Perhaps the strangest reaction to President Obama’s summer-reading list came from Mickey Kaus (emphasis his):
Obama’s just-released “summer reading list” doesn’t offer a lot of evidence even for the “reads very widely” thesis. It’s heavy on the wrenching stories of migrant experiences, something the President already knows quite a bit about. … Maybe the release of this list is a bit of politicized PR BS designed to help the President out. If so, it’s sending the wrong message. Which leads me to suspect it might actually be real.
There is an absurdity on the very surface of this statement—the implication that I, as the grandson of a native Yiddish-speaker, oughtn’t waste my time with Philip Roth or Saul Bellow, or that I, as the grandson of farm-raised Kentuckians, have nothing to learn from Wendell Berry—that obscures its deeper, and more systemic, misunderstanding of the purpose of literature in general and fiction particularly. Kaus also implies that what one will learn, or experience, or witness through reading is no different in the works of Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, because they both write about the highly literate, highly American children of Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants (most of whom, incidentally, have highly troubled love lives). Or, say, that “Goodbye, Columbus” is exactly the same as American Pastoral. I mean, they both take place in Newark, right?
But “Goodbye, Columbus,” is a novella written by a man in his mid-twenties, about a man in his mid-twenties in the present day; American Pastoral is framed by the aftermath of Zuckerman’s prostate surgery, and the bulk involves him looking back to the Newark of Neil Klugman’s early adulthood. Mortality, as the inevitable conclusion of human life, becomes a constant presence—almost a companion—in Roth’s fiction beginning with Sabbath’s Theater.* This is the change that slows the pace of his writing to its earlier, Jamesian roots and, to my mind, is responsible for the string of awards and renewed acclaim that met these novels. If the reader learns from fiction, what he learns from these novels is vastly different from, say, Portnoy’s Complaint.
If one doesn’t necessarily experience the same thing from reading the various works of a single author, then it should, clearly, be evident that one doesn’t experience the same thing by reading the works of various authors, united only by the factors of background or that ever-nebulous term, “theme.” One only learns the same thing, as a rule, by works united in these ways if there is nothing to learn from fiction, that fiction is only, and merely, entertainment. Fiction can, of course, be merely entertainment; but it is not necessarily entertainment. The best fiction—the best literature generally—is more than entertainment. This is not to say that fiction should be didactic (God forbid it!), but that the reading of fiction allows one to experience a unique perspective, a unique story, a unique narrative. As I put it a little while ago,
Fiction doesn’t present the unreal; it presents the possibly real, something balancing precariously between the real and the non. […] We empathize with fictional beings not despite their unreality, but because of their possible reality.
It is the “ghostly proximity to other human souls” of which Marilynne Robinson sometimes speaks.
Just as we shouldn’t be concerned about the fact that the President is reading fiction, we shouldn’t be concerned about the fact that he’s reading, apparently, about “migrant experiences.” Zoë Pollack was very much on the right track when she mentioned, briefly, an “instinct for narrative.” But shouldn’t we be concerned that he’s reading David Grossman and not Saul Bellow, or some other fellow with a Nobel (or at least a half-century of death) under his belt? Contemporary fiction presents narratives about the contemporary world—or at least from the contemporary world (compare, again, “Goodbye, Columbus” and American Pastoral—set in the same period; written at different times). Even in the latter case, it offers an understanding of the contemporary world, about how we narrate the past from our present. So perhaps the President isn’t seeking the escape from the world this summer; perhaps he’s taking a few weeks to seek a kind of understanding, or at least a perspective, that he’ll never find in a policy brief—or in the latest “Current Affairs” best-seller.
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A final note: doesn’t Kaus realize that we’re all migrants now?
*To some extent, I’ll concede, Zuckerman’s severe back problems of The Anatomy Lesson anticipate the presence of mortality in the 1990s and on; death and dying are constants in The Counterlife, but, I think, serve more as plot devices to explore matters of fictional and national/religious identity, rather than the other way around.
