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/lit/ - Literature

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16986428 No.16986428 [Reply] [Original]

Thoughts on Obama's taste in literature?

>> No.16986460

>>16986428
Generic, but pretty good. Invisible Man is excellent.

>> No.16986469

F Scott FitzGgerald was a great prosaist. His sentences are some of the best constructed by any modern writer. It's a shame he only ever wrote iterations of the gg though.

>> No.16986478

>>16986428
Nothing on this list is bad, but it's very plain and safe.

>> No.16986481

>>16986428
kek i read most of these in high school

is that when he stopped reading new books

>> No.16986501

>>16986428
N

>> No.16986511

>>16986428
At least he likes Faulkner.

>> No.16986714

>>16986428
Pretty bland standard taste, probably all just things he read in college.

>> No.16986722

>>16986428
decent

>> No.16986800

I thought you guys hated Obama.

>> No.16986824

>>16986428
What’s his list for nonfiction?

>> No.16986826
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16986826

>>16986800
Nah we love Obama, we just rag on him. We're probably the only ones who read his biography.

>> No.16986831

Nabokov was completely right about Faulkner.

>> No.16986833

Pretty standard stuff

>> No.16986842

>>16986831
yes, but if you swallow the corn-cobby pretensions whole, which Nabokov declined to do, you're still left with near-immaculate novels.

>> No.16986865

>>16986428
I'm glad that he liked what he read for school.

>> No.16987007

>>16986428
Not bad. I think there's a temptation to mock him for being so conformist with things you're "supposed to" read. But if he had some more obscure interests, we would all but certainly be attacking him for being an autist over it. He's probably the most /lit/ President this generation. But it's not like there's serious competition for that title when looking at all the post-FDR politicians.

t. diehard republican who hates Obama

>> No.16987032

>>16986831
No, just like one of the many wrong opinions he held.

>> No.16987037

>>16986428
nothing surprising, overall good

>> No.16987063

>>16986428
Reminds me of the old /mu/ meme
>I LOVE Jazz
>Miles Davis, Coletrane, the list goes on and on...

>> No.16987069

>>16986831
Nabokov is wrong about basically everything about American literature

>> No.16987077

>>16987063
i like that meme too, this doesn't look anything like it, though.

>> No.16987102

>>16987069
No surprise, Deleuze understood it pretty fucking well, which is nice

>> No.16987167

>>16986428
The books are good, but they show that Obama only read what he was told to read by his teachers.
There is no eccentric choice, nothing unexpected, nothing that reveals the presence of a soul, which is unsurprising, considering that he, being a successful politician, obviously lacks one.

>> No.16987181

>>16987167
>for understanding america
not weird he wouldn't throw in an eccentric one.
also, pretty sure this is from when he was president, so i'm sure they wouldn't have allowed that

>> No.16987233

>>16986428
I think that Lee Child's 'Reacher' character is quite interesting; formulaic, certainly, but as Barack lists books one should, in his opinion, read in order to understand America ... well, the (ex) army angle is something to look at.

>> No.16987235

>>16987181
"They" wouldn't have allowed Wallace Stevens? Emily Dickinson? Thomas Pynchon? Emerson? e.e. cummings? They who? The joos? Fuck off. That list is high-school tier and Obama is the most perfect incarnation of the intellectual-yet-idiot.

Sorry, but he is not "cultured". He couldn't even pronounce Martha Argerich's name when he gave her a medal.

>> No.16987258

>>16987235
way to actively misinterpret what i was saying, i was referencing his PR department, fucking obviously.
also, not one of them are "eccentric choices"

>> No.16987266
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16987266

>>16986428
People laugh at his college take on Eliot but it's not bad.

>> No.16987278

>>16987235
Literally all those authors, bar pynchon, are high-school tier

>> No.16987279

>>16986428
Based. Solid African American Lit-Core with Ellison & Morrison.

Very american but what else would a president read?

>> No.16987489

>>16986428
It's not his taste, it's a reading list for "understanding America." And in that regard it's pretty good.

>> No.16987665

Did Obama read Guenon?

>> No.16987733
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16987733

>tfw Obama read more than most people on /lit/ in college

>> No.16987878

>>16987733
I'm starting to get really annoyed at how safe all the books he's naming are.

>> No.16988370

>>16986865
This

>> No.16988425

>>16987733
Surprise surprise, people who attend Harvard usually read a lot.

>> No.16988449

>>16986428
>Philip Roth
>Obama likes the book about a black guy pretending to be a Jew who gets cancelled for racism for using the word "spook"

>> No.16988450

Obama was literally a CIA plant to make all the wars more appeasable to the public. Literally started 3 more shadow wars and killed tons of kids via drone. Continued the bush era tax cuts and no one said anything about it.

In a rational and decent world, like the last 5 presidents, he would be lined up and executed for treason to mankind. I don’t give a shit what that bloodthirsty fag reads

>> No.16988535

>Just about anything by Hemingway or Faulkner
wtf I love Obama now

>> No.16988538

>>16986481
maybe he got busy becoming a lawyer then senator then president

>> No.16988548

>>16986800
Word on the street is that Obama posts here.

>> No.16988553

>>16986428
This is so fucking basic it reeks of a pseud afraid someone will judge him. I’d expect an educated person in his 50s to have at least one non-cookie cutter bullshit book.

