Tonight is your answer

It's hard to concentrate on literary things while history is being made. It felt like watching the end of a war seeing all those people, all those weeping, laughing people in Chicago's Grant Park today. Here's an eloquent article on Salon.com about Obama's win calling it a political and generational transformation, and pointing out that 'Tuesday was the night that the 1960s - the divisive decade that defined American politics for 40 years - finally died.'

McCain in his gracious concession speech referred to the same thing: how far the US had come from those times but how they could still cause hurt, and - I think I understood him correctly - that America electing Obama was a way of assuaging that hurt.

And here's the whole of Obama's presidential victory speech - I recommend watching it if you missed it. His story of 106 year old Anne Nixon Cooper is close to genius. It was one of those incredible moments seeing him speak today (live on CNN) - knowing the words would echo down the corridors of years, and I would always remember sitting in my living room with my daughter and her friend watching Barack Obama deliver them.


Later: Sorry, here's Part 2 of the speech. The 106 year old's story is about 5 minutes in.

Limber Tongue

Few of the stories one has it in one’s self to speak get spoken, because the heart rarely confesses to intelligence its deeper needs; and few of the stories one has at the top of one’s head get told, because the mind does not always possess the voice for them; and even when the voice is there, and the tongue is limber as if with liquor — loud, lilting and Irish, or soothing and French, liquid and Italian, sweet as the Spanish lisp — where is that second ear? No court commands our entertainments, requires our flattery, needs our loyal enlargements or memorialising lies.

Literature once held families together better than quarrelling. It carved a common ancestry from mere air, peopling an often empty and forgotten past with gods, demons, worthy enemies and proper heroes, until it became largely responsible for that pride we sometimes feel in being Athenian or Basque, a follower or a fan. It’s no small gift, this sense of worth which reaches us ahead of any action of our own, like hair at birth, and makes brilliant enterprises possible.

William Gass

Couldn't resist this - it has been sent out just now in the regular newsletter from the International Institute of Modern Letters here in Wellington which is where I did my Creative Writing MA. Nice to be told literature is 'no small gift' when you're slogging away at home to get down two hundred words you're happy with by close of day.

William Gass's words are also apposite now with the United States waiting on the results of the polls with history ringing in its ears. Also ringing will be the stumbling words, the stories, the slippery language, the pleas, the assertions, and the oratory of politicians. One especially, Barack Obama: he of the 'limber' tongue.

US Election

All eyes and all that. As the US prepares to vote for its 44th President, we hear that Obama's grandmother has died - the woman who raised him for eight years. Sad that she won't get to know the results of this election. Meanwhile NBR commentator David Cohen makes a prediction of an Obama win but not of Reagan proportions, wonders about the white Radio NZ line-up to cover the US Election, and suggests the amount of fainting in the Obama crowds might not be entirely accidental. I dunno, David, someone nearly fainted at my book launch - I think it happens in crowds (especially hot or excitable ones -mine was hot), and Obama has been at the centre of a lot of crowds lately. There were apparently 100,000 at his last speech.

Doing a quick trawl on You Tube I found this video made - it says - by a young black film-maker which seems to capture some of the feeling of the black population in the US about this man, Obama. Having said that, I'm always a little sceptical of You Tube stuff like this - it's hard to know where the truth ends and fantasy begins most of the time. Although this offering seems to speak for itself.

For the faint-hearted election watcher, Gordan Campbell on Scoop has produced a useful guide: How to Watch A US Election . Campbell will be reporting live tomorrow as the results come in. Go here for how a NZ writer [Paula Morris] will spend Election Day in the US. And here's a depressing video of average parking-lot Americans discussing Obama's 'terrorist bloodlines' [is it his father's middle name that gets them riled?]

For a good, healthy laugh, spot Sarah Palin and her running mate on a quick trip through NZ. I'll finish with the real thing (well, there's an element of fakery in this too - the two gents are a Quebec comedy duo notorious for prank calls to celebrities). And I'll continue to cross my fingers that, after tomorrow, this dreadful woman gives up and goes back where she came from, and Barack Obama has the win he deserves.

Late Breaking News: Just before midnight Tuesday night our time, a quick google of the US election revealed some polls were already open, and in the small New Hampshire town of Dixville Notch, it has opened and shut and the votes have been counted! The remote town traditionally opens its polls at midnight on election day. For the record, it was 15 ballots for Barack Obama and six for John McCain