From Chicago to Kenya: Obama's Dreams From My Father

This is the second of two parts reviewing Barack Obama's Dreams From My Father. Read Part I here. The photo is from Punahou High School, where Obama wrote his name in concrete. The "King" was added later.

I always find discussions of political experience rather reductive, as the recent discussions of Obama's experience demonstrates. The definition of experience used by Washington insiders is usually pretty limited. Unless a politician was previously a soldier, a lawyer, or a CEO, previous life experience doesn't count for much, and certainly not the experience of working day to day with the working poor of Chicago's south side projects. I'm sure that if Barack Obama had not resigned his job on Wall Street he might be considered by some to be more qualified to be President, but the decision wouldn't have fit with his values and identity.

The middle part of Obama's Dreams describes these years in Chicago, the frustrations and successes, the growth of his leadership, the struggles within him to find direction and meaning in his life, a search which ultimately leads him to Kenya and to the graves of his father and grandfather.


Dreams From My Father, written over ten years ago, gives insight into many of the issues from Obama's life that have commanded media attention during the last few months of his campaign. Of course, first and foremost is Obama's "community organizing" in Chicago. Obama took a job with a non-profit in Chicago after leaving Wall Street for work that would be more meaningful to him. His job is to work with the residents of the south side to find concrete ways to improve their lives. Rather than simply lobby the city government for improved services, Obama and his colleagues work with residents to help them do it themselves. One of Obama's projects is to organize a group of residents to secure an employment center closer to their project. Obama's organizing career coincides with the election of Harold Washington. Obama explains that the election of Washington was a seismic shift in Chicago politics, but it was also an inspiring moment for the city's black population who suddenly felt they had an ally in city hall. Still, the residents had to work to cut through the bureaucracy of the city government in order to have their concerns heard.

Living and working in a predominantly black community causes Obama to think about the divisions in the community. He seems to observe from a distance the confusion regarding color consciousness: "if you're light, you're alright; if you're black, get back." Obama doesn't seem concerned about questions of how "black" he was, even though it would come up later in his own nascent presidential campaign. He admits to "privately measuring my own degree of infection" with these questions, but in general he wonders if it isn't "an expression of self-hatred."

Mostly I kept quiet when these subjects were broached privately measuring my own degree of infection. But I noticed that such conversations rarely took place in large groups and never in front of whites. Later I would realize that the position of most black students in predominantly white colleges was already too tenuous, our identities too scrambled, to admit to ourselves that our black pride remained incomplete. And to admit our doubt and confusion to whites, to open up our psyches to general examination by those who had caused so much of the damage in the first place, seemed ludicrous, itself an expression of self hatred--for there seemed no reason to expect that whites would look at our private struggles as a mirror into their own souls, rather than yet more evidence of black pathology.

Obama's book is full of fascinating observations like these, observations about race, politics, his own efforts to understand the black community that he really didn't grow up in, while at the same time negotiating city and organizational politics. Obama also describes his friendship with "Rafiq," a black nationalist whom Obama admires in spite of his radicalism. Over time, Obama becomes distrustful of an ideological that he finds self-defeating in spite of its message of self determination:

In talking to self-professed nationalists like Rafiq, I came to see how the blanket indictment of everything white served a central function in their message of uplift; how... one depended on the other. For when the nationalist spoke of reawakening of values as the only solution to black poverty, he was expressing an implicit, if not explicit, criticism to black listeners: that we did not have to live as we did. And while there were those who could take such an unadorned message and use it to hew out a new life for themselves,--those with the stolid disposisitons that Booker T. Washington had once demanded from his followers--in the ears of many blacks such talk smacked of the explanations that whites had always offered for black poverty: that we continued to suffer from, if not genetic inferiority, then cultural weakness. It was a message that ignored causality or fault, a message outside history, without a script or plot that might insist on a progression. For a people already stripped of their history, a people often ill equipped to retrieve that history in any form other than what fluttered across the telvision screen, the testimony of what we saw ever day seemed only to confirm our worst suspicions about ourselves.

Nationalism provided that history, an unambiguous morality tale that was easily communicated and easily grasped. A steady attack on the white race, the constant recitation of black people's brutal experience in this country, served as ballast that could prevent the ideas of personal and communal responsibility from tipping into an ocean of despari. Yes, the nationalist would say, whites are responsible for your sorry state, not any inherent flaws in you. In fact, whites are so heartless and devious that we can no longer expect anything from them. The self-loathing you feel, what keeps you drinking or thieving, is planted by them...

Obama finds the white hatred of black nationalism difficult to accept and personally uncomfortable. Ultimately, however, Obama's critique of black nationalism centers on the practical questions of cooperation with whites and the reality of integration on a practical level. Obama understands that his own history and family prevent him from really needing or believing in a complete withdrawal from white society. It's hard to see your mother and grandparents, whom you love, as the white devil. He describes efforts of some in Chicago to create a completely separate economy of goods and services so that no money had to be spent on white businesses. But, he explains that for most blacks, economic realities prevent them from completely withdrawing into black nationalism: he imagines a worker saying, "White folks I work with ain't so bad, and even if they were, I can't be quitting my job--who's gonna pay my rent tomorrow or feed my children today?"

As an aside, anyone reading these pages in Obama's book can't help but wonder at the simplistic criticism of his supposed association with Louis Farrakhan. Obama discusses the following and the crowds he drew in Chicago in the 80's, the allure of his message to the residents of the south side. But Obama offers a thoughtful critique, written long before his presidential or even senatorial runs, to Farrakhan and black nationalism, however unsensational it may be in the climate of "gotcha" political reporting.

There is a story from Chicago that speaks directly to Obama's campaign rhetoric about empowerment. One of his major successes as an organizer was to uncover a serious asbestos problem in the Altgeld project where Obama worked. The problem became apparent after asbestos was removed from the offices of some of the directors of public housing, while the asbestos present in the residences was to be left untouched. After a time spent organizing the residents and creating awareness of the issue, Obama organizes a bus trip to the director's office at the Chicago Housing Authority to demand answers about the asbestos problem. The press arrived, and one of the parents at Altgeld, a woman named Sadie, became a media celebrity after Obama made her answer the questions from the press. Obama says that he "changed" as a result of that bus trip, becoming more aware of the power of individuals to alter their own destiny.

But is was away from all that (publicity), as wwe prepared for our meeting with the CHA director, that I began to see something wonderful happening. The parents began talking about ideas for future campaigns. New parents got involved. The block by block canvass we'd planned earlier was put into effect, with LInda and her swollen belly waddling door to door to collect complaint forms; Mr. Lucas, unable to read the forms himself, explaining to neighbors how to fill them out properly...It was as though Sadie's small, nohest step had broken into a reservoir of hope, allowing people in Altgeld to reclaim a power they had all along.

Obama's time in Chicago comes to an end when he is admitted to Harvard Law School. But first he makes a trip to Kenya, a trip which comprises the final third of the book. His sister, Auma, and his brother Roy both have visited him in the US, giving hints as to his father's history and his grandfather's. In Kenya, Obama learns of the family divisions. The paltry estate of his father is the subject of a legal dispute, pitting Obama's grandmother on one side, and the second (or step) mother of his father and Barack's children on the other. Obama, led by his sister Auma through the Kenyan family sites, doesn't choose sides. Obama is looking for his own share of the inheritance: the stories of his father and grandfather.

Obama's grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, was a stern man who made a small fortune as a domestic during Kenya's colonial era. He also assisted with organizational affairs, working with road crews to facilitate the infrastructure the British needed. After a lifetime of service, Onyango as he is known purchases a plot of land and builds a life there. He has a hard time finding a woman who can put up with his aloofness, and even Barack's (Obama's father is known as Barack) mother runs away. After a time, the children, Barack and his sister, attempt to run away and rejoin their mother, but they aren't successful, and Barack never attempts to leave again.

