Obama's summer reading: shelf disclosures

[Mark Kohut]

my off-the-cuff critique needs improvement. This writer-President,
with first-rate autobiographies and speechwriting of his own maybe not since
Lincoln, picked these books because of THE WRITING.

All of them, from Salter, a writer who lived in the Hamptons when Joseph Heller
did when Heller had a weekly lunch with writers who said, after a perfect pause,
when somebody suggested that they invite him to the lunches----"Nah, he writes
too well".

And Doerr winning prizes after acclaim and a huge readership and
Lahiri, also prize-winning, already in
The Norton Anthology, with fine lyrical, subtle prose......

Why wouldn't this guy---anyone--think it was for the writing no matter
"the subject' ---so damn literal--
that Obama chose the books he did?

On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 6:32 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> An almost-despicable piece of pseudo-journalism. From the stupid slam
> on the two books that begin with ALL to the final almost-vile
> suggestion that Obama is reading Chernow's WASHINGTON because legacy,
> this guy knows nothing about Obama's reading choices and probably how
> and why ( all inferential and circumstantial of course) they were
> made.
>
> Chernow's because he saw HAMILTON, the acclaimed musical, I'd bet,
> which started with Chernow's superb bio on that guy. And because O
> reads history. Coates' because of the acclaim, yes the Baldwin-level
> immediate classic of it and because O has more than hinted that when
> his presidency is up, he wants to work for African-American Justice in
> some way.
>
> He always finds a first-rate female writer of fiction to read--seems
> surely because she IS female. He has chosen Pulitzer winners
> before--Maryanne Robinson ( whose Gilead he borrowed from in his Mercy
> speech)
>
> On Mon, Aug 17, 2015 at 10:58 PM, Dave Monroe
> <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow
>> Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
>> All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
>> The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert
>> The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
>> All That Is by James Salter
>>
>> http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/aug/14/obamas-summer-reading-shelf-disclosures
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l