We should be worried now that Barry is letting the DHS carry out backdoor amnesty for illegals.Report
Becasuse he’s not REALLY American — he’s secretly still Kenyan. But no racism here, no sirree.
I’m just glad we have a President who reads! (All those who think that GWB would have any idea who the authors mentioned in this pat are, raise your hand.)Report
Jeff:
How typically elitist. Barry is superior to Bush b/c he reads what you would read, right? How do you even know that Bush didn’t read or what he might have read?Report
“How do you even know that Bush didn’t read or what he might have read?”
Because I listened to him.Report
‘Barry’ and ‘Bush’? Should it not be either ‘Barry and Georgie’ or ‘Obama and Bush’? This seems so juvenile as to make you unworthy of reading. So I’ll just skip on by. It’s a shame, I have always been impressed with the discourse I find here.Report
I liked Kaus’ observation. BHO is on the ropes in polls of Hispanics, whom he needs sorely for his re-elect, so it’s PR. Either that or BHO is completely self-absorbed and spends his spare time reading mirrors of his own experience.
Hopefully, POTUS’ reading list is full of things that might actually help him find a way out of the current crisis [crises], like an Econ 101 text.Report
If the President reads things which mirror his own personal experiences, then that just means he’s a lot like the rest of us. Including a goodly number of us here at LOOG.Report
I know I spend a great deal of time dealing with incursions from the Unseelie Court and figuring out how best to deal with the zombie hordes in my personal life. Just to pick a couple of my vacation reads at random.Report
Okay, well, maybe not you, NoPublic.Report
I would not be all that sure that that was what Kaus was driving at when he said the ‘president knows quite a bit about’ wrenching migrant experiences. ‘Wrenching migrant experience’ is a rather florid way of describing Obama’s move to Indonesia with his mother in 1966 and his return to Honolulu to live with his grandparents in 1971.Report
Burt:
I didn’t realize that Game of Thrones mirrored anyone at LOOGs personal experience.Report
I’ll have to ask if the incestuous couple next door and their dwarf brother are reading it or not.Report
Perhaps not in the sense that no one is sleeping with their siblings, running swords through their enemies, or engaging in complex and deadly political and military machinations. At least, I sure hope not.
But there is a concerted effort to tease out human emotional experiences from the books, like loving a sibling that you aren’t quite sure you actually like; having to weigh personal advantage against ethical ideals; wrestling with competing visions of the ineffable; or balancing the value of observing the law for its own sake versus taking a chance at a better policy goal with different (or no) rules.
I think you probably don’t have to look all that hard to find some resonance.
Of course, I also don’t think that the only thing people here are reading is A Song Of Fire And Ice. But it sure is fun.Report
It’s hard to picture the list is PR designed to appeal to Hispanics, when not one of the books is, you know, about Hispanics. Nor do I see how a family drama set in Israel, or crime novels set in Louisiana are mirrors of BHO’s experience.Report
BTW, this is one of the main reasons we liberals think that people like Klaus are ridiculous:
Liberals bashed Bush because of his actions, especially those that got people killed. Idiots like Klaus bash Obama over his freakin’ READING LIST! Guh!!!Report
Kaus is a registered Democrat. He was a clerk for Judge Stanley Mosk of the Supreme Court of California, then on the Domestic Policy Staff of the Carter White House, then on the staff of Harper’s during Michael Kinsley’s tenure as editor, then an aide to Sen. Ernest Hollings. He has always been somewhat irritated with the dominant opinion within the Democratic Party.Report
And he often makes silly, unfounded generalizations like the one in this post.Report
And before the reading list it was the earthquake and before that it was the vacation and before that it was the bus tour while Congress is out of town, NOT doing their job, and before that it was…oh I don’t remember, something Rush had to say? white men being picked on again I suppose.Report
“This is not to say that fiction should be didactic (God forbid it!),”
Unfortunately, Ayn Rand didn’t believe in God.Report
It’s almost sad, the trajectory of Mickey Kaus’s career. Almost.Report