Barack is an excellent student, and a very quick learner. He succeeds in school, in spite of his laziness, although he is eventually expelled, and his father sends him to work as a clerk in Mombasa in order to teach him responsibility. He becomes involved in politics, is jailed for his involvement, gets married and has two children, Auma and Roy, whom Obama has met in the US. After a time, he finds two American women, missionaries, who offer to help Barack find a university to attend in the United States. This inspires Barack to complete correspondance courses and enables him to gain the credentials needed to be admitted in an American university. Finally, he is admitted to the University of Hawaii where he meets Obama's mother. Having left one family in Kenya, he later leaves another behind in Hawaii. As Granny explains, Onyango's opposition to the marriage in Hawaii had nothing to do with the fact that Obama's mother was white. It was that Barack already had a family in Kenya, and he doubted that he would be able to take care of both.

Later, Barack returned to Kenya and a white woman, Ruth, came looking for him. They were married as well. Barack continued in his career in public service until at the end of his life he found himself alone and underemployed. At the end of this book, Obama has had his questions answered, the story of his life and his father's is as complete as it can be. The book ends with the image of Obama sitting before the graves of his grandfather and father, both of whom are buried at the family compound in graves beside each other, while the rest of his reunited African family looks on.

For a long time I sat between the two graves and wept. When my tears were finally spent, I felt a calmness wash over me. I felt the circle finally close. I realized who I was, what I cared about, was no longer just a matter of intellect or obligation no longer a construct of words. I saw that my life in America--the black life, the white life, the sense of abandonment I'd felt as a boy, the frustration and hope I'd witnessed in Chicago--all of it was connected with this small plot of earth an ocean away, connected by more thatn the accident of a name or the color of my skin. The pain I felt was my father's pain. My questions were my brother's questions. Their struggle, my birthright.

In the heat of a presidential campaign, it's easy to distort a candidate's past, invent radicalisms where none exist, fabricate associations out of mere acquaintances. Obama's Dreams From My Father not only puts some of the heated rhetoric of this campaign into a more sensible context, but it also provides a view of Barack Obama as a man, his youth and his development, his insecurities and passions. The book also shows his brilliance. The book is prefectly constructed, beautifully written, and honest.

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Obama's Dreams From My Father; First of Two Parts

Note: This is the first of a two-part review of Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father.

As Barack Obama's candidacy grows, there will naturally be more interest in his life story, and Obama has the advantage of having told this story himself, eloquently and forcefully, in an autobiography written before his Senate career or his presidential run. Dreams From My Father isn't as famous as The Audacity of Hope, his campaign manifesto, but the story he tells in the former may ultimately win him more votes, and convince Americans that he is, after all, a different kind of candidate, different in every way from any major candidate for President in our history.

The differences become clear in the book's opening pages, which tell the story of Obama's African father. The narrative begins with his death, when Barack was 21 years old, and meanders through the memories and legends of his father he grew up hearing. Living in New York at the time his father died, Obama is reminded of an old man who lived in his apartment building until he was found dead in his apartment, a lonely ignoble death much like his father's in Kenya. As Obama describes later in the book, his father died a shell of his former self, alone, alienated from his children, struggling to maintain relevance and dignity in spite of his doctorate and prosperous past. But the stories Obama grows up with are the stories of his youthful vigor and charm, his seriousness, his promise, his charisma--qualities that might be applied to Obama himself.

From his white mother and grandparents, he hears glowing portraits, tales of strangers in rapt attention to his words.

"Your father can be a bit domineering," my mother would admit with a hint of smile. "But it's just that he is basically a very honest person. That makes him uncompromising sometimes."

She preferred a gentler portrait of my father. She would tell the story of whwne he arrived to accept his Phi Beta Kappa key in his favorite outfit--jeans and an old knit shirt with a leopard print pattern. "Nobody told him it was a big honor so he walked in and found everyone standing around this elegant room dressed in tuxedos. The only time I ever saw him embarrassed."

The shadow of Obama's father remains throughout, but this book is about Obama himself. That story begins, after the opening flashforward to his father's death, begins with his grandparents' nomadic wanderings which lead them eventually to Hawaii, to a new life, where Obama's mother meets his father and where he is born, where he is left behind by a father whose departure is never explained to him.

Obama lives in Hawaii until he is six years old, when his mother accepts a proposal from an Indonesian named Lolo. When they move to Indonesia, Barack adapts quickly and becomes close to Lolo. However, as time goes by, his mother begins to wonder if she is losing her son to a culture and identity that is unfamiliar to her. While Barack attends Indonesian schools, his mother works to inculcate midwestern values of honesty and fairness, and wakes him up early every morning to provide her own English lessons before he went to school. While he is in Indonesia, he has a bit of a racial awakening. He describes looking through a Life magazine and discovering a story of a black man who had tried to peel away his skin. As Obama describes it, it was a moment of racial awakening for him, and he began to question why television shows had so few black characters, that the Sears catalog had so few people in it that looked like him.

I kept these observations to myself, deciding that either my mother didn't see them or she was trying to protect me and that I shouldn't expose her efforts as having failed. I still trusted my mother's love--but now I faced the prospect that her account of the world, and my father's place in it, was somehow incomplete.

After a time Obama returns to Hawaii and his grandparents to attend an American school, the Punahou Academy at age ten. Obama describes the traumas and lessons of his youth, including a mement where he was unkind to an overweight classmate who was supposed to be his girlfriend, and the moment where like a typical 10 year old he bragged about his father only to have it backfire. Telling the story of his father as tribal chief, he becomes uneasy, wondering if the story is doing more harm than good. He begins to wonder what his father's identity means to his own. Obama continues his education at Punahou through high school, playing famously on the basketball team, finding his racial identity and his sense of belonging in the drug-infused seventies. Living with elderly white grandparents on a multiracial but mostly white and asian island made learning about racial politics difficult, but he sought the advice of books by Malcolm X, Langston Hughes, and the black friend of his grandfather, and his friend Ray. His growing racial pride and struggle to express it is illustrated by a story he tells from high school when a white acquaintance approaches Ray:

"Hey Ray! Mah main man! Wha's happenin'!"

Ray went up and slapped Kurt's outstretched palm. But when Kurt repeated the gesture to me I waved him off.

"What's the problem?" I overheard Kurt say to Ray as I walked away. A few minutes later Ray caught up with me and asked me what was wrong.

"Man, those folks are just making fun of us," I said.

"What're you talking about?"

"All that 'yo, baby, give me five,' bullshit."

"So who's Mr. Sensitive all of a sudden? Kurt don't mean nothing by it."

"If that's what you think then hey--"

Ray's face suddenly glistened with anger. "Look," he said, "I'm just getting along, all right? Just like I see you getting along, talking your game with the teachers when you need them to do you a favor. All that stuff about, 'Yes, Miss Snooty Bitch, I just find this novel so engaging, if I can just have one more day for that paper, I'll kiss your white ass.' It's their world, all right? They own it, and we in it..."

This and other moments in the book, like when Obama dismisses a black friend as a "tom" and is rebuked by another friend, show Obama's struggles to articulate his own feelings about race. He mentions repeatedly throughout the book that he is part of neither race, or part of both, but being raised in a white family but feeling more at home with black friends causes him so moments of tension and self doubt, feelings which at length seem to get worked out, especially by the time he goes to college and on to work as an organizer in Chicago. Even in Chicago, Obama describes feeling pulled between "two strands of black nationalism" as he begins to feel uncomfortable with the white antipathy he finds himself surrounded with at times:

Ever since I'd picked up Malcolm X's autobiography I had tried to untangle the twin strands of black nationalism, agruing that nationalism's affirming message of solidarity and self-reliance, discipline and communal responsibility, need not depend on hatred of whites any more than it depended on white munificence. We could tell this country where it was wrong, I would tell myself and any black friends who would listen, without ceasing to believe in its capacity for change.

