Oct 30, 2008

Geoff Nunberg Rates the Presidential Candidates' Reading Lists

From the San Francisco Chronicle
October 30, 2008

Local literati rate candidates' reading lists
By Heidi Benson

If we are what we read, then the books the presidential candidates claim to hold dear present clues to their character. Or do they? ...

We asked a handful of Bay Area authors for their response to the lists; their answers follow....

Geoffrey Nunberg, Author, "Going Nucular: Language, Politics and Culture," professor, UC Berkeley School of Information:

McCain must have settled on these choices a long time ago; has he reread them since then? The Hemingway and Remarque teach that stoicism and sacrifice are heroic but ultimately thankless, Gibbon blames the fall of Rome on the decline of civic virtue and the softening effects of Christianity. They're all books that would flatter a young officer's romantic sense of himself; they would also confirm an old man's darkest suspicions.

How could Obama not have responded to "Song of Solomon," about a young black man searching for his identity in the story of his ancestors? But I wonder which character he identified with in "Moby-Dick." And I can see why the young Obama would have been drawn to Emerson's essay, too: Its Ayn Randish aphorisms would appeal to an uncannily confident self-fashioner: "Trust thyself: Every heart vibrates to that iron string"; "Whoso would be a man, must be a non-conformist."

But if he wins on Tuesday, I hope he'd read it again, particularly Emerson's warning against seeking validation in public approval: "A political victory ... raises your spirits, and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. It can never be so."

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October 4, 2016