Obama’s Secret to Surviving the White House Years: Books
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/16/books/obamas-secret-to-surviving-the-white-house-years-books.html?_r=0
Not since Lincoln has there been a president fundamentally shaped — in
his life, convictions and outlook on the world — by reading and writing
as Barack Obama.
Last Friday, seven days before his departure from the White House, Mr.
Obama sat down in the Oval Office and talked about the indispensable
role that books have played during his presidency and throughout his
life — from his peripatetic and sometimes lonely boyhood, when “these
worlds that were portable” provided companionship, to his youth when
they helped him to figure out who he was, what he thought and what was
important...
Transcript: President Obama on What Books Mean to Him
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/16/books/transcript-president-obama-on-what-books-mean-to-him.html
Transcript: President Obama on What Books Mean to Him
JAN. 16, 2017
Michiko Kakutani, the chief book critic for The New York Times,
interviewed President Obama about literature on Friday at the White
House. Here are excerpts from the conversation, which have been edited
and condensed.
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These books that you gave to your daughter Malia on the Kindle, what
were they? Some of your favorites?
I think some of them were sort of the usual suspects, so “The Naked and
the Dead” or “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” I think she hadn’t read yet.
Then there were some books I think that are not on everybody’s reading
list these days, but I remembered as being interesting, like “The Golden
Notebook” by Doris Lessing, for example. Or “The Woman Warrior,” by
Maxine [Hong Kingston].
Part of what was interesting was me pulling back books that I thought
were really powerful, but that might not surface when she goes to college.
Have you had a chance to discuss them with her?
I’ve had the chance to discuss some. And she’s interested in being a
filmmaker, so storytelling is of great interest to her. She had just
read “A Moveable Feast.” I hadn’t included that, and she was just
captivated by the idea that Hemingway described his goal of writing one
true thing every day.
What made you want to become a writer?
I loved reading when I was a kid, partly because I was traveling so
much, and there were times where I’d be displaced, I’d be the outsider.
When I first moved to Indonesia, I’m this big, dark-skinned kid that
kind of stood out. And then when I moved back from Indonesia to Hawaii,
I had the manners and habits probably of an Indonesian kid.
And so the idea of having these worlds that were portable, that were
yours, that you could enter into, was appealing to me. And then I became
a teenager and wasn’t reading that much other than what was assigned in
school, and playing basketball and chasing girls, and imbibing things
that weren’t very healthy.
I think all of us did.
Yeah. And then I think rediscovered writing and reading and thinking in
my first or second year of college and used that as a way to rebuild
myself, a process I write about in “Dreams From My Father.”
That period in New York, where you were intensely reading.
I was hermetic — it really is true. I had one plate, one towel, and I’d
buy clothes from thrift shops. And I was very intense, and sort of
humorless. But it reintroduced me to the power of words as a way to
figure out who you are and what you think, and what you believe, and
what’s important, and to sort through and interpret this swirl of events
that is happening around you every minute.
And so even though by the time I graduated I knew I wanted to be
involved in public policy, or I had these vague notions of organizing,
the idea of continuing to write and tell stories as part of that was
valuable to me. And so I would come home from work, and I would write in
my journal or write a story or two.
The great thing was that it was useful in my organizing work. Because
when I got there, the guy who had hired me said that the thing that
brings people together to have the courage to take action on behalf of
their lives is not just that they care about the same issue, it’s that
they have shared stories. And he told me that if you learn how to listen
to people’s stories and can find what’s sacred in other people’s
stories, then you’ll be able to forge a relationship that lasts.
But my interest in public service and politics then merged with the idea
of storytelling.
What were your short stories like?
It’s interesting, when I read them, a lot of them had to do with older
people.
I think part of the reason was because I was working in communities with
people who were significantly older than me. We were going into
churches, and probably the average age of these folks was 55, 60. A lot
of them had scratched and clawed their way into the middle class, but
just barely. They were seeing the communities in which they had invested
their hopes and dreams and raised their kids starting to decay — steel
mills had closed, and there had been a lot of racial turnover in these
communities. And so there was also this sense of loss and disappointment.
And so a bunch of the short stories I wrote had to do with that sense,
that atmosphere. One story is about an old black pastor who seems to be
about to lose his church, his lease is running out and he’s got this
loyal woman deacon who is trying to buck him up. Another is about an
elderly couple — a white couple in L.A., — and he’s like in advertising,
wrote jingles. And he’s just retired and has gotten cranky. And his wife
is trying to convince him that his life is not over.
So when I think back on what’s interesting to me, there is not a lot of
Jack Kerouac, open-road, young kid on the make discovering stuff. It’s
more melancholy and reflective.
Was writing partly a way to figure out your identity?
Yes, I think so. For me, particularly at that time, writing was the way
I sorted through a lot of crosscurrents in my life — race, class,
family. And I genuinely believe that it was part of the way in which I
was able to integrate all these pieces of myself into something
relatively whole.
