The New Yorker article about Rahm Emanuel was fascinating, but as with most things, my favorite parts are about our president.
Obama's managerial instincts tend toward a looser operation, with lots of staff and outside input. ... [But] early in his Senate career Obama also learned the perils of not having one strong manager in charge. When he arrived in Washington, in 2005, he told one of his senior aides, "My vision of this is having six smart people sitting around the table batting ideas around." A month and a half later, tensions erupted between Obama's Chicago staff and his Washington staff, making it difficult for them to agree on his schedule. Obama was frustrated that no single person was able to make decisions. The aide reminded him, "Don't you remember: 'six smart people sitting around the table'?" Obama replied, "Oh, that was six weeks ago. I'm not on that now."
Yikes... I've enjoyed another cartoon from the New Yorker. It's a trend.
I've never read any of Ian McEwan's novels, but I enjoyed the profile of him in last week's New Yorker nonetheless, particularly this part:
Perhaps the one thing that McEwan shares with his more Romantic peers is a love of the long walk. At sixty, he has probably rambled more miles than any English writer since Coleridge. For four decades, he has canvassed the Lake District and the Chilterns—the chalk hills between London and Oxford. Outside England, McEwan has conquered swaths of the Bernese Oberland, the Atlas Mountains, and the Dolomites. Usually, he walks slightly ahead of a companion, and his knapsack contains two stainless-steel cups and a very good bottle of wine.
That sounds pretty much like the perfect way to enjoy a walk.
I loved this quote from the recent New Yorker article about Marlon Brando (sadly, not online), about Brando's attempts to reconnect with himself/his family in the 80s (emphasis mine):
At home in Beverly Hills, he saw a psychiatrist several times a week, slowly learning to "be the child I never had a chance to be." At the same time, divorced again and the father of nine (by his own count; the actual number is uncertain), he was trying "to get to know my children better." The efforts involved in these two ventures--becoming a child, becoming a father--were rarely compatible.
David Sedaris starts out writing about undecided voters and, as with a lot of recent Sedaris stories--or is this just my imagination?--ends up in a depressing family anecdote.
I told my father that I had voted. "[My mother] let me," I said. "And I picked Nixon."
"Well, at least someone in the family has some brains." He patted me on the shoulder and as my mother turned away I understood that I had chosen the wrong person.