The Way We Live Now Commentary I take my title from Anthony Trollope’s great 1875 novel chronicling the activities of the rapacious swindler Augustus Melmotte and his coterie of grasping climbers and brittle ingenues. Trollope saw deep into the cynical engine room of his society, where a deadly brutishness panted just beneath the painted surface of propriety. In our story, the star is no less grasping than Melmotte, but he has been crossed with Chauncey Gardiner from the movie “Being There,” the confused puppet who, serving the interests of the dominant party’s power brokers, finds himself president of the United States.