by Garrison Keillor I was at a playground with my daughter the other day, reading "The Two Kinds of Decay" by Sarah Manguso (good book) and watching my girl as she stood at the perimeter of children playing and studied them, exactly as I did when I was a kid, working up the nerve to plunge into the fray. She is braver than I—she plunges. I tended to retreat and have been backpedaling ever since.
I was sitting on a bench in the shade with the nannies and mommies, most of them on cell phones, talking about problem men, problem cleaning ladies, problem mothers, and the woman sitting next to me got up to go see to her child, and then stopped and came back and got her purse out of the stroller and took it with her. I was offended. I am an author, not a purse snatcher. Does a purse snatcher sit on a bench reading the latest Manguso book?
When she came back I wanted to tell her, "I am not a crook," but remembered Richard Nixon saying that and how the very words immediately told you what a liar he was, so I sat and brooded, and then it occurred to me that if you play it cool and don't talk to people, then people are entitled to assume the worst. I hadn't said so much as "Good morning" to her and so she was wary.
The willingness to put yourself out there and let people poke you and examine your teeth and look in your ears and up your nose and trot when they tell you to trot is what good politicians have in common, unlike us writers who are secretive brooders, observers on the perimeter, and what's notable about Barack Obama is that he is both: He has the self-confidence but also the smarts and integrity to put himself down on paper. His is the only candidacy I can think of that was launched by an autobiography. Usually that comes later and is written by a ghost.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-oped0626keillorjun26,0,3557698.column
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