It's less compelling reading, the nuts and bolts of community organizing in Chicago, but that section of the book provides the most insight into Obama's leadership skills and his values. Obama arrives in Chicago a wide eyed idealist, and although his idealism isn't dampened necessarily, he learns that good intentions aren't enough. The organization he's part of, in spite of their efforts and heart, never seem to actually get anyone in the projects a job, or improve the lives of people in measurable ways. It isn't until Obama learns to apply his charisma and energy into concrete political action, working the Harold Washington administration into concrete steps such as moving an employment office into the neighborhood of the people they are actually serving.

Obama's early life shows him to be sensitive, smart, and worldly. The first half of the book includes some material that has provided ammunition for right wing attacks--he did attend Islamic school for a couple of years in Indonesia, he used drugs in high school and college, he reflects on the merits of black nationalism. But anyone who actually takes the time to read Obama's story can't help but come away inspired by his unusual life, impressed by his elegant prose, overwhelmed by his insights and attention to the people around him. Next week I'll look at the second half of Obama's Dreams From My Father.

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Sunday Reading: American Fascists

Chris Hedges' (author of War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning) new paperback edition of American Fascists includes a question and answer with the author in which Hedges discusses the loaded term "fascists" and its application to the American religious political movement. Hedges admits that the term is loaded, but argues that it is appropriate:

..."fascism" or "fascist" is a terribly loaded word, and it evokes a historical period, primarily that of the Nazis and to a lesser extent Mussolini. But fasism as an ideology has generic qualities. People like Robert O. Paxton in The Anatomy of Fascism have tried to quantify them. Umberto Eco did it in Five Moral Pieces, and I actually begin the book with an excerpt from Eco. I think there are enough generic qualities that the group within the religious right, known as Christian Reconstructionists or dominionists, warrants the word. Does this mean that this is Nazi Germany? No. Does this mean that this is Mussolinin's Italy? No. Does this mean that this is a deeply anti-democratic movement that would like to impose a totalitarian system? Yes.

Hedge's book then, examines this premise, and examines the Christian right as a fascist movement. Hedges' book is rich in detail, and provides a compelling inside look at the religious right.


The book is organized around the features of fascism, too many to list and discuss here, but a few of them require attention.

Hedges' first chapter deals with faith, and in it Hedges illustrates the meaning of faith within the Reconstructionist or dominionist movement. It is of course marked by a literalist reading of the bible and a belief in the authority of the church over all aspects of life, including political. Hedges says dominionists seek the power of the state and to subject it to biblical authority:

Dominionism, born out of a theology known as Christian reconstructionism, seeks to politicize faith. It has, like all fascist movements, a belief in magic along with leadership adoration and a strident call for moral and physical supremeacy of a master race, in this case American Christians. It als has, like fascist movements, an ill-defined and shifting set of beliefs, some of which contradict one another. Paxton argues that the best way to understand authentic fascist movements, which he says exist in all societies, including democracies, is to focus no on what they say but on how they act, for as he writes, some of the ideas that underlied fascist movements "remain unstated and implicit in fascist public language..."

Hedges goes on to explain that the dominionists have a core set of sometimes unspoken goals or beliefs, such as the death penalty for a wide variety of offenses, a world "subdued by a Christian United States," an antipathy for any role for government other than for national security, and the supremacy of biblical law. Furthermore, like traditional fundamentalism, Hedges argues, the dominionists practice an obedience to the specifically male authority of the church, and an intolerance of nonbelievers, but that dominionists go further in attempting to take over the mechanisms of state power and make them an extension of the church. Additionally, as biblical literalists, they believe in a literal interpretation of the creation myth of Genesis, and object to scientific understanding of geology and evolutionary biology.

Another significant element of the dominionist movement described by Hedges is the "cult of masculinity," or what Hedges describes as a "hypermasculinity" that is imposed on the church body. Hedges explains that male authority is supreme in the movement, and that leaders feel threatened by homosexuality or any kind of femininity within the leadership of the church. "The goal of the movement is theocracy," he quotes a former female church member as saying, "but they must dominate women to keep the system in place." At the same time, the movement attempts to create obedient children who will not question the church authority.

These children are condidtioned to rely on external authority for moral choice. They obey out of fear and often repeat this pattern of fearful obedience as adults. Rebusal to submit to authority is heresy. Raised in a home and a school where he or she is tuaght to see the world as one where the possibility of attack and danger lurks behind every crevice, the child learns to distrust outsiders. The benign and trivial take on satanic proposrtions...the pathology of fear, ingrained in the child, plays itself out in the constant search for phantom enemies who seek the destruction of the adult believer.

Another example of the cult of masculinity and how it informs concepts of family and authority:

Nicolosi warns against fathers who are "weak and unmasculine, and perhaps beaten down by the mother." He says that boys need a strong, masculine father who is worthy of imitation, of modeling, owrthy of disconnecting from the mother." He also cautions against an "overemotionally involved mother" who is a "dominant, strong personality."

In addition to a hypermasculinity, fascism indulges in a hyperpatriotism as well, a nationalism that is chauvinistic and often racist. It makes sense then, that the dominionist movement finds a natural ally in anti-immigration forces. In fact, reading Hedges' book helps make clear the strong antipathy for McCain among evangelical Christians. He isn't one of them, isn't sufficiently intolerant, hasn't had a background with the most extreme leaders of the right wing movement. It's also easy to understand the coded attacks that are currently being directed at Barack Obama. In accusing him of refusing to say the pledge of allegiance, accusing him of being Muslim, accusing him of being African and thus not American, the religious right is engaging in coded attacks to label him as the enemy of all that they stand for, an enemy in the unification of the church and state in a theocratic society.

In a summary of this kind, the movement Hedges is describing sounds familiar enough to most readers. However, what gives Hedges' book greater depth and meaning is the wealth of examples of speeches and writings of the leadership of the movement, and the testimony of some who have left it. In particular, Hedges describes the actions of Ken Blackwell in 2004 in terms of his loyalty to the dominionist cause, and describes his connections to many in the movement. He also gives a chilling account of Columbus Ohio pastor Rod Parsley, head of the World Harvest Church:

Often, as he did at a rally at Columbus with former Attorney General John Ashcroft, Parsley orders the secular media to leave. He was instrumental in mobilizing voters to support the gay marriage ban during the 2004 presidential elections in Ohio, an effective tool in getting the religious right to the polls to vote for President Bush.

He also quotes Parsley as saying: "I just love to talk about money... I just love to talk about your money. Let me be very clear--I want your money. I deserve it. The church deserves it."

American Fascists is a terrific reference manual for understanding the religious right in America, the sources of their ideas, their leaders, their lines of argument. It is an indispensable book.

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Sunday Reading: Earthly

The volume is called Earthly, but it deals as much with nostalgia as it does with gardens and fruit. In her poems, Erica Funkhouser eulogizes the changing New England landscape, and yearns for the past represented by the poetry of Robert Frost, poetry which she self-conciously recalls in this volume. The imagery of the second section of the volume, about the apple crop, recall's Frost's time and even his language. "Into the Blue Core", and the rest of the sequence can't help but remind a reader of "After Apple Picking", with the images of the ladder and the apples heaping into crates during the apple harvest. When Funkhouser writes, "I will wait with one foot pressed against the lower rung," one is reminded of the Frost line "my instep arch keeps the pressure of a ladder round." Throughout the volume there are echoes of Frost and his landscape, the fields of hay waiting to be mown, the apples and the people who harvest them.

