Posted on 10/07/2002 2:07:57 PM PDT by summer
The First Lady Builds a Literary Room of Her Own
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
WASHINGTON, Oct. 6 — David Levering Lewis, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of W. E. B. Du Bois and an eminent black historian who considers President Bush's policies on Iraq "a menace," was flabbergasted when he received an invitation from Laura Bush's office to be the keynote speaker at a White House symposium on the writers of the Harlem Renaissance.
Ursula Smith, who with her partner, Linda Peavy, has chronicled the ordinary lives of the American frontier, was similarly taken aback when Mrs. Bush's office extended an invitation for both historians to speak at a symposium on the women writers of the West. "I didn't think I could with any kind of integrity walk into a White House that I take such exception to," said Ms. Smith, who disagrees with Mr. Bush on Iraq, the environment and many other issues.
And Justin Kaplan, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Mark Twain who says Mr. Bush has a "troglodytic" approach to social and economic problems, was so surprised by his invitation from the White House to a symposium on Twain that he told the aide in the first lady's office he would have to get back to her.
But all four not only turned up in the East Room, they came away startled and impressed by a first lady who is quietly creating her own separate space within a presidency focused on war. While Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, gives the president political biographies and invites like-minded historians to speak, Mrs. Bush has reached out beyond ideology.
"There's nothing political about American literature," Mrs. Bush said in a telephone interview Saturday, acknowledging that some of her guests were not sympathetic to her husband. "Everyone can like American literature, no matter what your party."
Mrs. Bush, a former teacher and librarian who will be the host of the second annual National Book Festival on the lawn of the Capitol this weekend, has so far held three White House events showcasing American literature, all of them open to the press but largely ignored except for reruns on C-Span. "I wish they had a bigger audience," she said. Each symposium — Twain last November, the Harlem Renaissance this past March and the women writers of the West in September — was held on a day when news of Afghanistan or Iraq overshadowed it.
But many participants are convinced that publicity is not Mrs. Bush's primary motive and that the events are rooted in the identity she established before she married into what became an American political dynasty. Certainly the audiences of 200 invited by the White House for the events — District of Columbia high school students, spouses of administration officials, old friends of the first lady — are not designed to impress social Washington or otherwise attract attention.
"I think it probably nourishes her and feeds her," said Patricia MacLachlan, the author of the children's book "Sarah, Plain and Tall," who was a speaker at the symposium on women of the West. "It validates who she is, where she came from and what she values."
Participants have also been surprised by the contents of the two-hour events. Although they do not break academic ground, they are often highly literary and tackle topics, like race, feminism and class, not normally discussed in the formal splendor of the East Room. Mr. Kaplan, for example, bluntly told the crowd last fall that Mark Twain was far more interested in writing about money than about sex.
"It was a kind of pornography of the dollar," Mr. Kaplan said. "He adored money, but at the same time he was terrified of it."
Mrs. Bush always sits in the front row, often nodding and beaming. "I chose Mark Twain to start with because I believe that Mark Twain is the first real American writer," she said in the interview. "I think Mark Twain really talks about everything that is at the crux of what America is, even now."
Participants have also been surprised by the choice of authors, who are always selected by Mrs. Bush. When Patricia Nelson Limerick, a leading historian of the American West and the author of the influential revisionist history "The Legacy of Conquest," was asked to speak about the Western writers Willa Cather, Edna Ferber and Laura Ingalls Wilder in September, she had to read Ferber's "Giant" for the first time — and came away stunned.
"It is quite a penetrating, mocking portrait of Texas rich people, and particularly of people making their money in oil," Ms. Limerick said, adding that she at first could not imagine that the first lady, with her roots in Texas, would have selected such a book for White House discussion. But when Mrs. Bush spoke in her opening remarks at that symposium of Ferber's shock at "the swaggering arrogance of men in 10-gallon hats," Ms. Limerick knew that Mrs. Bush was no stranger to the themes of "Giant."
"I did Mrs. Bush a terrible disservice thinking that maybe she didn't know, that she thought these were all little houses on the prairie," Ms. Limerick said.
Mrs. Bush said she chose the Harlem Renaissance as a topic because she has always loved the poetry of Langston Hughes. Not surprisingly, one guest at the Harlem symposium was Arnold Rampersad of Stanford, Hughes's biographer, who recalled overhearing Mrs. Bush talk informally after the event about what writers she should select for the next symposium.
"She talked about Willa Cather and Katherine Anne Porter," Mr. Rampersad said. "That was the moment when it became very clear that she was seeing this world from the inside, not the outside."
Mrs. Bush, who is currently rereading the memoirs of Lillian Hellman, said she was already thinking of what writers should be next. She said she was toying with the idea of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, but was also thinking of Faulkner, Hemingway and Fitzgerald.
"And I love Truman Capote," she said. "I think he'd be fabulous."
Uh, huh. Tell that to Norman, Joyce Carol and those two affirmative action literati, one of whom, I can never remember which one, got herself a Nobel. And that's just for starters. Even mystery writer and friend of the Presidents Kinky Friedman is political as heck. In this country, everything is political, including fairy tales.
People are said to have a similar reaction upon meeting George W. Bush face-to-face, as well. Their detractors are prepared to meet the liberal press sterotype of this couple only to have their assumptions totally revised upon closer inspection.
James 3:16 "For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere."
Neither can I. She would, of necessity, have to be literate. Mrs Gore's literacy appears to begin, and end, with pop music lyrics.
Yes, we can expect Laura Bush to come out and characterize this hack as she has been described in much of literary press (even the liberal press too) as a "despicable Stalinist." For sure. These Pubbies wanna be loved by everybody, Stalinist, Trotskyist, hippie, yuppie, homeless, homo.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.