WSTFPR?* or Why I Love the New York Times Book Review

June 2, 2008

*What should the future President read?

The New York Times Book Review asked a handful of writers to recommend books for the presidential candidates. (JFK photo from Conelrad.com)

I love love love Junot Diaz’ words and John Irving and Francine Prose are pretty wonderful, too.  And then there’s Gore Vidal…

Here are some of the higlights:

LORRIE MOORE

For Obama: “The Portrait of a Lady,” by Henry James. A virtuous orphan is plotted against by a charming, ruthless couple the orphan once trusted and admired.

For Clinton: “Macbeth,” by William Shakespeare. The timeless tale of how untethered ambition and early predictions may carry a large price tag.

For McCain: “Tales From the Brothers Grimm.” In case more are needed.

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JUNOT DÍAZ

I believe in books as only a deep reader can, but even I cannot imagine that any book would change any of our candidates. But just in case:

McCain: War Hero needs to read his fellow Vietnam vet Joe Haldeman’s novel “The Forever War.” 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. Perhaps Haldeman’s marvelous novel will crack Pharaoh’s heart. But don’t bet on it.

Hillary: What to recommend to a driven, brilliant, flawed woman who has no problem threatening to obliterate Iran, should they attack Israel? I recommend Peter Balakian’s “Black Dog of Fate,” in an attempt to cure her of her genocidal impulses. Armenians know all about being “obliterated,” and perhaps that nation’s suffering and miraculous survival will crack Pharaoh’s heart. But don’t bet on it.

Obama: A warrior-hearted black man running for president in a country that bends over backward to deny its white supremacist tendencies? Now here’s a cat who truly is an optimist, who really believes. For the honorable senator I recommend Leslie Marmon Silko’s “Ceremony,” a) because it’s a perfect novel about our country and b) because “Ceremony” is all about love and hope, and Senator Obama is going to need a ton of both to get through this one with his warrior-heart intact.

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JOHN IRVING

…And poor old John McCain — who is even older and more old-fashioned than I am — should be forced to read Evan S. Connell’s “Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Bighorn.” With all due respect for Senator McCain’s military education and his heroic service in Vietnam — and as truly dumbfounded as I am by his support of the war in Iraq — I sincerely urge Senator McCain to read Connell’s brilliant account of the utter folly of Gen. George Armstrong Custer and the Battle of Little Bighorn. With any luck, and stubborn though he is, he might learn that engaging the enemy isn’t always such a swell idea.

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FRANCINE PROSE

I’d advise all three candidates to take a brisk march through the Norton Anthology of American Literature, as well as certain American classics, for a crash (or refresher) course in who — as a nation — we are, and how we got to be this way: Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards for a notion of how important it is to resist our country’s periodic eruptions of harsh, punitive Puritanism; “Moby-Dick” for (among other things) a warning about the dangers of fanaticism and monomania; Walt Whitman for his passionate humanism, his celebratory spirit, his love of the physical and of the body; Emily Dickinson for an essential dash of mystery and beauty; “Huckleberry Finn” for its wit, its trenchant social analysis, its moral conscience; and the sermons of Martin Luther King for a model of the heights that rhetoric and oratory can reach. Finally, I’d suggest they read Fanny Trollope’s “Domestic Manners of the Americans” and Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72” as helpful reminders of the fact that someone with a bracing sense of humor and a highly developed consciousness of the absurd is (whether they know it or not) always present, always watching everything they do.

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GORE VIDAL

I can only answer in the negative: I want them not to read The New York Times, while subscribing to The Financial Times.

Read the entire article here.