In "Chebacco: Perspective with Views" Funkhouser reminds us that while this rural landscape still exists, it exists as a commodity, it's been commercialized. The antiques, or an apple crate, symbolize the nostalgiac uses to which the past is put in modern life, kept around for decoration or as a quaint reminder of an idealized history. The poem is a portrait of a town where "one angry citizen advertises his grievance/ on a hand-painted sign in his yard:/ If you'd listened to me your tax bill would be $400 lower this year.", where the past becomes commodity in the poem's final lines:

Town where you might in the twenty-first century still purchase
at the White Elephant or Red Dragon
an old apple crate
if it hasn't already been auctioned on eBay.

This symbol of the apple crate also opens the long section called "Pome"--15 separate poems about the apple harvest. The poem begins with a description of the commercialized old-fashioned-ness of rural life:

An empty box--
all that remains
is the sweat-on-wood scent
of collectible New England
and a single plural

APPLES

stamped in stocky letters,
their original bloom
long ago receded.

Funkhouser's collection is about such nostalgia, but also loneliness, wandering, searching. But the poems don't have a despairing tone; it's more hopeful and optimistic, like the figure of Johnny Appleseed who is sprinkled like seeds throughout this volume, with his messianic rural optimisim and practicality.


A great example of the mood of this volume is the poem "Waiting to Cut the Hay". Again it reminds a reader of Frost (Mowing). But the poem revels in its loneliness, a warm and sweet appreciation of the beauty of rural life. The movement of the poem is masterful. As the speaker drives the tractor out of the toolshed and throughout the farm, drives it past fields and the river, a procession of images, but more remarkably, the rhythm of the poem imitates the movement of the tractor itself over farm terrain. For urbanites, think of an SUV on a bumpy road, or in grass: the jerky movements side to side, the unpredictable jostling of your body--all this comes to life in the harsh rythm of the lines, with regular strings of stressed syllables like "heart-shaped seat":

In the toolshed the best thing
is the heart-shaped seat of the tractor.
You don't have to know anything to sit in it.
You don't have to squeeze out the choke
and pump the gas pedal before you can go anywhere.
You dont have to steer the front wheel around
like the neck of a stubborn horse
in order to get out to the fields.
You don't have to look through the rusted floorboards
to see that the timothy is ripe
and that all the hayfields tilt toward the toolshed.
Even the stones beneath the fields lean this way.
And here comes the far pasture,
with its sumac and cow parsley and the sway-backed fence,
and here's the road to the river, and now the river itself,
the shy wood duck flapping up from the reeds,
the bullfrogs frog-kicking into black water,
and the yellow perch swirling like our own galaxy
until they're right here above the clutch
where you can lower yoru toes in among them.

There's much to enjoy in this volume. But I thought I'd finish with a somewhat political poem, her fantastic concluding poem "The Pianist Upstairs."

The world's at war and he breaks into Brahms
tonight--an intermezzo one might him
to lull a child or coax to life numb
nerves after a round of deafening bombs.

The stairwell's dark and cold, and still I sit
and listen as the music circulates.
I don't know what to do; the day's debates
don't change a thing. We hit. They hit. We hit.

My country's ruined choir resounds with lies,
and still my song will only come from words.
Upstairs, a man devotes a tender hour
to teasing out sweet hidden harmonies
that populate the hallway with white birds.
How wasted here, their pure expressive power.

The sonnet, as a medium for this expression, is perfect, the neat and tidy artistic form whose loveliness contrasts with the brutality and anarchy of war. Art gives form to life and gives us hope with order and beauty. But what strikes me is the odd final line: how wasted here? The peace symbolized by the white birds in the 13th line aren't wasted in the home. And neither are the "words" of the 10th. Peace needed at home as well as on the battlefield.

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Sunday Reading: Blogs

This week's NY Review of Books has a terrific piece on blogs by Sarah Boxer. She describes the difficulty of trying to come up with an anthology of writing from blogs: that the linkiness of blogs make them nearly impossible to reproduce in paper form:

Every sport, every war, every hurricane brings out a crop of bloggers, who often outdo the mainstream media in timeliness, geographic reach, insider information, and obsessive detail. You can read about the Iraq war from Iraqi bloggers, from American soldiers (often censored now), or from scholars like Juan Cole, whose blog, Informed Comment, summarizes, analyzes, and translates news from the front. For opera, to take another example, you have Parterre Box, which is kind of campy, or Sieglinde's Diaries and My Favorite Intermissions, written by frequent Met-goers, or Opera Chic, a Milan-based blog focused on La Scala (which followed in great detail the scandal of Roberto Alagna's walkout during Aida a year ago). And that doesn't begin to cover it.

With such riches to choose from, you might think it would be a snap to put a bunch of blogs into a book and call it an anthology. And you would be wrong. The trouble? Links—those bits of highlighted text that you click on to be transported to another blog or another Web site. (Links are the Web equivalent of footnotes, except that they take you directly to the source.) It's not only that the links are hard to transpose into print. It's that the whole culture of linking—composing on the fly, grabbing and posting whatever you like, making weird, unexplained connections and references— doesn't sit happily in a book. Yes, I'm talking about bloggy writing itself.

Boxer does a great job in this article of discussing the history of blog writing, and describing the uniqueness of blogwriting. In particular, Boxer explains the chummy and personal nature of much blog writing, the sense you get of being "in the know" if you are reading. She makes a terrific analogy here:

Political blogs are among the trickiest to capture in a book because they tend to rely heavily on links and ephemeral information. But even blogs that have few or no links still show the imprint of the Web, its associative ethos, and its obsession with connection—the stink of the link. Blogs are porous to the world of texts and facts and opinions on line. (And this is probably as close as I can come to defining an essence of blog writing.)

Bloggers assume that if you're reading them, you're one of their friends, or at least in on the gossip, the joke, or the names they drop. They often begin their posts mid-thought or mid-rant—in medias craze. They don't care if they leave you in the dust. They're not responsible for your education. Bloggers, as Mark Liberman, one of the founders of the blog called Language Log, once noted, are like Plato. :-) The unspoken message is: Hey, I'm here talking with my buddies. Keep up with me or don't. It's up to you. Here is the beginning of Plato's Republic:

I went down yesterday to the Peiraeus with Glaucon, the son of Ariston, to pay my devotions to the Goddess, and also because I wished to see how they would conduct the festival since this was its inauguration.
Wait a second! Who is Ariston? What Goddess? What festival?

And here, for comparison's sake, is a passage from Julia {Here Be Hippogriffs}, a blog about motherhood and infertility:

Having left Steve to his own devices for the past three days I am being heavily pressured to abandon the internet (you! he wants me to abandon you!) and come downstairs to watch SG-1 with him....
So this will have to be quick. Vite! Aprisa aprisa!
I went to Blogher. It was rather fun and rather ridiculous and I am quite glad I went although I do not know if I would ever go again. One thing of note for my infertile blogging friends: DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT IT. Do not go. Do not ever ever go to Blogher.

Huh? Who's Steve? What's Blogher? A blog? (No.) A mothers' club? (No.) A blogging conference? (Yes.)

You get the point. Bloggers breeze through places, people, texts, and blogs that you might or might not know without providing any helpful identification. They figure that even if they don't provide you with links you can get all the background you need by Googling unfamiliar terms, clicking through Wikipedia (the collaborative on-line encyclopedia) or searching their blog's archives.

