All the President's Reads

One of the criticisms (there were many) of President’s Obama’s relatively brief (ten days, cut short to eight by Hurricane Irene) vacation to Martha’s Vineyard was his reading list, which included Marianna Baer’s Frost, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Daniel Woodrell’s Bayou Trilogy, Emma Donoghue’s Room, Ward Just’s Rodin’s Debutante, Abraham Verghese’s Cutting for Stone, David Grossman’s To the End of the Land, and Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration. (The first two are assumed to have been purchased for Obama’s two daughters. If any of them were assumed to have been purchased for his wife, I haven’t heard.) The criticism, as outlined by Tevi Troy in the National Review, is three-pronged.

“First,” as Troy scolds, “five of the six are novels, and the near-absence of nonfiction sends the wrong message for any president, because it sets him up for the charge that he is out of touch with reality.” Apparently, the reading list of a president (or anyone else?) is somehow an indication of their relationship with reality. If you read nonfiction, you’re engaged in the here and now (even if that nonfiction is a history of the Trojan War? If you’re reading fiction, you’re floating around in some imagined universe of worlds created by the minds of beings not of our planet that have no bearing on our reality. But isn’t that the whole point of summer – especially summer beach – reading, to escape the day-to-day slings and arrows of political assholedom?

Second is the problem of subject. The Bayou Trilogy is a mystery, which is apparently below the dignity of presidential reading (at least openly), I guess because it’s a lesser form of escape. To the End of the Land is about an Israeli woman who walks miles to avoid news of her soldier son, which according to Troy, “could create complications for Obama on the Israel front.” And Room is about a mother and child trapped in a small room, not something a president trying to escape the reality of being trapped in the White House should be turning to. (But wait a minute, don’t these criticisms contradict the criticism above that he shouldn’t be trying to escape . . . ? It’s tough to follow the conservative arguments.)

Finally, Obama’s reading list is, as Troy notes, “mainly liberal books.” According to the conservative blogger Mickey Klaus, it’s “heavy on the wrenching stories of immigrant experiences, something the President already knows quite a bit about.” (Again, that this contradicts the argument that the list represents an escape from reality is apparently not a concern.) Apparently Obama should be including some Ann Coulter or Glenn Beck. Or Dick Cheney. Or Machiavelli. To Troy and Klaus, “the list reveals an intellectually incurious president.” As if he’s never read anything before in his life. Maybe Obama should follow his predecessor’s example and pick up a copy of The Pet Goat? But it might already be in the White House library. And maybe he’s already read it. Just because he’s curious.

I really don’t have any problems with the president’s reading list, except that I fear it’s just another of those empty exercises that all presidents are expected to engage in – what’s the president reading on his vacation? How do we know any president reads any of the books that are touted on their lists? And think about this: Obama’s list includes six full-length books, including Cutting for Stone, which I have on my own to-read pile, and it’s 534 pages long. Are we supposed to believe that he’s going to read all of these books while he’s on Martha’s Vineyard for ten days, while he’s also walking the beach with his wife and kids, golfing, boating, and still keeping regularly briefed on the state of the union and the world? This to me is being “out of touch with reality.”

Mr. President, just pick a book, whatever book you want to read for whatever reason – interest, information, amusement, instruction, escape – and read it when you have the time. And don’t feel you have to tell anyone about it.