A day after I admitted that my life was somehow incomplete without good reading, the New York Times has a piece on how books (and reading) made Barack Obama, the next President of the United States and soon to be Most Powerful Man in the World:
"Mr. Obama’s first book, “Dreams From My Father” (which surely stands as the most evocative, lyrical and candid autobiography written by a future president), suggests that throughout his life he has turned to books as a way of acquiring insights and information from others — as a means of breaking out of the bubble of self-hood and, more recently, the bubble of power and fame. He recalls that he read James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright and W. E. B. Du Bois when he was an adolescent in an effort to come to terms with his racial identity and that later, during an ascetic phase in college, he immersed himself in the works of thinkers like Nietzsche and St. Augustine in a spiritual-intellectual search to figure out what he truly believed."
I wonder then if the crazy, weird, almost incomprehensible - and brilliant - Infinite Jest (a book I really like) is going to show me something about what I truly believe...
It just might. For there is a nice coincidence in the NYT piece. The writer of the piece, MICHIKO KAKUTANI, uses one of my new favourite words - and the source of Hal's surname - incandescent:
"The incandescent power of Lincoln’s language, its resonance and rhythmic cadences, as well as his ability to shift gears between the magisterial and the down-to-earth, has been a model for Mr. Obama — who has said he frequently rereads Lincoln for inspiration — and so, too, have been the uses to which Lincoln put his superior language skills: to goad Americans to complete the unfinished work of the founders, and to galvanize a nation reeling from hard times with a new vision of reconciliation and hope."
"Mr. Obama’s first book, “Dreams From My Father” (which surely stands as the most evocative, lyrical and candid autobiography written by a future president), suggests that throughout his life he has turned to books as a way of acquiring insights and information from others — as a means of breaking out of the bubble of self-hood and, more recently, the bubble of power and fame. He recalls that he read James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright and W. E. B. Du Bois when he was an adolescent in an effort to come to terms with his racial identity and that later, during an ascetic phase in college, he immersed himself in the works of thinkers like Nietzsche and St. Augustine in a spiritual-intellectual search to figure out what he truly believed."
I wonder then if the crazy, weird, almost incomprehensible - and brilliant - Infinite Jest (a book I really like) is going to show me something about what I truly believe...
It just might. For there is a nice coincidence in the NYT piece. The writer of the piece, MICHIKO KAKUTANI, uses one of my new favourite words - and the source of Hal's surname - incandescent:
"The incandescent power of Lincoln’s language, its resonance and rhythmic cadences, as well as his ability to shift gears between the magisterial and the down-to-earth, has been a model for Mr. Obama — who has said he frequently rereads Lincoln for inspiration — and so, too, have been the uses to which Lincoln put his superior language skills: to goad Americans to complete the unfinished work of the founders, and to galvanize a nation reeling from hard times with a new vision of reconciliation and hope."
No comments:
Post a Comment
Surely You Jest...