QUILLBLOG

Chávez vs Bush: the war of books

Devoted Quillblog readers may remember that back in August, Quillblog featured an entry about George W. Bush’s summer reading list, addressing the speculation that it was an attempt to convince people that the not-always-eloquent American president was in fact an intelligent, well-read man.

Well, move over Dubya, because Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s socialist president, seems to have been at the book promotion game for much longer.

As the New York Times reports, Chávez has always been known to drop book titles in his speeches. And just last year, in celebration of the 400th anniversary of Don Quixote‘s publication, the Venezuelan government “paid for a million copies [of the book] to be distributed free,” ostensibly among the Venezuelan people.

Chávez’s list of favourite authors is rather extensive, and includes some big names (Cervantes, Victor Hugo, and other classic European authors), as well as lesser-known Latin American political theorists and the expected military and guerrilla leaders. Oh, and of course, books that condemn Bush (such as Michael Moore’s Dude, Where’s My Country?) figure prominently on the list.

As for the charge that, as the Times puts it, there is “a whiff of 1970s-style third-world intellectual pretension” in his book campaign, “Chávez does not seem to mind.”

And really, given this report from a former mistress, who used to read aloud in the car to Chávez as he was driving, it’s really not so surprising. “He would hang on every word,” says Herma Markman, “especially if it was fiction by Garciá Márquez.” The man just loves books, though the safety of Caracas streets might be compromised as a result.

Related links:
Read the New York Times story here

Comments are closed.