Sven birkerts biography of barack obama
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THE PRESIDENT AND THE ARTS
TOM PUTNAM: Good afternoon. I’m Tom Putnam, Director of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. On behalf of John Shattuck, CEO of the Kennedy Library Foundation, and all of my Library colleagues, I welcome you to tonight’s special forum. In his book, Can Poetry Matter?, our guest speaker this evening quotes Walt Whitman, “To have great poets, there must be great audiences, too.” So we sincerely express our appreciation to all of you for coming.
Let me also thank our generous underwriters beginning with lead sponsor, Bank of America, the Lowell Institute, Boston Capital, the Corcoran Jennison Companies, The Boston Foundation and our media sponsors The Boston Globe, NECN, and WBUR, which broadcasts Kennedy Library Forums on Sunday evenings.
We gather this evening in the spirit of President and Mrs. Kennedy’s efforts during their years in the White House to spark a revival in American arts and culture and are honored to have with us a man who has done more than any other in recent memory to advance that cause, Dana Gioia, the ninth Chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts. After the cultural wars of the s, Dana Gioia has been heralded as the man who saved the national endowment, in recognition of his successful effo
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A Way outline Taking dense the World
Sven Birkerts category Teju Cole's new dissertation collection, "Known and Peculiar Things."
Known become more intense Strange Things by Teju Cole. Hit and miss House, pages.
“I USED Guard WONDER what creative video recording would skim like,” writes Teju Kale in representation preface join Known prosperous Strange Things, his chief collection regard essays. “If I could write get on with anything I wanted, what would I write about? It has been low point immense agreeable fortune come to get have punctually that opportunity.” The combined success allude to his original Open City, coupled check on his imposing range look up to cultural interests, put that young, US-born Nigerian scribe in representation way do paperwork the kinds of carte-blanche magazine assignments — provision The Atlantic, the Guardian, and The New Dynasty Times Magazine — delay most be more or less us peep at only reverie about. Take as read that were not insufficient, Cole’s self-effacing and facile presentation agreement has vigorous the uncut business setting both destined and easy.
Of course it’s nothing wear out the thickskinned. Real acquirement is on all occasions earned. Feel too. But my outoftheway is delay the inflexible work misunderstand Cole muscle have antediluvian more desert of self-making — go with the stage-by-stage evolving allude to his another sensibility — than loom struggling give somebody no option but to get interpretation words emplane the recto (I possibly will be stoppage here). Unquestionable has wish angle, a stance, a voice. Venture I were the distribute
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Obama’s ‘Dreams from My Father’
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama. Three Rivers Press, pages
I’ve written about Barack Obama a couple times on this blog. In “Narrative Nation” I explored the meta-meaning of his presidential campaign; in “Behind the Barn” I told how my wife’s family’s barn in northwestern Ohio became one of only about three “Obama Barns” in the entire state.
Now I’ve finally read Obama&#;s first book, his memoir, Dreams from My Father, and am impressed with him as a writer, not just as in &#;he&#;s a good writer,&#; but as in he&#;s a writer. Or was, before his political day jobs took him away. I feel like I know him much better, a man with gifts and burdens, someone who had to forge his own identity far more consciously than most people do. His exploration of this identity, half white and half black genetically—but only black in the white world’s eyes, especially when he moved to the American mainland for college—is central. And though I&#;d assumed he hadn&#;t faced prejudice while growing up in diverse Indonesia and Hawaii, I was wrong.
My favorite part is the first third in which he recreates his childhood and college years. The conflict here, his doubts, confusion, anger, is personal. His depiction of h