The Primer, Reality Hunger, and the President

I've only read two books since I went back to school: The New England Primer (which, thank-you-very-much, was an answer I got right while watching Jeopardy! two days ago) and Reality Hunger by David Shields. The Primer is pretty self-explanatory: it's an early, intrinsically American textbook, containing ABC pictures and little prayers, etc. Examples:

David Shields' book, is a whole different thing, however. It's...brace yourself...creative. On the whole, I don't love the book and after dissecting it for its (maybe?) true purposes in class, I can't bear to hate it. Basically, Shields is interested in appropriation, collective art, collage, and breaking conventions. He says that he's sick of novels and plays with broad concepts like memory, interpretation, and culture. The most exciting thing about the book is that his bibliography is less than thorough, and he suggests that you cut the pages with the cited sources out on the dotted lines. They actually have dotted lines. Both charming and annoying are the chapter headings which are all letters of the alphabet--one of the few similarities the text shares to the Primer. The chapters are broken into "passages" which range from deep one-liners to extensive lists. I'd recommend borrowing it from the library instead of purchasing your own copy because you might really, really like how he deconstructs the rules of the academic academy. Or, you might think he's a little too pretentious to have so many books on sale.

And on to a semi-unrelated subject: The President.

The president of the United States addressed Congress and the country tonight. Did you watch it? Probably not because Americans seem to have given up on politics. We say politicians are corrupt. We say there's nothing we can do to change things. We say politicians don't use their power to change things. Whatever. I think that is the wrong way to think about the situation, but I'll digress because that isn't what I wanted to talk about. I want to talk about the monumental changes that have taken place in our country since its start. Warning: things are about to get sentimental.

At the start of this country, Europeans justified racism against the indigenous population in part due to their technological "superiority". They justified racism against Africans stolen for slavery in a similar way, even developing a "science" to find whites to be the intellectually superior "race". And I know it took too long for the slaves to be freed. And I know it took too long for African Americans to get the right to vote. And I know it took way to long for schools to be desegregated. But look, the fact that the people of this country elected a black man to be president is something monumental, especially when considering the bigotry, racism, and prejudice that shape the United States today and have shaped the Americas  since the time of Columbus and the Conquistadors.

When I watched the speech tonight I was overcome with emotion because of huge change. You can rant and rave about how Obama hasn't done anything he promised to do or about how politics is a waste of time, but there has been change under the latest president, and it has been a great change in the moral constitution of this country.

Frustrated with politics? Check out this website as hope for the future.