Becoming Obama




Image via Vanity Fair

  

My favorite article in the current issue of Vanity Fair was "Becoming Obama", a portrait of young Barack Obama by David Maraniss about Obama's time spent in New York and his relationship with then girlfriend Genevieve Cook. I particularly enjoyed this humanizing glimpse into Obama's feelings of identity crisis at the time:

“Caught without a class, a structure, or tradition to support me, in a sense the choice to take a different path is made for me. The only way to assuage my feelings of isolation are to absorb all the traditions [and] classes; make them mine, me theirs."

And this excerpt from a letter written to Genevieve describing his ritual-like runs:

"I run every other day at the small indoor track [at Columbia] which slants slightly upward like a plate; I stretch long and slow, twist and shake, the fatigue, the inertia finding home in different parts of the body. I check the time and growl—aargh!—and tumble onto the wheel. And bodies crowd and give off heat, some people are in front and you can hear the patter or plod of the steps behind. You look down to watch your feet, neat unified steps, and you throw back your arms and run after people, and run from them and with them, and sometimes someone will shadow your pace, step for step, and you can hear the person puffing, a different puff than yours, and on a good day they’ll come up alongside and thank you for a good run, for keeping a good pace, and you nod and keep going on your way, but you’re pretty pleased, and your stride gets lighter, the slumber slipping off behind you, into the wake of the past."

Agree or disagree with the President's political decisions, admit he is one heck of a writer.