People now remark on this notion of me being very cool, or composed. And
what is true is that I generally have a pretty good sense of place and
who I am, and what’s important to me. And I trace a lot of that back to
that process of writing.
Has that continued to be so in the presidency?
Not as much as I would have liked. I just didn’t have time.
But you keep some form of a journal?
I’ve kept some, but not with the sort of discipline that I would have
hoped for. The main writing that I’ve done during the presidency has
been my speeches, the ones at least that were important to me.
How has the speechwriting and being at the center of history and dealing
with crises affected you as a writer?
I’m not sure yet. I’ll have to see when I start writing the next book.
Some of the craft of writing a good speech is identical to any other
good writing: Is that word necessary? Is it the right word? Is there a
rhythm to it that feels good? How does it sound aloud?
I actually think that one of the useful things about speechwriting is
reminding yourself that the original words are spoken, and that there is
a sound, a feel to words that, even if you’re reading silently,
transmits itself.
So in that sense, I think there will be some consistency.
But this is part of why it was important to pick up the occasional novel
during the presidency, because most of my reading every day was briefing
books and memos and proposals. And so working that very analytical side
of the brain all the time sometimes meant you lost track of not just the
poetry of fiction, but also the depth of fiction.
Fiction was useful as a reminder of the truths under the surface of what
we argue about every day and was a way of seeing and hearing the voices,
the multitudes of this country.
Are there examples of specific novels or writers?
Well, the last novel I read was Colson Whitehead’s “The Underground
Railroad.” And the reminder of the ways in which the pain of slavery
transmits itself across generations, not just in overt ways, but how it
changes minds and hearts.
It’s what you said in your farewell address about Atticus Finch, where
you said people are so isolated in their little bubbles. Fiction can leap —
It bridges them. I struck up a friendship with [the novelist] Marilynne
Robinson, who has become a good friend. And we’ve become sort of pen
pals. I started reading her in Iowa, where “Gilead” and some of her best
novels are set. And I loved her writing in part because I saw those
people every day. And the interior life she was describing that
connected them — the people I was shaking hands with and making speeches
to — it connected them with my grandparents, who were from Kansas and
ended up journeying all the way to Hawaii, but whose foundation had been
set in a very similar setting.
And so I think that I found myself better able to imagine what’s going
on in the lives of people throughout my presidency because of not just a
specific novel but the act of reading fiction. It exercises those
muscles, and I think that has been helpful.
And then there’s been the occasion where I just want to get out of my
own head. [Laughter] Sometimes you read fiction just because you want to
be someplace else.
What are some of those books?
It’s interesting, the stuff I read just to escape ends up being a mix of
things — some science fiction. For a while, there was a three-volume
science-fiction novel, the “Three-Body Problem” series —
Oh, Liu Cixin, who won the Hugo Award.
— which was just wildly imaginative, really interesting. It wasn’t so
much sort of character studies as it was just this sweeping —
It’s really about the fate of the universe.
Exactly. The scope of it was immense. So that was fun to read, partly
because my day-to-day problems with Congress seem fairly petty — not
something to worry about. Aliens are about to invade. [Laughter]
There were books that would blend, I think, really good writing with
thriller genres. I mean, I thought “Gone Girl” was a well-constructed,
well-written book.
I loved that structure.
Yeah, and it was really well executed. And a similar structure, that I
thought was a really powerful novel: “Fates and Furies,” by Lauren Groff.
I like those structures where you actually see different points of view.
Which I have to do for this job, too. [Laughter]
Have there been certain books that have been touchstones for you in
these eight years?
I would say Shakespeare continues to be a touchstone. Like most
teenagers in high school, when we were assigned, I don’t know, “The
Tempest” or something, I thought, ‘My God, this is boring.’ And I took
this wonderful Shakespeare class in college where I just started to read
the tragedies and dig into them. And that, I think, is foundational for
me in understanding how certain patterns repeat themselves and play
themselves out between human beings.
Is that sort of comforting?
It gives me a sense of perspective. I think Toni Morrison’s writings —
particularly “Song of Solomon” is a book I think of when I imagine
people going through hardship. That it’s not just pain, but there’s joy
and glory and mystery.
I think that there are writers who I don’t necessarily agree with in
terms of their politics, but whose writings are sort of a baseline for
how to think about certain things — V. S. Naipaul, for example. His “A
Bend in the River,” which starts with the line, “The world is what it
is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no
place in it.” And I always think about that line, and I think about his
novels when I’m thinking about the hardness of the world sometimes,
particularly in foreign policy, and I resist and fight against sometimes
that very cynical, more realistic view of the world. And yet, there are
times where it feels as if that may be true.
So in that sense, I’m using writing like that as a foil or something to
debate against.
