En una entrevista con Marilynne Robinson, “President Obama & Marilynne Robinson: A Conversation\u2014II,” el presidente Obama habla de lo que aprendimos de la literatura y por qu\u00e9 es tan importante leer. Tambi\u00e9n ofrece su perspectiva sobre la nueva sensaci\u00f3n de Broadway, “Hamilton” de Lin-Manuel Miranda.
\nPara leer toda la entrevista, sigue este enlace:
\nhttp:\/\/www.nybooks.com\/articles\/archives\/2015\/nov\/19\/president-obama-marilynne-robinson-conversation-2\/<\/p>\n
The President: Are you somebody who worries about people not reading novels anymore? And do you think that has an impact on the culture? When I think about how I understand my role as citizen, setting aside being president, and the most important set of understandings that I bring to that position of citizen, the most important stuff I\u2019ve learned I think I\u2019ve learned from novels. It has to do with empathy. It has to do with being comfortable with the notion that the world is complicated and full of grays, but there\u2019s still truth there to be found, and that you have to strive for that and work for that. And the notion that it\u2019s possible to connect with some[one] else even though they\u2019re very different from you.<\/p>\n
And so I wonder when you\u2019re sitting there writing longhand in some\u2014your messy longhand somewhere\u2014so I wonder whether you feel as if that same shared culture is as prevalent and as important in the lives of people as it was, say, when you were that little girl in Idaho, coming up, or whether you feel as if those voices have been overwhelmed by flashier ways to pass the time.<\/p>\n
Marilynne Robinson: I\u2019m not really the person\u2014because I\u2019m almost always talking with people who love books.<\/p>\n
The President: Right. You sort of have a self-selecting crew.<\/p>\n
Robinson: And also teaching writers\u2014I\u2019m quite aware of the publication of new writers. I think\u2014I mean, the literature at present is full to bursting. No book can sell in that way that Gone with the Wind sold, or something like that. But the thing that\u2019s wonderful about it is that there\u2019s an incredible variety of voices in contemporary writing. You know people say, is there an American tradition surviving in literature, and yes, our tradition is the incredible variety of voices\u2026.<\/p>\n
And [now] you don\u2019t get the conversation that would support the literary life. I think that\u2019s one of the things that has made book clubs so popular.<\/p>\n
….<\/p>\n
Robinson: I think that in our earlier history\u2014the Gettysburg Address or something\u2014there was the conscious sense that democracy was an achievement. It was not simply the most efficient modern system or something. It was something that people collectively made and they understood that they held it together by valuing it. I think that in earlier periods\u2014which is not to say one we will never return to\u2014the president himself was this sort of symbolic achievement of democracy. And there was the human respect that I was talking about before, [that] compounds itself in the respect for the personified achievement of a democratic culture. Which is a hard thing\u2014not many people can pull that together, you know\u2026. So I do think that one of the things that we have to realize and talk about is that we cannot take it for granted. It\u2019s a made thing that we make continuously.<\/p>\n
The President: A source of optimism\u2014I took my girls to see Hamilton, this new musical on Broadway, which you should see. Because this wonderful young Latino playwright produced this play, musical, about Alexander Hamilton and the Founding Fathers. And it\u2019s all in rap and hip-hop. And it\u2019s all played by young African-American and Latino actors.<\/p>\n
And it sounds initially like it would not work at all. And it is brilliant, and so much so that I\u2019m pretty sure this is the only thing that Dick Cheney and I have agreed on\u2014during my entire political career\u2014it speaks to this vibrancy of American democracy, but also the fact that it was made by these living, breathing, flawed individuals who were brilliant. We haven\u2019t seen a collection of that much smarts and chutzpah and character in any other nation in history, I think.<\/p>\n
But what\u2019s most important about [Hamilton] and why I think it has received so many accolades is it makes it live. It doesn\u2019t feel distant. And it doesn\u2019t feel set apart from the arguments that we\u2019re having today.<\/p>\n
And Michelle and I, when we went to see it, the first thing we thought about was what could we do to encourage this kind of creativity in teaching history to our kids. Because, look, America is famously ahistorical. That\u2019s one of our strengths\u2014we forget things. You go to other countries, they\u2019re still having arguments from four hundred years ago, and with serious consequences, right? They\u2019re bloody arguments. In the Middle East right now, you\u2019ve got arguments dating back to the seventh century that are live today. And we tend to forget that stuff. We don\u2019t sometimes even remember what happened two weeks ago.<\/p>\n
But this point you made about us caring enough about the blood, sweat, and tears involved in maintaining a democracy is vital and important. But it also is the reason why I think those who have much more of an \u201cus\u201d versus \u201cthem,\u201d fearful, conspiratorial brand of politics can thrive sometimes is because they can ignore that history.<\/p>\n
If, in fact, you don\u2019t know much about the evolution of slavery and the civil rights movement and the Civil War and the postwar amendments, then the arguments that are being had now about how our criminal justice system interacts with African-Americans seem pretty foreign. It\u2019s like, what are the issues here? If you\u2019re not paying attention to how Jefferson and Madison and Franklin and others were thinking about the separation of church and state, then you\u2019re not that worried about keeping those lines separate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
En una entrevista con Marilynne Robinson, “President Obama & Marilynne Robinson: A Conversation\u2014II,” el presidente Obama habla de lo que aprendimos de la literatura y por qu\u00e9 es tan importante leer. Tambi\u00e9n ofrece su perspectiva sobre la nueva sensaci\u00f3n de Broadway, “Hamilton” de Lin-Manuel Miranda. Para leer toda la entrevista, sigue este enlace: http:\/\/www.nybooks.com\/articles\/archives\/2015\/nov\/19\/president-obama-marilynne-robinson-conversation-2\/ The … Continue reading Obama y la importancia de la literatura<\/span>