英語学習者が読みやすい本

釣りタイトルみたいになっていますが、Bob WoodwardのFearを読んでみた率直な感想です。彼の本はとても読みやすく今が旬ですので、トランプのはちゃめちゃさにアレルギーがなければオススメできます。

なぜ読みやすいのかは、以下のような書評が述べているように分析的な話はせずにWoodward’s flat, reportorial tone / Woodward’s words are quotidianとあるように、起こったことを淡々と書いているからでしょう。この本にあまり興味がない方はNew York Timesの編集長だったJill Abramsonの書評がバランスよく書いているのでこの書評を読むだけでもいいかもしれません。

Bob Woodward’s meticulous, frightening look inside the Trump White House

September 6

Jill Abramson

In his previous books about eight presidents, Woodward has always eschewed making judgments or inserting his own analytic spin. His insistence on relying on dialogue drawn from interviews has prompted harsh assessments from various critics, including the writer Joan Didion, who famously called him a “stenographer.” (A reviewer for The Post, writing about his book “The Price of Politics,” described his style as the “literary equivalent of C-SPAN3.”) But these days Woodward’s flat, reportorial tone seems like the perfect antidote to the adversarial roar on Fox or Twitter. The authority of dogged reporting, utterly denuded of opinion, gives the book its credibility.

****** 

Fear review: Bob Woodward's dragnet descends on Donald Trump

The Watergate reporter has written another sober, must-read dissection of corruption and rot at the White House

Lloyd Green

Sat 8 Sep 2018 06.00 BST 

Like Joe Friday on Dragnet, Jack Webb’s television classic, Woodward’s Fear is big on facts and short on hyperventilation. It is not Fire and Fury redux or Omarosa 2.0. Rather, it is a sober account of how we reached this vertiginous point. Woodward’s words are quotidian but the story he tells is chilling. Like Trump himself, the characters that populate Woodward’s narrative are Runyonesque and foul-mouthed.

Woodward has always eschewed making judgments or inserting his own analytic spinについては、著者本人は価値判断は読む人に委ねていると語っています。そうは言っても、トランプのとんでもな振る舞いのエピソードをこれでもかと盛り込んでいるので、十分に価値判断をしていると思います。。。

Trump ‘doesn’t understand the basics,’ says ‘Fear’ author Bob Woodward

Sep 13, 2018 6:25 PM EDT

Judy Woodruff:

So, congratulations on the book.

There is something jaw-dropping on virtually every other page.

Bob Woodward, did you come away believing that Donald Trump is not fit to govern?

Bob Woodward:

See, that that's not for me to judge. That's up to individuals in the political system.

As a reporter, having done this, this is my ninth president. And the goal is to really understand, what's happening behind the scenes, what's real? What are the motives? Who is this person? Where is the advice coming from? And, ultimately, what does it mean for the country?

But that's not for me to decide. So, I step back on that.

読みやすさのもう一つの要因は、本の内容がニュースになっていて事前にある程度流れを把握していることもあるかもしれません。ニュースで出ていた発言が登場すると「おおっここなのか！」となります(笑)

そうなるとあえて読まなくていいじゃないかとなります。確かにそうですが、本を読むとYou might have already sensed this, but you didn’t know it with such nauseating specificity.とより具体的にトランプ政権の酷さを感じることができるのです。

September 24, 2018 Issue

With “Fear” and Trump, Bob Woodward Has a Bookend to the Nixon Story

Almost half a century later, the ghost of the scandal that launched Woodward’s career haunts the Trump White House.

By George Packer

No one has any respect for Trump. In the course of the book, his chief of staff calls him “an idiot”; his Secretary of State ups it to “a fucking moron”; his Secretary of Defense compares him to an eleven-year-old; his top economic adviser and his personal lawyer consider him, respectively, “a professional liar” and “a fucking liar.” (Various denials have been issued.) Gary Cohn, the economic adviser, tells the President to his face that he’s “a fucking asshole,” while Trump calls Cohn “a fucking globalist.” When Cohn first tries to resign, Trump mocks him for being under his wife’s thumb, not to mention treasonous. There’s no end to the Cabinet members and generals whom Trump is eager to insult in front of their colleagues, or to fire by tweet. A coarse and feckless viciousness is the operating procedure of his White House, and the poison spreads to everyone. Only snakes and sycophants survive.

You might have already sensed this, but you didn’t know it with such nauseating specificity. In the absence of an Oval Office taping system like the one that destroyed Nixon during Watergate, Woodward’s interviews, conducted under the shroud of deep background, are a pretty comprehensive substitute.

読むとトランプは救いようのない感じをしますがトランプは他人事ではないというエピソードを一つ。大学の授業に出てノートを取るようなことはせず、前日の一夜漬けでギリギリ単位が取れれば良しとする人だったようです。今時の学生は真面目だそうですが、Yutaの世代だとこういう学生こそが大学生だという感覚です。こういう態度が変わっていない人っていますよね。。。

 

Don’t lecture Trump. He doesn’t like professors. He doesn’t like intellectuals. Trump was a guy who “never went to class. Never got the syllabus. Never took a note. Never went to a lecture. The night before the final, he comes in at midnight from the fraternity house, puts on a pot of coffee, takes your notes, memorizes as much as he can, walks in at 8 in the morning and gets a C. And that’s good enough. He’s going to be a billionaire.

ただトランプはあくまで政治不信、政治の機能不全の結果であって、原因ではありません。減税法案をまとめる際の駆け引きを読むとそのあたりを少し感じることができます。

Cohn found out that getting votes in the Senate was all about giving individual senators their favorite loopholes or tax breaks. “It's a candy store,” he said. Senators Chuck Grassley, John Thune and Dean Heller were among those who wanted credits for alternative fuel, including windmills. Susan Collins insisted on a deduction for schoolteachers who bought supplies for their classrooms. She would not vote for the bill if the deduction was not included. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin was concerned about pass-through businesses. McConnell made other promises including one to Jeff Flake on immigration.

The final bill was a dizzying labyrinth of numbers, rules, and categories. There was no doubt that it was a Republican tax bill, benefiting corporations and the wealthy most. The bill, however, would reduce taxes for all income groups in 2018, and according to the Tax Policy Center, after-tax income would go up an average of 2.2 percent.

トランプ批判をして溜飲を下げても、政治の機能不全を改善しない限り何も変わらないでしょう。結局トランプを引き摺り下ろしても待っているのは政治の分断・停滞なのかもしれません。