Barack Obama's "Dreams From My Father"

I almost abandoned Barack Obama's memoir, Dreams From My Father (published 1995) after thirty pages or so. He is a cool writer, not unlike the character he represents in public life. I sometimes felt that it was only his best face that was put forward -- as if he was running for some kind of office. (The book was published in 1995, I believe before he had attained political office.)

But I kept on. Fortunately, that politico tone doesn't dominate the book. And now I think this is a fairly good book. He's a better writer than I expected.

He describes his boyhood with his mother and grandparents, in Hawaii and Indonesia, his years working as a community organizer in Chicago, and his search for the details and connection to his father's Kenyan family -- the central theme of the book. I felt a kinship with him in my own attempts to learn about my parents, and to stay connected with my Greek relatives and their histories.

His hungering for his African self -- for his Kenyan father, whom he barely knew firsthand -- is good reading.

I finally decided that it was overall a good thing that he's cool as a writer -- he shows us the characters of people around him by how they look, what they say, how their eyes and bodies work.

In the best passage in the book, he finally attends Reverend Jeremiah Wright's church in Chicago and hears a sermon there (he was not an avid church goer to that point, some time in his early 20s). He repeats a portion of Wright's sermon: "The audacity of hope! Times when we couldn't pay the bills. Times when it looked like I wasn't ever going to amount to anything...at the age of fifteen, busted for grand larceny auto theft...and yet and still my momma and daddy would break into a song...Oh yes, Jesus, I thank you...."

And then Obama concludes the chapter on Chicago like this: "And in that single note --hope!--I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones...As the choir lifted back up into song, as the congregation began to applaud those were walking to he altar to accept reverend Wright's call, I felt a light touch on the top of my hand. I looked down to see the older of the two boys sitting beside me,his face slightly aprehensive as he handed me a pocket tissue. Beside him, his mother glanced at me with a faint smile before turning back toward the altar. It was only as I thanked the boy that I felt the tears running down my cheeks."

It must have been wrenching for Obama to reject Reverend Wright earlier this year, when Wright gave that sermon about God damning America. But Barack Obama did it. As far as we know, he took his family and left.

As far as what the book says about him as a potential president, I can think of three things.

1. He trusts subordinates and other people. More than that, he promotes other people, putting them forward to accept the glory, as he does with his fellow organizers, whom he was managing in Chicago. (And sometimes he puts unprepared people forward to face a hot crowd, while he stays somewhere in the background.)

2. He believes in collective solutions to problems. But they don't have to be governmental solutions. His organizing days involved work with private community groups, often trying to motivate and organize neighborhoods to work on their own.

3. He naturally empathizes with people, and is able to understand and argue an issue from more than one perspective. With a white mother and a black father, this must come naturally to him.

Gutenberg! the Musical!-- a workshop idea stretched into a paying show

The New Repertory Theater's Gutenberg! the Musical! is about a pair of young actors who want to put on a brilliant musical. They need producers and financial backing, and we, the audience, serve as the producers for whom they audition the show. What follows is a frantic spoof of musicals and musical songs and story lines.

I appreciate the idea to give new and "cutting edge" (dreaded phrase) productions a chance, I like the energy and talent of the two actors, and I like the idea of getting some laughs. But this is a poor thin show. It feels like a college theater workshop idea that's been stretched into a show that people are expected to pay for.

I did get the premise, that these guys are spoofing musicals. How could you not get it? They explain it to you. But no amount of screeching, dancing, frantic gestures and diving around can hide the miserable story line, the empty songs that are supposed to be ironic and funny, and the labored cliches presented as new. They simply copied bad musical shtick. And did we need all the sight gags about masturbation? This must be the result of theater people raised on Betty's Summer Vacation. If they shorten it to 15-20 minutes, well, that might work.

We left at intermission. We like the New Rep a lot, and have been attending their shows for years. But we left at intermission.