I’ve read that Lincoln loved Shakespeare his whole life, but when he was
dealing with the Civil War, reading the history plays helped give him
solace and perspective.
Lincoln’s own writings do that. He is a very fine writer.
I’d put the Second Inaugural up against any piece of American writing —
as good as anything. One of the great treats of being president is, in
the Lincoln Bedroom, there’s a copy of the Gettysburg Address
handwritten by him, one of five copies he did for charity. And there
have been times in the evening when I’d just walk over, because it’s
right next to my office, my home office, and I just read it.
And perspective is exactly what is wanted. At a time when events move so
quickly and so much information is transmitted, the ability to slow down
and get perspective, along with the ability to get in somebody else’s
shoes — those two things have been invaluable to me. Whether they’ve
made me a better president, I can’t say. But what I can say is that they
have allowed me to sort of maintain my balance during the course of
eight years, because this is a place that comes at you hard and fast and
doesn’t let up.
Is there some poem or any writing or author that you would turn to, say,
after the mass killings in Newtown, Conn., or during the financial crisis?
I think that during those periods, Lincoln’s writings, King’s writings,
Gandhi’s writings, Mandela’s writings — I found those particularly
helpful, because what you wanted was a sense of solidarity. During very
difficult moments, this job can be very isolating. So sometimes you have
to hop across history to find folks who have been similarly feeling
isolated. Churchill’s a good writer. And I loved reading Teddy
Roosevelt’s writing. He’s this big, outsize character.
Have you read a lot of presidential biographies?
The biographies have been useful, because I do think that there’s a
tendency, understandable, to think that whatever’s going on right now is
uniquely disastrous or amazing or difficult. And it just serves you well
to think about Roosevelt trying to navigate World War II or Lincoln
trying to figure out whether he’s going to fire [George B.] McClellan
when Rebel troops are 20, 30, 40 miles away.
I watched some of the civil-rights-movement documentary mini-series
“Eyes on the Prize” after the election.
It was useful.
You do see how far we’ve come, and in the space of my lifetime.
And that’s why seeing my daughters now picking up books that I read 30
years ago or 40 years ago is gratifying, because I want them to have
perspective — not for purposes of complacency, but rather to give them
confidence that people with a sense of determination and courage and
pluck can reshape things. It’s empowering for them.
What books would you recommend at this moment in time, that captures
this sense of turmoil?
I should probably ask you or some people who have had time to catch up
on reading. I’ll confess that since the election, I’ve been busier than
I expected. So one of the things I’m really looking forward to is to dig
into a whole bunch of literature.
But one of the things I’m confident about is that, out of this moment,
there are a whole bunch of writers, a lot of them young, who are
probably writing the book I need to read. [Laughter] They’re ahead of me
right now. And so in my post-presidency, in addition to training the
next generation of leaders to work on issues like climate change or gun
violence or criminal justice reform, my hope is to link them up with
their peers who see fiction or nonfiction as an important part of that
process.
When so much of our politics is trying to manage this clash of cultures
brought about by globalization and technology and migration, the role of
stories to unify — as opposed to divide, to engage rather than to
marginalize — is more important than ever.
There’s something particular about quieting yourself and having a
sustained stretch of time that is different from music or television or
even the greatest movies.
And part of what we’re all having to deal with right now is just a lot
of information overload and a lack of time to process things. So we make
quick judgments and assign stereotypes to things, block certain things
out, because our brain is just trying to get through the day.
We’re bombarded with information. Technology is moving so rapidly.
Look, I don’t worry about the survival of the novel. We’re a
storytelling species.
I think that what one of the jobs of political leaders going forward is,
is to tell a better story about what binds us together as a people. And
America is unique in having to stitch together all these disparate
elements — we’re not one race, we’re not one tribe, folks didn’t all
arrive here at the same time.
What holds us together is an idea, and it’s a story about who we are and
what’s important to us. And I want to make sure that we continue that.
I know you like Junot Díaz’s and Jhumpa Lahiri’s books, and they speak
to immigration or the American Dream.
I think Lahiri’s books, I think Díaz’s books, do speak to a very
particular contemporary immigration experience. But also this
combination of — that I think is universal — longing for this better
place, but also feeling displaced and looking backwards at the same
time. I think in that sense, their novels are directly connected to a
lot of American literature.
Some of the great books by Jewish authors like Philip Roth or Saul
Bellow, they are steeped with this sense of being an outsider, longing
to get in, not sure what you’re giving up — what you’re willing to give
up and what you’re not willing to give up. So that particular aspect of
American fiction I think is still of great relevance today.
---end---
Link Includes Photo
President Obama in the Oval Office on Friday during an interview with
Michiko Kakutani, the chief book critic for The New York Times.
Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times
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Albert Peres
afpe...@3129.ca
416.660.0847 cell
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