Kucinich memoir Courage to Survive' is a rare treat among campaign tomes

[Algorem]

http://www.cleveland.com/plaindealer/stories/index.ssf?/base/entertainment-0/1196502268203590.xml&coll=2

Kucinich memoir Courage to Survive' is a rare treat among campaign tomes

Sunday, December 02, 2007

Margo Hammond

Books by presidential candidates are as ubiquitous as campaign promises -- and usually just as self-serving...

Only one has been called "as good as Theodore Dreiser." It is also one of the rare books by a presidential hopeful that doesn't dwell on political victories...

His narrative, written with appealing guilelessness, includes an overly macho father who beat him, racism in his mixed working-class neighborhood - Kucinich is pictured on the cover with a childhood friend who is black - and a life-threatening illness that his poverty certainly must have exacerbated. All these features, of course, are familiar to America's underclass. And, yes, it is the stuff of Dreiser novels.

It was Gore Vidal who compared Kucinich to the author of "An American Tragedy" and "Sister Carrie," early 20th-century novels of social realism. Vidal's quote, emblazoned on the cover of "The Courage to Survive," is not as much of a stretch as it might seem...


Hammond, the former book editor of the St. Petersburg Times, now writes at http://www.thebookbabes.com .

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. DK is one of my heroes...

I plan to get this and read it...

Thanks for the reminder...

[dantyrant]

2. Didn't even know about it...

Thanks for the heads-up!