I experienced something similar on the site The Agonist yesterday. Take a look at this post by Sean Paul Kelley:

Note that the blogger in question doesn't name names. Just fuzzy concepts. Many of us have been right, far too right for the cheerleaders' comfort. But human nature is what it is, people are forgiven for making mistakes, but for being right? Never.

Now, I haven't reproduced the links, and you'll have to click through to the Agonist site to get them. But the post is a perfect example of what Boxer is talking about: there is a quick post, referring to two other posts, which have to be read, as though they are extended footnotes, in order to understand the point Kelley is making. It's one of the things that make blog reading occasionally frustrating (I find Atrios, for example, annoying on this point--he rarely includes in his own post the information he is referring to, and reading him requires constant back and forth between other sites) but also what makes reading blogs fun. The interconnectedness of the blog world is endlessly fascinating. It's as if in the middle of reading one book or magazine you can make another book or magazine instantly appear, and back again.

What Boxer leaves out, I think, is the recognition that the blogosphere gives voice to many, many terrific writers who otherwise wouldn't get to be read as widely as they are. I am thinking of writers like Digby, a brilliant analyst who might not ever have been published, or at least not as widely, in traditional media.

Boxer's article is definitely worth reading if you are a fan or writer of blogs.

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Sunday Reading: The Theory of Clouds

Stephane Audeguy's debut novel, The Theory of Clouds, is as full of atmospheric imagery as you might expect from the title, but the central images of the novel are disturbing ones that haunt the reader long after the book has been put back on the shelves.

The first of these two disturbing images appears in the jungle of Borneo. The meteorologist Richard Abercombie has undertaken to travel the world photographing clouds following the excitement of the 1889 exposition in Paris in which he presented on clouds and classification systems. The wealthy Abercrombie then sails to all latitudes, from Cairo to the Cape of Good Hope, but upon landing in Borneo he seems to have lost his heart for the project. In Borneo he agrees to an expedition with some adventurers he's met in the British consulate. The men canoe into the jungle up the Sapu Gaya River. Abercrombie becomes tired, and is left to rest in a clearing, but wakes to find himself covered in leeches.

Abercrombie undresses to remove the leeches, and crouches on a rock naked in a symbolic rebirth, as he discovers he is not alone--a large mother orguntan watches him intently from the other side of a pool of water. While her baby hangs on her neck, she stares at Abercrombie, as intently interested in him as he is in her. But the silence is broken:

Time resumed its course; the noise of the jungle was returning, as if from some great distance. The organgutan made a vague movement that was abbreviated because, suddenlty, her right eye spasmed and was covered by a growing black stain; a second later the sound of the gunshot reached Abercrombie's ears...

The experience changes Abercrombie in profound and inexplicable ways, repulsed as his is by the behavior of his fellow hunters, and his pursuit of a meteorological catalogue is altered forever.

The second lasting image from the novel comes from the life of its main character, Akiro Kumo, and does have to do with clouds--in a way.

Akiro Kumo is a Japanese couturier who has emigrated to Paris in the later stages of life. A collector of collections, so to speak, in his later years he has turned his collecting obsession to clouds. He develops one of the world's foremost collections on books and materials relating to meteorology and clouds more specifically. As the novel opens, Kumo has enlisted the services of a young Parisian woman named Virginie to assist with cataloguing and indexing his collection. Virginie serves as much as a soundboard for Kumo's stories as a librarian. The novel begins as he descrbes for her the life of Luke Howard, the quiet Quaker scientist who first classifies clouds using the familiar Latin terminology widely known today--cumulus, cumulo-nimbus, stratus, and so on. Virginie realizes her job is mostly to listen, and eventually, she begins to work full time for this mysterious, solitary man.

Kumo, it turns out, is a survivor of the Hiroshima blast. Not only a survivor: a miracle, having been tantalizing close to the blast's epicenter, but unharmed (physically, at least) and cancer-free. Towards the end of the novel, this second disturbing image emerges, that of the cloud created by the Hirshima bomb, covering the city in eerie darkness, the sun visible only at the edges of the blackness.

These two images cast a heavy shadow on this fascinating novel, whose basic storyline is as follows. Kumo's collection is lacking one critical item: the Abercrombie Protocol, the catalogue of clouds that Abercrombie promised the world he would deliver, that he travelled the world to develop, but never finished. At the death of Abercrombie's daughter, Virginie is sent to procure the protocol from her heir, Richard Jr., grandson of the first Richard Abercrombie. He seduces Virginie, and she obtains the notebook, which began as a collection of cloud photographs, but shockingly transformed into a work of pornography--Abercrombie, a 49 year old virgin at the time of the orangutan's shooting, turned his attention from the weather to the physical geography of women. The novel goes on to tell the story of Abercrombie's travels, interweaving the narrative of Virginie's life and Kumo's strange biography as well.

The clouds in the novel take on a metaphorical significance in multiple ways, and certainly the way clouds form and reform, shape and reshape, their infinite differences and the uniqueness of each, stand as a metaphor for the passage of time and the meandering unpredictability of human life. But the novel's title seems to refer to the idea, considered by both Kumo and Virginie separately, that human life seems to exist in the moisture of the body, moisture which evaporates upon death, is yielded up to the skies, only to return as rain to the earth--this is the "theory of clouds", that their vast and sometimes ominous presence is a mechanism for death and rebirth. Kumo first considers this as a boy looking up at the vast, mysterious mushroom cloud over his head, a cloud which precipitated upon him the human lives it had taken moments before. Later, Virginie considers the moisture of the corpse of her patron, that is has left his body and joined the clouds above, only to return later as the rain that pelts the windows and doors of Paris.

Audeguy's profound and mysterious novel merits reading and re-reading. It is rich and complex, with layers of meaning that continue to reveal themselves throughout. The narrative form is fascinating--the narrative focus shifts between characters frequently and effortlessly, while the story remains compelling and provocative. Finally, the novel is highly erotic, nearly pornographic. Both Kumo and Abercrombie are habitual customers of prostitutes, and Virginie's unusual sexual--how to put this--proclivities? are described more than once in the novel. But in spite of the eros of the novel, none of the characters seems able to love. The affection that Kumo and Virginie develop for one another is distant, as Kumo reveals himself only at the furthest distances in the form of letters, without leaving any chance for questioning. As a result of the lack of feeling, the novel is, in spite of the lightness and fluffiness of its subject matter, bleak and dreary in its outlook. No less should be expected from a life marked by the Hiroshima blast. In the wake of such violence, the novel seems to suggest, our emotional meteorology is hardly worth exploring.

An excerpt from the novel can be found here...

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Sunday Book Notes

No new review today, but an announcement: I am beginning to cross post my reviews here at Into My Own at Brave New Films and at Cliff Schecter's companion site. The first installment is today, and I've reprised my look at John Edwards' Four Trials, which I initially featured here last summer.

I also wanted to congratulate Chris Barzak, whose terrific novel One for Sorrow was reviewed here when it hit the market in August, along with a companion interview. Chris has won the Crawford Award given for the best first novel in the genre of fantasy. Ohio is well represented by Chris and his exciting first novel. Way to go, Chris! He will travel to Orlando in March to accept the award. Very much deserved.

Next week I'll be taking a look at The Theory of Clouds by the French author Stephane Audeguy.

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Sunday Reading: De Niro's Game

Two boys grow up in a rough neighborhood. They are best friends. Their mothers, both single, are best friends, so the boys are raised as brothers. They get into trouble at school, and eventually become adept at petty crime that gives them some money in their pockets. As they grow older, their cunning earns them a reputation on the streets, and eventually they are recruited into organized crime. But one brother refuses to join, and the boys go their separate ways, and meet their separate fates.

