President Bush spent some of his 10-day vacation at the Crawford, Texas, ranch reading Albert Camus’ 1946 novel “The Stranger,” according to White House spokesman Tony Snow. Snow said, “I don’t want to go too deep into it, but we discussed the origins of existentialism.” Early last year, Bush quoted Camus as saying, “Freedom is a long-distance race.” Anybody feel like reading into Bush’s choice of reading?
John Dickerson at Slate did: “Does his experience in Iraq push him to read works replete with themes of angst, anxiety, and dread? Was the president trying to gain insight into the thinking of Europeans who are skeptical of his plan for democracy in the Middle East, founded as it is on the idea of a universal rational essence that existentialists reject? Did he just want to read something short for his truncated vacation? This may be the first time that national security demands an official version of literary criticism. We want a book report!”
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd couldn’t resist reading into it, either: “If you think about it long enough, though, it begins to make a sort of wacky sense. ‘The Stranger’ is about the emotionally detached Meursault, who makes a lot of bad decisions and pre-emptively kills an Arab in the sand. Get it? Camus’ protagonist moves through an opaque, obscure and violent world that is indifferent to his beliefs and desires. Get it?
“If there was ever a moment when this president could regard the unanticipated consequences of his actions, behold the world littered with the very opposite of what he intended for it and appreciate the gritty stoicism of the philosophy of absurdism, this is it.”
Posted by Rhonda Holman
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16 Comments
For national security reasons Bush has been ordered to read books that don’t have pictures or are about goats. That way he’ll get off his ass and do something if America is attacked.
Guitars are out too, in case of flooding.
It’s been a while since I read “The Stranger” (25 years or so), but it was a great book.
I think Maureen Dowd might have read the first page of the Cliff’s Notes.
Can Dubya pronounced existentialism?
Yep!
W liked the part where the guy kills an Arab.
I don’t think this project would take the entire summer if he turned the book rightside up.
Maybe everyone is overthinking this. Maybe, just maybe, it is only a case of Georgie likes the pictures.
Looks like we found the person that reads Dowd…and has actually paid to do so…
See Spot run.Run, Spot run…..
President Bush’s first mistake was believing that we could spread democracy through force of arms. America has to leave Iraq sometime, and when we do the power vacuum in Iraq will be up for grabs by any number of factions ranging from native Shiites, Sunni groups vying for power or worse; Iraq may fall to the influence of the fanatical Iranian government leaving a once secularistic nation to become radicalized and gain monumental amounts of $$$ from Iraq’s oil reserves. You see, at present Iran has us in a catch 22.There are only two possible actions we can take: stay in Iraq and suffer more dead American soldiers. Or leave and in doing so basically roll out the red carpet for Iran to take over. (which it would easily accomplish due to the weakness of the fledgling Iraqi government and ever growing anti U.S. and Israeli sentiment thanks to Olmert’s misadventures in Lebanon.) Either way, this whole war ends in Iran’s favor not in ours.
My 2 cents
Bush can read!?Wow! That’s definitely a step up!
I find it interesting that the president, in reading The Stranger, chooses a book about someone who commits suicide as a response to his mother’s death. And that he is interested in the “theatre of the absurd” class of literature. Is there a hidden meaning within his choice?
>a book about someone who commits suicide as a response to his mother’s death<
Wow. I guess you and MoDo read the same Cliff’s Notes. I thought lefties were supposed to be the literate ones.
remember when they asked him what his favorite book was, he said the bible.thats cos he cant read.he goes to church and listens(i doubt he even absorbs much)but im guessing he counts that as reading.supposedly he read”Hamlet” & “Macbeth.”
he doesnt even lie well.youd think the WH would hire someone to teach him to lie better.
wonder if he ever gets past the first page of any of these books he reads.
anyone hear the part where he said he has an “epileptic book list” ?
bush read 60 books this summer ???http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/08/23/bush-a-man-of-letters/
where does he find the time?http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/no-way-in-hell-president-_b_27926.html
Bradhttp://911review.org
TRACY SAYS…”There are only two possible actions we can take: stay in Iraq and suffer more dead American soldiers. Or leave and in doing so basically roll out the red carpet for Iran to take over.”
Yea,i am thinking that …Maybe they thought about this before entering Iraq ?
This is a MUST see.
Bush TRYING to read Twas the Night Before Christmasvideohttp://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/12/20021217-4.v.html