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Gore Vidal, �The American Presidency�

Started August 27 � Finished August 27, 2002; 97 pages. Posted 01 September 2002

Yes, I realize that only a few entries ago I stated that I was going to read nothing but trash for the remainder of the month, and a Gore Vidal non-fiction book on the presidency doesn�t really seem like trash. (Although if I had read one of his FICTION books on the presidency, it would probably still qualify — and I�d probably still be trying to finish it.)

There�s a simple reason for straying from my trash rule — school has started. That is, if you can call going to San Jose State University a school. Since it�s primarily a commuter school, passing through the campus has a feel of walking through a mall. In fact, I had to go to a mall this weekend, and everybody was dressed the same.

It�s nine a.m. and the way everybody is dressed on campus, they look like they�ve been working on their outfits and hairstyles since three this morning. And my god, the majority of people who pass through these hallowed halls seem as sharp as a wet sponge. Here�s some actual snippets of conversation I heard today:

�Man, we just saw xXx for the third time last night! That shit is tight!�

�And then, like, my dad, you know? Like, he gives me forty bucks and tells me to, like, go buy a pair of jeans. And I�m all like, hello? Where? Kmart? I don�t think so!�

�Yeah man, that show was hecka bad. Hecka. Totally hecka bad. It was hecka fun.�

And my personal favorite...

�I played two games, so that was a dollar eighty, plus a dollar eighty... Uh... I�m not sure how much that is.�

I swear I couldn�t make this stuff up even if I wanted to.

Tuesday also finds me with a loooooooong break between classes, so I sat and plowed through this. I read another piece of cultural criticism by Gore Vidal that was informative and interesting, but this really isn�t very good at all. Vidal is all over the place, or at least as much as he can be with the limited number of pages available, and bits of serious history get lost within smarmy jokes about his relatives, of whom seem to involve both Jimmy Carter and Al Gore.

And since this was written during Clinton�s reign, we don�t even get to the most interesting piece of presidential history — Bush jr. vs. Gore. Still though, by the time I got to that period, I was so tired of this book that I was glad for its brevity — that was all it had going for it.


Rating: Hecka bad, dood.

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