This review reminds me of people who say things like “Shakespeare thought that life was a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Who are such people? People who haven’t read Lear… or only read it as an assignment. Which kind of sounds like the attitude that Bruce read with here. I’m glad you provided the context Bruce, because otherwise I would now think much less of you as both a reader and writer than I do. You didn’t want to read it, and in my opinion, you essentially didn’t read it.
Obama rather unflinchingly narrates his own coming to grips with his confused racial identity. It’s a story Bruce is not interested in, and the details of which obviously repell him. That’s natural, because racial identity in the U.S. is a kind of repellant topic, not one that people want to deal with or acknowledge unless forced to, a kind of Un-American topic.
But people who are designated as “black” have to deal with it. And I think Obama gives a great and honest account of this encounter, one that contains all the inherant confusions that it represents. Bruce is taking a “journey” story and treating it like an opinion essay, and pulling themes out of context in an unforgivable way.
Take it from someone who read the book AND does not have Obama as a first choice candidate: This is a truly worthless review, and an unfair extension of criticism to the candidate. But that’s what you get when the reviewer is simply uninterested or perhaps slightly antagonistic to the subject at hand.
As an aside, I dearly love all the wingers who come on to say “yeah, that’s just what I thought that book would be about, and it proves blacks are the real racists, and anyone who votes obama is just a guilt-ridden fool who just wants to elect black people.” What can you expect though when you have Bruce basically saying that the only reason at all that he wants to vote Obama is race-driven.
Whew. It stinks here today.
