https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/david-garrow-interview-obama

I’ve gotten the sense, from my read of him and from people close to him, that the pose of being a writer is actually one that he prefers in many ways to being a politician.

Oh God, yes. Yes, yes, yes.

So why wouldn’t he want his writerliness to be revealed?

He doesn’t want the writerliness challenged. It’s my story and I’m sticking to it. The book [Dreams] is so fictionalized.

What’s wrong with that? At this point in time, only a very naive person would think of memoir as anything other than a literary genre that is cousin to the novel. It’s not history.

It’s so inaccurate, whether about the dynamics among the guys in Hawaii or what’s going on in the community group on the far South Side. And it completely omits women. I’ve always thought that there’d eventually be a feminist critique of Obama because his mother and all the girlfriends—they’re not there. They don’t exist.

I will say, from reading your book, I had the sense that all of those women seemed like they felt betrayed by him. Even the act of giving you his love letters is itself a tremendously aggressive, hostile act. They knew exactly what his response would be. They knew what they had.

With Alex and Genevieve, it was so far in the past. Sheila is a whole different thing.

With Sheila, you could feel the hurt, but with Alex, you could too. The anecdote that obviously came from Alex about running into Barack and Michelle in Boston or New York on a street—

On Madison Avenue. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

There’s a million ways to be like, “Hi, this is Alex. She’s an old friend from school.” And then, your significant other may say later on, “Oh, did you fuck her?” You say, “Oh, no.” Or “Yes.” Or whatever.

But you don’t cross the street.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5528063&forum_id=2#47657825)

https://x.com/theparasiteguy/status/1789646671468503182?s=46&t=fIiduTBk7J5IhOnHW5xRKg

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5528063&forum_id=2#47658080)