Obama as Literary Critic

Edward Mendelson schreibt in der New York Review of Books über einen Kommentar zu T.S. Eliot, den „ein 21jähriger Collegestudent namens Barack Obama“ in einem Brief an seine Freundin lieferte, die einen Aufsatz über The Waste Land schreiben mußte. Mendelsons begeistertes Fazit nicht zu Obamas Politik, sondern zu seiner jugendlichen Literaturkritik:

Having first placed Eliot in his historical and literary context, then having pointed to what is unique in him, Obama ends by showing how he speaks to any individual reader who pauses to listen. This is what the finest literary criticism has always done.