>> No.16988556
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16988556

>>16986428

>> No.16988564

These are all good choices, unfortunately our education system is so poor that high schoolers are too stupid to read books like these and get anything out of it. I think it may be too late to salvage reading for high school; if you’re a reader, you’ll know. If you’re not, I don’t think books will help you and you probably don’t need them for what you’re going to do in life and how you’re going to live

>> No.16988571

>>16987878
Yeah, it’s not like these are bad books but you supposedly read this massive amount and at no point you stumble into anything relatively weird or edgy that couldn’t be found on a school’s reading list? Either he’s a massive phony and isn’t willing to admit what he actually read, or it’s all true and he’s a massive pseudo, or this is all fake bullshit and he’s just another dumb lying nigger.

>> No.16988581 [DELETED] 

>>16988571
Fuck off cock sucking nigger lover

>> No.16988582

>>16986469
Too true. Fitzgerald sentences always seem almost lyrical when he really gets into it. Read May Day for an underrated short novella by him

>> No.16988596

>>16988571
>he's a massive phony and isn't willing to admit what he's actually read
It's this one. Every single president we've had in the last 50-100 years has lied about the actually interesting books they've read. There was a big controversy in the early 1980s when Reagan privately mentioned a real author (Frank Meyer) who he liked, as Meyer had views that were not quite normal enough.

>> No.16988602

>>16987037
That’s the problem, it’s too unsurprising, you’d have to be a robot being fed school reading list algorithms for this to actually be your favorites.

>> No.16988607

>>16988538
absolutely retarded take

>> No.16988620

>>16988596
Makes sense. Fuck normie honestly dude, I get these people are basically actors but I’d at least like to know what theyre reading.

>> No.16988633

>>16987878
I think you're just mad because this guy actually read these books and did something important and influential with his time but you read all these really obscure books to inflate your ego while you jerk off and toil away at Five Guys

>> No.16988636

>>16988556
lol

>> No.16988639

>>16988556
Keked and saved.

>> No.16988651

>>16988556
>let me be clear
it's the little things

>> No.16988660

>>16986428
>Obama on the increased use of drone strikes on non-combatants
> Wake up to reality! Nothing ever goes as planned in this accursed world. The longer you live the more you will realize that the only things that truly exist in this reality are merely pain, suffering, and futility. Listen... Everywhere you look in this world, wherever there is light, there will always be shadows to be found as well. As long as theres a concept of victors, the vanquished will also exist. The selfish intent of wanting to preserve peace, initiates wars and hatred is born in order to protect love. There are nexuses, casual relationships that cannot be separated.
Will there ever be a more based president?

>> No.16988687

>>16986428

Non-threatening and overly verbose with a sprinkle of black America. Just like the man's public persona. Cringe yet consistent.

>> No.16988766

>>16988425
>2020
>still thinking the ivymeme means shit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35vY_c6h23I

>> No.16988883

>>16986428
Boring

>> No.16988927
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16988927

>>16988766

>> No.16989179

>>16988660
Sounds like pseud bullshit to justify killing kids

>> No.16989189

>>16988660
Also, Obama didn’t write that, fool

>> No.16989212

What non-meme book would you like to see your president to shill?

>> No.16989213

>>16986428
High school tier

>> No.16989286

The Beatles
Bob Dylan
The Eagles
Frank Sinatra
Leonard Cohen

>> No.16989296

>>16989212
Bill Clinton had "The Denial of Death" in his top 25. When I found that out I forgave the whole Epstein thing

>> No.16989498

>>16989212
I dont care if Mitterand is a nazi or a commie, I think he said Les Deux Etendards was his favorite book and he's based for that

>> No.16990839
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16990839

>>16986800
obama creeps into lit and mus to drop his bland taste on books and music to troll

>> No.16990989

>>16986428
Someone else chose that list for him

>> No.16991283

>Roth

Lol. This is the only telling one. Obama is neurotic confirmed.

>> No.16991459

>>16986428
very bland, any high-school literature book will give you about the same results. it was probably crafted that way to be relatable.
which books does orangeman like?

>> No.16991652

>>16988538
Studying American Law tends to have a lobotomy oiling effect on people.

>> No.16991703

>>16991459
The Art of War

>> No.16991712

>>16991459
What high school gives out Roth to read? Kek

>> No.16991724

>>16991459
The Fountainhead

>> No.16991725

>>16986800
That’s /pol/ I think.
This list is a lot more based than it ought to be.

>> No.16992237
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16992237

I haven’t read “The Waste Land” for a year, and I never did bother to check all the footnotes. But I will hazard these statements—Eliot contains the same ecstatic vision which runs from Münzer to Yeats. However, he retains a grounding in the social reality/order of his time.

Facing what he perceives as a choice between ecstatic chaos and lifeless mechanistic order, he accedes to maintaining a separation of asexual purity and brutal sexual reality. And he wears a stoical face before this. Read his essay on Tradition and the Individual Talent, as well as Four Quartets, when he’s less concerned with depicting moribund Europe, to catch a sense of what I speak.

Remember how I said there’s a certain kind of conservatism which I respect more than bourgeois liberalism—Eliot is of this type. Of course, the dichotomy he maintains is reactionary, but it’s due to a deep fatalism, not ignorance. (Counter him with Yeats or Pound, who, arising from the same milieu, opted to support Hitler and Mussolini.)

And this fatalism is born out of the relation between fertility and death, which I touched on in my last letter—life feeds on itself. A fatalism I share with the western tradition at times. You seem surprised at Eliot’s irreconcilable ambivalence; don’t you share this ambivalence yourself, Alex?

>> No.16994138

>>16988596
I wonder what authors are super popular among the elite but are hidden to the plebs.

>> No.16995270

>>16989179
based dumbass