October 06, 2002

The First Lady Builds a Literary Room of Her Own

David Levering Lewis, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of W. E. B. Du Bois and an eminent black historian who considers President Bush's policies on Iraq "a menace," was flabbergasted when he received an invitation from Laura Bush's office to be the keynote speaker at a White House symposium on the writers of the Harlem Renaissance...

If books and American literature and culture are your thing, do read the rest of the piece!
Here's my favorite part about the First Lady and Edna Ferber's novel about Texas, "Giant:"

Participants have also been surprised by the choice of authors, who are always selected by Mrs. Bush. When Patricia Nelson Limerick, a leading historian of the American West and the author of the influential revisionist history "The Legacy of Conquest," was asked to speak about the Western writers Willa Cather, Edna Ferber and Laura Ingalls Wilder in September, she had to read Ferber's "Giant" for the first time — and came away stunned.
"It is quite a penetrating, mocking portrait of Texas rich people, and particularly of people making their money in oil," Ms. Limerick said, adding that she at first could not imagine that the first lady, with her roots in Texas, would have selected such a book for White House discussion. But when Mrs. Bush spoke in her opening remarks at that symposium of Ferber's shock at "the swaggering arrogance of men in 10-gallon hats," Ms. Limerick knew that Mrs. Bush was no stranger to the themes of "Giant."

I have loved "Giant," both the book and the movie forever, but I guess being a native Texan has a lot to do with it.
I do think that Miss Ferber's novel vividly immortalizes the people of Our Great State at an important time when was it was "Oil Rich and Outrageous" (the 1930's, 40's and 50's).
Believe it or not, when I set out to buy a copy for my personal library, "Giant" was darn hard to find, even here in Big D!
Maybe someone with the clout of Mrs. Bush can renew interest in (female) American writers like Edna Ferber and then publishers could reprint both "Giant" and her other epic novel of the South "Showboat" for new generations of readers.

Isn't it wonderful to have a First Lady that is interested in things like American authors, good writing, and parents reading to children and not things like One World Health Care and collecting the FBI files of her political enemies?
Thank you, God, for Laura *and* George Bush.