Former NYT star critic, Michiko Kakutani, makes a return to talk with Barack Obama about A Promised Land – the book and all the books that led to it, and the land, and all the promises it makes – sometimes fulfilling them and just as often not. One could say her piece (based on an extended telephone conversation) confirms what one already knows about Obama’s intellectual and literary influences, but it does also reveal a few new things. For instance, about his method of writing – not a disciplined keeper of a diary, rather a collector of fragmentary anecdotes; digitally inclined when it comes to research; very analogue – legal pad and favourite pen – when it comes to the writing.
In her opening paragraph, Kakutani refers to A Promised Land as being, beyond the expected historical record, also “an introspective self-portrait”. Perhaps, not exactly the same thing, but Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, in fact missed “true self-revelation” and bemoaned Obama’s (too) cool detachment. Nor does Kakutani insinuate any discomfort with his handling of race issues, unlike Adichie who is frustrated by what she identifies as his tendency towards misplaced evenhandedness. But, then, Kakutani is not writing a critique. What they both do agree on, though, is the fineness of the prose and the pleasure of the reading experience, and the service done in giving an enthralling account of an extraordinary (too) few years.
Any hesitancy I may initially have had about diving into such a meaty tome – fearing somewhat the insider policy-speak that comes with most political memoirs – was quickly assuaged. Obama talks to us! Every other passage, every turn of phrase, one may well imagine coming from his lips – just without the ums and ahs! The complexities of politics are so well packaged in familiar real world scenarios, and without a preponderance of technical jargon, that they should be understandable to most, and, more importantly perhaps, are embedded in the common warmth of a life being lived.
Asked about what he is reading now, I am absolutely unsurprised that Obama has turned, amongst other things, to Jack for some respite. It would not need me to bring to his attention the significance of his return to Marilynne Robinson’s “Gilead” opus just now; the first story of which had accompanied him as he traipsed around Iowa in 2007, at the beginning of an odyssey that could have led nowhere, but instead to the highest echelons of power. Did he ever imagine that the (once) “bright radical star” of the Union would play such an important role in his life?
Granted, I must confess, I am only a couple of hundred pages in – chronologically speaking, the first weeks of his presidency – and as one unable to confine myself to just one Lektüre at a time, I do have some reading ahead of me, but I look forward every day to a bit more. And, I will most definitely have more to say.