Bush reads Camus's 'The Stranger' on ranch vacation

Breitbart ^ | August 11, 2006 | Agence France Presse

[woofie]

absurd

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

"reading the existentialists in the original."

He read nekked? That was a mental picture I did not need.

[Sabatier]

"The same summer he also spent plowing a hillside behind a pair of mules in Tennessee."

Ugh. I don't want to hear about his sex life.

[harrowup]

""He's reading Camus, but he's feeling Sartre (No Exit)."
"That's pretty clever. Kudos."
"Nietsche is peachy, but Sartre is smarter..."

I was going to join in but I can see the whole damn FR Roundtable is here in force tonight ...even the scoo bee doobie doo crowd.

[shrinkermd]

Too bad. The President has been in Washington too long. He now believes he must meet and exceed all other mortals and their self-expectations.

If he wants to read with Laura, he should try "The Slave". A great story. He could then call up Gibson and give him a great movie plot. IB Singer was a great story teller. Wrote in Yiddish no less. Won the Nobel Prize on the basis of this novel. I think Saul Bellow translated the book.

If he wants OJT in crowd psychology, he should read the first 150 pages of "Crowds and Power" . Elias Canetti won the Nobel Prize in early 80's for this one.

Since they were both written by Jews, he might impress the PTB in Israel. They are also great books. Even this Slavophile can see that.

[ClaireSolt]

We all read The Stranger in French and in English, except algore who never went to class. Bush is probably refreshing his memory in an effort to understand the dems who get stranger and stranger every day.

[LurkedLongEnough]

A Minnesota resident with taste would easily catch the reference to Outshined.

Good evening, all.

[ladyinred]

Bush on vacation was a topic of some nut in our letters to the editor. The woman was just furious that he had the nerve to go to his ranch instead of doing his Presidential duties! Worse yet, Laura has the nerve to bum a cigarette or two from workers on the ranch while they are there! The woman was ballistic over that! The Clintons NEVER vacationed you see! (they only traveled more than any first couple in history)

[P-40]

he spent one teenage summer in Cannes

Must have been one wicked case of diarrhea!

[no dems]

Now, that is witty!

(And smart.)

[vikingchick]

The plot of The Stranger, if I recall correctly, is where a Frenchman shoots an Arab to death on a beach and feels no remorse for the crime.

/looking for deep meaning, conspiracy theories, and secret messages sensory off>

[Democratshavenobrains]

Well Scooby Doo can do-do, but Jimmy Carter is smarter!

[EdJay]

The interesting thing for me, in this story, was Tony Snow saying Bush had just read the book recently, on his vacation.

The clear implication is that when he quoted from it last year, he was just reading what some speechwriter wrote for him to say. Which is probably true, but stupid of Tony to admit.

[NewLand]

Bush's detractors are, by and large, empty-headed pretenders.

Including some right here on FR...

[RightWhale]

The same summer he also spent plowing a hillside behind a pair of mules in Tennessee.

while he was inventing TV.

[California Patriot]

I wonder what fool advised this. "The Stranger" is not a great work, and not even a particularly important one. It is simply a short, easy-to-read "classic" -- classic in the sense that it's famous -- that happens to have been read by many "educated" people. Someone who wanted Bush to look more "educated" and thought of "The Stranger" as one of the books the "educated" have read and will recogtnize the title of, must have suggested this. It's indicative of how this White House works. There are so many other short classics, true classics, that Bush could have spent his time reading.