This book may have been of greater interest to non-American readers had Picador published it over a year ago. As it is, saturation coverage of Obama, his life, presidential campaign and his “post-racial” persona plus the rash of post-election books have all combined to create serious reader fatigue. A year-and-a-half since Obama’s election, the first flush of excitement has inevitably receded; most people will now be looking forward to “inside stories” and assessments of Obama’s governance.
As editor of the New Yorker, David Remnick, one of the more thoughtful chroniclers of the Obama phenomenon, is all too aware of these expectations. He has sought to cover that base with an extended epilogue that takes in Obama’s first year in office. That, too, has little new to offer either in terms of reportage or assessment. We know Obama grumbled about not expecting to take charge in an economic crisis of gigantic proportions — he said so publicly; his gaffe over the arrest of an African-American professor from Harvard was reported in minute detail as was the collective cringe moment when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. It is reassuring, however, to discover that Obama does not suffer the sin of triumphalism; informed about the Nobel, the President’s reaction was apparently, “a more elongated and colourful version of ‘shut up’”.
To be sure, Remnick can never be accused of quickie journalism. Those who have read Lenin’s Tomb and Resurrection, his reportage on post-Communist Russia will confirm his ability to combine careful research with truly insightful analysis. The Bridge, a 586-page doorstopper, is no exception. He recognises that the rise of Barack Obama is one of those defining moments in history — Maureen Dowd, a razor-sharp observer of the Washington scene, presciently nicknamed him “The One” — and has sought to capture his journey to the White House through the prism of contemporary American history and politics.
Ironically, Remnick’s strongest competition comes from Obama himself. Anyone who has read or heard him will attest to the fact that Obama tells his own story the best. His two best-selling books, Dreams from my Father and The Audacity of Hope served as eloquent autobiographies and commentaries. Remnick’s book essentially fills the interstices in Obama’s own narratives by providing a more robust historical backgrounding and nuanced reportage.
This is a book of two parts, the more compelling one being Obama’s early life up to and including his time in Harvard. Obama’s search for an identity was complicated by the fact that he did not share the slave heritage of other African-Americans. Remnick has linked the independence movement in Kenya to Obama’s “complex fate”. His Kenyan father came to the US as part of an “airlift” of students in 1963 financed by various American institutions. This was an initiative by the charismatic Kenyan politician Thomas Mboya to educate the country’s brightest young sons in readiness to govern after independence.
Obama’s portrait of his father in his first book hints at serious character flaws amidst a general charisma. Remnick is less reserved. Not to put too fine a point on it, Obama Senior was brilliant, idealistic, maverick, alcoholic and a philanderer. When he married Stanley Ann Dunham, he omitted to disclose that he had a wife and child back home in Africa and another on the way. When he left his American wife and son in Hawaii to study at Harvard, he acquired another American girlfriend (a few months later, Dunham filed for divorce). When he returned to Kenya, he continued with his “overlapping relationships and marriages”, found a job as a civil servant but was rapidly disillusioned by the corruption of the newly independent state and the debilitating rivalry between the Kikuyu and Luo, the country’s two dominant tribes (Obama comes from the Luo tribe). His drink-driving death was a fate that surprised no one, though it impacted his son deeply.
Meanwhile, growing up in multi-cultural Hawaii, America’s newest state, Obama faces mild racism — nowhere near the intensity of the mainland — and his unusual name and mixed racial heritage provided him with a gnawing sense of alienation. As he grew up, he taught himself to be black — changing the way he walked, talked, dressed, listened to music and so on.
More From This Section
Remnick stretches the thread of Obama’s search for a racial identity through the narrative to the presidential race. The more absorbing parts of the book remain Obama’s stint as a community worker (what Indians would call an NGO worker) on the seamy South Side of Chicago and his Harvard years, periods that Obama himself covered only fleetingly but which played a critical role in shaping his world view as a politician.
This magnum opus of “biographical journalism” is likely to find a respectable place on library shelves because it bristles with solid multi-disciplinary research and hours of interviews. Also, Remnick has resisted the kind of dewy-eyed subjectivity that has permeated much of the pre-election reportage of East Coast journalists. The tone of the book suggests that Obama commands Remnick’s respect, but not, thankfully, his objectivity. Only the radical Tea Partiers are likely to pillory him since he does not expend any wordage on their pet project: disproving Obama’s American birth.
THE BRIDGE
The life and rise of Barack Obama
David Remnick
Picador
586 pages; 5.99 pound