Sounds like a story that could be told in Boston, Philadelphia, or Chicago, but in this case the novel, De Niro's Game, by the Lebanese-Canadian writer Rawi Hage, is set in Beirut against the backdrop of the Lebanese Civil War. The novel is told from the standpoint of the Christian militias in East Beirut, backed by the Isrealis, fighting the Syrians and Palestinians. As the novel opens, the narrator, Bassam, joins his friend George in a series of petty crimes. For example, George works at a casino operated by the local militia, and rigs a game so that Bassam wins money every day. He and George then split the money.

Eventually, however, George is recruited by the militia, while Bassam begins to look for a way out of East Beirut, away from its steady rainfall of bombs and bullets, and looks West to Roma, the source of his dreams and aspirations.

De Niro's Game is written by Rawi Hage, who grew up in Lebanon during the Civil War. According to the book jacket, Hage moved to New York in 1992, and later moved to Montreal. The novel was published last year in Canada, where Hage was nominated for several literary prizes.

Hage's narrator is, as the bookjacket says, Hemingwayesque. In the midst of the lawless chaos of the civil war, Bassam remains stoic and composed. His girlfriend Rana begs him to share his feelings, especially following the death of his mother, but his internal plans and feeling remain shielded. Eventually his privacy and distance drive her away, but Bassam is constantly watching out for his own interests, and trusts no one, not even Rana. What primarily motivates Bassam is survival, and his emotional distance is designed primarily to protect himself.

Hage includes enough details to make Bassam likeable. For starters, he is loyal to his friend George, even when George is undeserving. He cherishes his mother, and looks after his friends' aunt as well, for whom he nourishes a secret crush. But what makes Bassam most vulnerable and likeable as a character might be the daydreams that live inside of him. While he wanders Paris, for example, he imagines himself a revolutionary punishing the decadent aristocrats and sending them to their fates. Even though Bassam has enough drama in his life--while in Paris he is dodging members of the Mossud and trying to stay out of jail--he still nourishes heroic dreams of greatness.

At times the novel reads like a spy novel or thriller. Bassam is the victim of double crosses, suspected of crimes he didn't commit, and so the plot starts to resemble the Fugitive or The Bourne Supremacy as Bassam ducks and weaves to stay alive and out of jail. But unlike most spy thrillers, the line between good and evil is not as clear in De Niro's Game, and we really can never trust any characters in the book. Hage has constructed a sort of existential dilemma in which Bassam frequently has to choose between equally unattractive options, and this kind of hazardous moral environment causes him to avoid making judgements of others. While he's in Paris, Bassam begins reading, appropriately enough, Camus' The Stranger, and reflects on the choices facing Mersault and himself, descending into a moral relativism, or more appropriately, a recognition that each of us must make and live with the choices in our lives:

Wearing only my underwear, I reached for my book. I opened it: ...and has he uttered a word of regret for his most odious crime?

No, I answered. Why should he? We all agreed to participate. It was our only choice, we each spun our own gun barrels, we each had four chances out of five. We all acted out of our own convictions, and out of passion. Reason, you ask? Mr. Prosecutor, while we are all sweating in this courtroom filled with French man and judges, reason is useful fiction.

Earlier in the novel, Bassam expresses a similar thought to George, warning him against getting involved in causes and factions, warning him that self preservation is the only cause worth fighting for, a warning that turns out to be prophetic and which determines the fate of each man. It is a warning reminiscent less of Mersault but more of Stephen Daedalus, who asked why he should die for Ireland, when maybe Ireland should die for him:

I will be leaving for Isreal for some training. The forces are establishing relations with the Jews down south.

It is a mistake, I whispered.

No, Bassam, we are alone in this war, and our people are being massacred every day. And you...whose grandfather was butchered...your father killed...you...you...We will unite with the devil to save our land. How are we to make the Syrians and the Palestinians leave?

I am fleeing and leaving this land to its devils, I said.

You believe in nothing.

Thieves and thugs like us, I said, since when have we ever believed in anything?

De Niro's Game is a beautifully written novel, composed with unusual rhythms, and highly imaginative. It has the intensity of a thriller, but has much greater depth. The historical background to the novel also makes it more real. Hage includes details about the Sabra-Shatila massacre in 1982 (unfortunately discussing those details would reveal too much of the ending), the corruption of the militia, the toll of the war on the people of Beirut, the moral and legal vacuum the war created. The subject matter is, of course, still relevant today, given the ongoing tussle in Lebanon between the Syrians and various factions opposed to them, and given Isreali incursions into Lebanon in the last few years. Hage has taken the strife of Lebanon and developed a beautiful novel that will last.

Links

Publisher's page

The Lebanese Civil War: background from Wikipedia

Thomas Friedman on the Sabra and Shatila Massacre

Excerpt:

Ten thousand bombs had landed, and I was waiting for George.Ten thousand bombs had landed on Beirut, that crowded city, and I was lying on a blue sofa covered with white sheets to protect it from dust and dirty feet.

It is time to leave, I was thinking to myself. My mother's radio was on. It had been on since the start of the war, a radio with Rayovac batteries that lasted ten thousand years. My mother's radio was wrapped in a cheap, green plastic cover, with holes in it, smudged with the residue of her cooking fingers and dust that penetrated its knobs, cinched against its edges. Nothing ever stopped those melancholic Fairuz songs that came out of it.

I was not escaping the war; I was running away from Fairuz, the notorious singer.

Summer and the heat had arrived; the land was burning under a close sun that cooked our flat and its roof. Down below our white window, Christian cats walked the narrow streets nonchalantly, never crossing themselves or kneeling for black-dressed priests. Cars were parked on both sides of the street, cars that climbed sidewalks, obstructed the passage of worn-out, suffocating pedestrians whose feet, tired feet, and faces, long faces, cursed and blamed America with every little step and every twitch of their miserable lives.

Heat descended, bombs landed, and thugs jumped the long lines for bread, stole the food of the weak, bullied the baker and caressed his daughter. Thugs never waited in lines.

George honked.

His motorcycle's cadaverous black fumes reached my window and its bubbly noise entered my room. I went downstairs and cursed Fairuz on the way out: that whining singer who makes my life a morbid hell.

My mother came down from the roof with two buckets in her hands; she was stealing water from the neighbour's reservoir.

There is no water, she said to me. It only comes two hours a day.

She mentioned something about food, as usual, but I waved and ran down the stairs.

I climbed onto George's motorbike and sat behind him, and we drove down the main streets where bombs fell, where Saudi diplomats had once picked up French prostitutes, where ancient Greeks had danced, Romans had invaded, Persians had sharpened their swords, Mamlucks had stolen the villagers' food, crusaders had eaten human flesh, and Turks had enslaved my grandmother.

War is for thugs. Motorcycles are also for thugs, and for longhaired teenagers like us, with guns under our bellies, and stolen gas in our tanks, and no particular place to go. We stopped at the city's shoreline, on the ramp of a bridge, and George said to me: I had a mashkal (problem).

Talk, I said.

This man, Chafiq Al-Azrak I think his name is, parks his car down from my Aunt Nabila's place. When he leaves, he still reserves the space for himself. I moved the two poles marking his spot so my aunt can park. So she parks, and we go up to have coffee at her place. This Chafiq fellow knocks at my aunt's door and asks her to move her car. It is his space, he says. My aunt says, It is a public space . . . He insults her . . . She shouts . . . I pull out my gun, put it in his face, and kick him out of the house. He runs down the stairs and threatens me from below. But we will show him, won't we, quiet man?

