Presidential Libraries
Now, this looks like a very fun game indeed. (And thanks to Matt Yglesias for pointing to it.) Not that every intellectual queried rises to the challenge; the first two entries, by Lorrie Moore and Junot Diaz, are predictably nasty and equally predictably uninsightful, but the list improves, and Gary Wills, Orlando Patterson, Thomas Mallon and Robert Pinsky all get in interesting suggestions.
My own contributions:
For both candidates:
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, by Mark Twain. Twain was writing an allegory of Reconstruction, but plug in Iraq or, for that matter, the American public school system, and it’ll work as well. Plus it’s just a whole lot of fun, a really easy read for the summer, and episodic so you can grab it for 20 minutes here and there between campaign stops.
Henry VIII, by William Shakespeare. Possibly the first portrait (and certainly one of the best) we have of a modern head of state: how he justifies himself, how his advisors manipulate him, and he them, and how abnormal life is at the imperial center of things. They ought to know what they are getting into.
Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist, by Yossi Klein Halevy. For Obama, because he’ll like it; it’s a great autobiography and illuminates issues of identity that he’s long found fascinating. For McCain, because Bill Kristol won’t. For both, because it’s a genuinely wonderful book.
For McCain: Strarship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein. I somehow doubt McCain has read much science fiction. I bet he’d like this book anyway. He should think about whether he likes it too much, or for the wrong reasons.
For Obama: Albion’s Seed, by David Hackett Fischer. I somehow don’t think Obama needs to read more about himself. This is a really good book about some other folks, the various British peoples who first established the character of America.
Finally: each candidate should read the other candidate’s father-fixated memoir: McCain should read Dreams From My Father and Obama should read Faith of My Fathers. So far, neither candidate seems terribly interested in understanding the other; they seem to hold each other in mutual contempt. I suspect this campaign will be much more edifying, and much more interesting, if they take the time to rectify that ignorance.
Another good scifi book as allagory for Iraq is The Forever War. It has relativity based time travel in it, which is adds a whole alyer to the coming home thing.
— cw · Jun 2, 08:18 PM · #
It’s interesting that you did not like Diaz or Moore’s response. People are dying out there, bub. A lot of them. I wish more people were furious and less delicate. CW: your recommendation of the Forever War is a bulls eye. Diaz recommends the same book. It“s amazing.
— Rosek Bernard · Jun 3, 12:20 AM · #
The Forever War is a good book, I’ll grant you that.
(Well, I guess I’ll also grant you that people are dying out there. They are. I still didn’t like Moore or Diaz’s answers, though.)
— Noah Millman · Jun 3, 12:26 AM · #
Diaz wrote: “McCain’s willingness to keep the nation in Iraq for, say, 100 years is a sign that for all his war hero posturing McCain has truly forgotten the young people we’ve damned to this folly we call Iraq.”
This comment is idiotic as well as uncharitable; one of those “young people” is McCain’s own son, whom I very much doubt he has forgotten. It is possible for people to support the war in good faith, and not just because they’re heartless, “posturing” monsters.
— Derannimer · Jun 3, 12:58 AM · #
Hey, I just read through that list and Dexter Filkins is writing abook about Iraq called “The Forever war.” What do you know.
— cw · Jun 3, 01:29 AM · #
I’m not sure how edifying it would be, but . . . If McCain watched the entire box set of “The West Wing” and Obama watched all of “24,” they would both probably get some good ideas to enhance their crossover appeal.
— southpaw · Jun 3, 04:27 AM · #