal (11/19/2008) “Chris Morrow will co-write.”

Dan Paisner is a formidable ghostwriter and apparently a very funny man when he isn’t a ventriloquist for celebrity dummies. Trump Card does not appear on his website but other listed ghostings include those for Denzel Washington, Serena Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, and Montel Williams. Mr. Rancic is also repped by Mel Berger of William Morris Agency and his book also comes with a Foreword by Donald Trump.

Here’s an interesting one: You’re Hired: How to Succeed in Business and Life from the Winner of The Apprentice, by Bill Rancic. In his acknowledgments Rancic says, “I have to give credit to Dan Paisner, for his incredible ability to help me craft this book.” It is incredible.

Ivanka’s subtitle is Playing to Win in Work and Life. The inside flap copy promises the “compelling story of her upbringing as the ultimate Apprentice…”

Why did twenty-seven-year-old Ivanka Trump feel the need to assemble, or cause to be assembled, the foregoing to assist her in perpetrating the fiction that she has “written” a “book” which in turn pleads, rather desperately, from what I read, that Ivanka has attained her “success” through her own initiative?

According to PW, the geniuses at Touchstone approached her with the idea. I’ve done shameful things, but I try not to make a profession out of it.

“In business, as in life, nothing is ever handed to you.” That’s the first line (I actually typed “lie” – it wasn’t a Freudian slip, I’m fully aware that it’s a lie, I’m just not a very good typist.) — the first line of The Trump Card.

Right now it’s number 1,551 on Amazon. You should all be very proud of yourselves.