I listened and nodded. Then we hopped back on the motorbike and drove under falling bullets, oblivious. We drove through the noise of military chants and a thousand radio stations all claiming victory. We stared at the short skirts of female warriors and drove beside schoolgirls' thighs. We were aimless, beggars and thieves, horny Arabs with curly hair and open shirts and Marlboro packs rolled in our sleeves, dropouts, ruthless nihilists with guns, bad breath, and long

American jeans.

I will see you tonight, late, George said to me when he dropped me back home. And he drove away.

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Sunday Reading: Broken Government by John Dean

John Dean has been a vocal critic of Republican rule since his role in the Watergate investigation, but his critical examination has reached its highest point during the George W. Bush era, as Dean has authored a series of books detailing the secretive and authoritarian nature of the Bush presidency, aided by its Congressional enablers. His current volume, Broken Government, makes the compelling case that all three branches of the federal government have been overtaken by radical views of power. For those seeking a historical perspective on the mechanisms of power employed by Republicans today, Dean provides a compelling case. He shows that the Bush presidency did not simply emerge from a group of radicals bent on destroying constitutional structures, it is a product of a decades long quest to restore the imperial presidency envisioned by Nixon and his supporters.

Dean's book is divided into four sections: one chapter on each of the branches of government, follwed by a conclusion entitled "Repairing Government." Dean begins with the legislative branch, which he says has become less deliberative and more corrupt and power driven under Republican leadership. As we all learned in civics class, the legislature was designed to be a deliberative body, an open discussion about laws as they were enacted, and a co-equal branch to the executive and judicial in terms of the power it exerted over the reins of government.

Dean explains, however, that prior to the Democrats taking control in 2006 the Congress became less deliberative, and that often debate was stifled or was nonexistent. There was often little public discussion prior to votes, or discussion was limited to a ridiculous amount. When the Congress considered the Military Commissions Act, dealing with the essential question of torture and detainment of US captives, Patrick Leahy expressed his frustration with the lack of debate before the hurried vote: "Over 200 years of jurisprudence in this country and after an hour of debate we get rid of it?" There are other famous examples, like the Medicare bill when the vote was taken in the middle of the night and held open until Republicans had the number of votes they needed. What's worse, the entire work of the Congress was in decline during the GOP years:

Beyond the attenuation of meaningful action and debate on the floor, we have seen as well the decline of committees, and not ony through the disappearance of oversitht. Major bills that in the past would have required weeks of hearings and days of markups are now often reviewed in days of hearings and with little or no visible time spent by the committee on analysis of the legislation line by line...Much of the action now takes place behind closed doors... put together by a small group of staff...and then rammed through subcommittee and committee with little debate. (Mann and Ornstein, quoted by Dean)

Dean explains that the GOP Rules Committee actively shut off debate with closed rules which limited debated, and "shut out Democrats' ability to alter legislation in any fashion". The GOP leadership cared only about winning votes, which meant that they ruled their membership with an iron fist, keeping the party in line so that little or no Democratic involvement were needed to craft or pass legislation. It's no surprise, therefore, that corruption ran rampant in this type of atmosphere: Legislation was crafted by small groups of people with enormous power and control over the budget process, with little time to debate, amend, or even study the fine print of the law.

The Congress also provided little oversight over the executive branch. Dean cites numerous examples of past Congresses and the oversight they exerted over their respective presidential administrations. However, as Dean explains, on a wide variety of extremely contentious issues, the GOP Congress accommodated the President, showing very little interest in any kind of meaningful review:

Congress' neglect of oversight during the first six years of the Bush presidency, ignoring everything from homeland security to the conduct of the Iraq war, from allegations of torture at Abu Ghraib to the illegal surveillance of domestic telephone calls by the NSA, is more than just a failure to uphold the institutional standards of Congress; it borders on complicity.

It would seem that the Congressional leadership simply accepted without question the administration's radical theories on power, theories explained in Chapter Two, which argued that the Congress has little authority in these matters. Even when the Democrats took over in 2007, the oversight has been limited because of the administration's criminal lack of cooperation with any investigation. While the Democrats were able to remove Alberto Gonzalez from office through intense investigations of the US Attorney firings scandal, they were never able--and remain unable--to obtain a clear picture of what happened due to the administration's intransigence and obstruction, their oft repeated claims that they "don't recall".

Chapter Two of Dean's book is marked by prolonged discussion of Dick Cheney's radical view of unfettered executive power. Cheney believes that the power of the presidency has waned since Nixon, and he seeks to restore it. His radical theory on presidential power claims that the Congress has no authority over national security or foreign policy. Dean traces Cheney's role back to the Nixon Administration, but more importantly back to the first Bush presidency, when Cheney as Secretary of Defense argued strenuously that there was no need to seek approval from Congress prior in order to attack Iraq. Indeed, he felt that Congressional approval merely encroached on presidential prerogatives. There is no need to expand here on the theory of the "Unitary Executive", since this radical theory has received wide attention in recent years, but those seeking more insight into its development will find it in Dean's book. The theory of the unitary executive certainly helps explain a wide array of the administration's positions, from its belief that the courts have no authority over prisoners at Guantanamo Bay to their stubborn refusal to cooperate with Congress on matters of oversight.

But the unitary executive theory doesn't apply only to foreign policy and to national security. As Ted Kennedy explained, cited by Dean in this book, the theory would effectively end any independent body that regulates American industry or political life:

Independent agencies such as the FEC created to see that our voting laws are properly enforced and interpreted, would be subject to the president's control. The same is true of the SEC, which is charged with preventing corporate abuses such as we recently saw in the case of Enron...It would compromise the historic independence of the Rederal Reserve Board, giving the president unprecedented and dangerous power to manipulate the economy. It would compromise the mission of every agency created to protect hardworking Americans from the exploitation of those who care only about profits, not the health and welfare and the very safety of their employees. Nor is the impact of this bizarre theory liminted to the independence of administrative agencies. It has a major effect on other assertions of presidential power as well. Discussing President Bush's aggressive claims for an unprecedented executive power in the case of national security Professor Calabresi stated recently that without accepting such a theory "there would be no way that President Bush's anti-terrorism policies could be constitutionally justified."

Dean also explains that the executive has been freed under the Bush presidency from the Independent Counsel law, which expired after the Clinton presidency. The law was greatly abused under the Republican Congress, which assigned independent counsels to investigate numerous areas of President Clinton's leadership. Just as oversight of Clinton was intense and onerous during his tenure, the independent counsel thrived as well. However, due to the abuses of the Independent Counsel law, Republicans and Democrats alike agreed to allow it to expire. This of course has meant that Bush and Cheney have been able to operate with near impunity, with outrageous assertions of law breaking on part of the President, such as torture, have gone uninvestigated. Clearly the expiration of the independent counsel law was the best thing that ever happened to the Bush administration.

When Dean gets to the judiciary, he does a masterful job of tracing the history of increasing politicization of the selection of Supreme Court Justices. Dean argues that this began with Nixon, and has continued right up until the most recent selection of Roberts and Alito, two staunch conservatives who match Cheney's ardent belief in the unitary executive (Kennedy speech above came during Alito's confirmation hearings). Dean divides justices into a series of categories, which it isn't necessary to replicate here, but he tries to understand whether the current conservative majority is "minimalist"--believing in minimal judicial tampering and believing in examining the case at hand, without broad theories to dictate decision making--or "Fundamentalist"--believing in strict construction based on "original understanding" of what was intended by founders at the time the Constitution was written. In practical terms, Dean believes the current court is a mix of conservative minimalists and fundamentalists, and warns of consequences for Americans if the court is permitted to add to its conservative core. In general, Dean believes the court will continue a pattern of restricting Congressional power, eliminating campaign finance reform efforts, expanding the powers of the executive, curtailing civil liberties, and providing corporate-friendly decisions. In terms of abortion law, Dean believes that the court will, rather than overturn Roe, gradually erode it to the point where the original decision is meaningless.

