QOTD

[randy_byers]

"In the late 1960s, George Bush Jr was at Yale, branding the asses of pledges to the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity with a hot coathanger. Michel Foucault was at the Societé française de philosophie, considering the question, ‘What is an author?’"

-- Eliot Weinberger, "'Damn Right,' I said" -- a review in London Review of Books of Dubya's new memoir, well worth reading in its entirety (the review, that is)

Comments

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

That's a brilliant analysis of the book's unintentional self-revelations, marred only by the conceit that Weinberger had never read, or even heard of, a ghostwritten political memoir before.

He should watch his comparisons between the book Bush and the real-life Bush, because sometimes the later comes only from rumor or caricature, and I'd like to know his source for stating that Poppy Bush, the one-time fighter pilot, was "actually considered a coward outside of" the family. Poppy's WW2 hero status comported oddly with his later political reputation as a wimp, but I never heard anybody claim he was a coward, certainly not in his military capacity.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I had never heard Bush Sr called a coward either, and I would agree that Weinberger paints with too broad a brush. He probably could have done more with the idea of memoir-by-committee as a postmodern artifact, but mostly it's just an amusing throw-away concept.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

He could have done more with it, but maybe in some other context. As far as the review goes, I'd rather he did less with it. Because once he gets off that and into actually discussing the book's words, this becomes one of the best analyses I've ever seen of what's actually conveyed by a sample of bad or dull prose.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Good point!