In the fourth chapter, Dean discusses where to go now. He argues that, naturally, citizens must become involved in government and demand changes to bring back effective leadership, but that Americans are apathetic. Dean concludes that apathy is unlikely to change, a rather depressing conclusion. But he says the way to fix the broken government is simply for leaders to return to the proper processes of governance.

Breakdowns in the three branches of the federal government do not call for new government reforms. The breakdowns I have described did not develop because any of the three branches hs fundamentally flawed processes. Rather, as I have made clear, the occurred because contemporary Republican leaders simply do not govern or rule by long-standing and well understood procedures. The solution to the problem is surprisingly simple: Run the government as it is supposed to be run. If Republicans are not willing to do that--and I believe they are not philosophically capable of it--they should not be trusted to control America.

In some ways, Dean's book doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know. Any observer of the last seven years can see that his main points are accurate and fair. But the accumulation of evidence in one volume is certainly powerful reading, and in some senses leads to a sense of despair. Even the change in leadership in Congress has not been enough to rein in this arrogant and reckless presidency. Dean helps us to understand that the other branches of government need to be repaired as well before we will return to any kind of effective American government.

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Sunday Reading: Atonement

I was surprised recently to notice that I had never written about Atonement--could've sworn I had. Ian McEwan's masterpiece is one of my favorite novels by one of my favorite novelists. I've written about Saturday and On Chesil Beach... but I've neglected his best and most famous work. Now that the novel has been made into an intriguing film adaptation (See above), I thought it would be a good time to write about Ian McEwan's Atonement.

This novel is a masterpiece of novel form and feeling. The story is set during World War II. It tells the story of Cecilia Tallis and her family, and her tortured love affair with Robbie Turner. Cecilia's family employs Robbie's mother as a housekeeper, and allow her and Robbie to live in a cottage on their property. Cecilia and Robbie grow as friends, and as Robbie reaches young adulthood her father takes responsibility for Robbie's education. Robbie and Cecilia are friends as they grow up, and they predictably fall in love as they reach adulthood. Robbie struggles with his feelings for Cecilia and writes her a note expressing his sexual frustration, a note which he intends only as a psychological release for himself. The note manages to fall into the wrong hands, however, and his true feelings are exposed.

Eventually Robbie and Celia express their feelings, but the interference of Celia's younger sister Briony creates problems for them. The book turns on a tragic false accusation, to which Briony's testimony is central, when Robbie is accused of rape. In spite of his denials, he is sentenced to prison. When the war begins, Robbie is permitted to enlist to commute his sentence. Cecilia, believing absolutely in Robbie's innocence, becomes estranged from the rest of her family and moves to London.

The remainder of the novel documents Robbie's incredible march to the English Channel with German guns at his back. Any further summary would spoil this novel's denouement, including its shocking ending, once which moved this reader to tears-- silly, childlike tears.

McEwan is credited with psychological astuteness worthy of Austen, and this novel is no exception. His characters are beautifully and carefully drawn. Like McEwan's other novels, he is fascinated with how the lives of ordinary people are transformed by tragedy, with the necessity of men and women to carry on in spite of the permanent, unreversable alterations caused by profound psychological trauma. But McEwan's work is hardly predictable; the tragedies he explores can take the form of random death or violence, natural effects of age and disease, or as in the case in this novel, simple acts of misunderstanding that, when they go uncorrected, ruin people's lives. Atonement is not only about perseverence, but about dreams and hopes, about how art can help to ease the pain of tragedy, and about as the title suggests, how we make up for the pain we cause in others' lives through our own ignorance. In Atonement, however, art is not only the means by which we recover our meaningful lives, but in Briony's case, her imagination is the cause of her pain as well. Set in the background of World War II the novel reminds us of the destructive ends to which the creative imagination can be put as well as its healing effects.

Links:

My features on McEwan's latest, last summer's On Chesil Beach, and the fantastic Saturday

McEwan's site

Review by Laura Miller in Salon

Atonement the movie home page

Expanded excperpt

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Sunday Reading: Last Night at the Lobster

Stuart O'Nan's Last Night at the Lobster is a sensitive and beautifully written novella about working life. The main character, Manny DeLeon, is struggling to hold his team together for the last night of service before the Red Lobster branch he manages is closed for good. Although some of his employees have been chosen to follow him to the nearby Olive Garden where the corporation has reassigned him as assistant manager, the others have no reason to stick around on a snowy New England night. As the snow accumulates, the customers disappear, and Manny is left with a skeleton crew, the ex-girlfriend he pines for, and his thoughts.



Structurally, O'Nan narrates the story chronologically through a work day, beginning the narrative as Manny arrives to open the restaurant and continuing through the lunch rush and the empty dinner hour.

Manny's concerns have less to do with his business and his future, which is secure, than with his complicated personal life. He is expecting a child with his girlfriend, Deena, but has painful memories of his relationship with Jackie, one of his servers what has come to work this last shift. Jackie is also involved with someone else, and has been the one to tell Manny that their relationship can't work, that they have responsibilities elsewhere that prevent them from being together. Manny, meanwhile, holds hope against hope that this last shift can lead to some sort of reconciliation and one last chance for the two of them to be together.

"... I'd love to have that again with you Manny, but it's not possible. And we both know it's not right."

Rodney she means, and now Deena, and the baby. Her life and his, the complications he conveniently forgets. He's always known it was wrong, yet he wants to argue with her--things change, they can do anything they want--but knows she'll only get mad at him, as if he doesn't understand. Maybe he's just being stubborn. They agreed this would be the easiest way; at times he's felt guilty about how conveient it is, walking away clean. Now he's not even sure what that means.

Throughout the novella, O'Nan has a delicate touch, dealing sensitively with the feelings of his characters. The waitstaff has their petty jealousies, arguing about who has the best tables and the most lucrative customers. The kitchen staff has their disagreements, until one of the line workers storms off in a huff, angry as his mistreatment from the head cook, slashing coats with his knife and cracking windshields in a final act of defiance. O'Nan illustrates the pride these workers have, and the greivances that may seem small to others but are important to them.

Manny's day is filled with stresses of work, but also with kindnesses and acts of humility. When a bratty child throws up on the dining room carpet, Manny cleans the mess himself without complaining, and remains calm when the boy's mother complains about the staff. When his bartender asks to leave early, Manny allows it. When an elderly couple comes arrives in the snow, Manny comps their bill. His entire day is about keeping his employees happy and his customers, while maintaining his composure and adhering to an ethic of doing his best up until the last moment of his employment.

All the while, the novel is written in poetic prose, as the opening demonstrates:

Mall traffic on a gray winter's day, stalled. Midmorning and the streetlights are still on, weakly. Scattered flakes drift down like ash, but for now the roads are dry. It's the holidays--a garbage truck stopped at the light has a big wreath wired to its grille, complete with a red velvet bow. th turning lane waits for the green arrow above to blink on, and a line of salted cars takes a left into the mall entrance, splitting as they sniff for parking spots.

One goes on alone across the far vastness of the lot, where a bulldozed mound of old snow towers like a dirty iceberg. A white shitbox of a Buick, the kind a grandmother might leave behind, the driver's side door missing a strip of molding. The Regal keeps to the designated lane along the edge, stopping at the stop sign, though there's nothing out there but empty spaces, and off in a distant corner, as if anchoring the lot, the Regal's destination, a dark stick-framed box with its own segregated parking and unlit sign facing the highway--a Red Lobster.

Terrific short read. Go pick up this honest, real novella.

Links:

Maureen Corrigan's terrific review for NPR.

O'Nan's site with multiple reviews linked.

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