"the critique that he isn’t really worthy of the prize (left critics like to note that wars are still going on in Afghanistan and Iraq) because he hasn’t made peace engages in a certain kind of historical amnesia. And U.S.-centrism. It is actually a lot of amnesia, because it forgets the long history of violence that foregrounds his appearance on the world stage. The Middle Passage, slavery, colonialism, segregation, and the persistence of anti-black racism at every level of American life (and life in the West generally) are certainly violences worthy of consideration, and Obama’s candidacy and election is surely a blow against that violence. No, one doesn’t have to go to the “post-racial fantasy” extreme. One simply needs to note that the unthinkable happened. Yet, I’ve not seen much attention to any such foregrounding violence in the commentary. It’s as if Obama became president, then even the critics of “post-racial America” forgot that he was black and what that means and how much violence forms the context of his election."

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As a columnist who regularly dishes out sharp criticism, I try not to question the motives of people with whom I don’t agree. Today, I’m going to step over that line.

The recent attacks by Republican leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers on the effort to reform the health-care system have been so misleading, so disingenuous, that they could only spring from a cynical effort to gain partisan political advantage. By poisoning the political well, they’ve given up any pretense of being the loyal opposition. They’ve become political terrorists, willing to say or do anything to prevent the country from reaching a consensus on one of its most serious domestic problems.

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It all started nearly 200 years ago. It was the “Year Without a Summer” of 1816, when ash from volcanic eruptions lowered temperatures around the globe, giving rise to widespread famine. A few friends gathered at the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva and decided to engage in a small competition to see who could come up with the most terrifying tale — and the two great monsters of the modern age were born.

One was created by Mary Godwin, soon to become Mary Shelley, whose Dr. Frankenstein gave life to a desolate creature. The other monster was less created than fused. John William Polidori stitched together folklore, personal resentment and erotic anxieties into “The Vampyre,” a story that is the basis for vampires as they are understood today.

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"Obama’s promise is as great as McCain’s threat. His race and background would refute the charges of American racial arrogance that have helped recruit many angry terrorists. His remarkable and apparently near-unanimous appeal abroad—an appeal the insular Republicans scorn—would immediately help redeem our soiled international reputation. He has a striking, deep intelligence, and a gift for combining clarity and strong feeling in his writing and speeches; and he uses these qualities to expose and explain complexity rather than bury it under slogans. It is said that he lacks experience. On the contrary, he alone among prominent politicians has the experience that counts most in a threatening and densely interdependent world: the crucial experience of empathy. He has lived, and been poor, in both domestic and foreign worlds that few national politicians can even imagine."

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The novelist’s certainty of knowledge about his characters must be like the biographer’s structure of factual evidence.

In fiction, the fine meshes of plausible action need constant attention, in the smallest details. It is astonishing how, when absorbed in other values of a story—-character, atmosphere, prose style, inner significance—-some of the small actualities escape attention. But one must always keep in mind how, ‘if this, then that’ must happen. Every detail must mean more than itself. The smallest error in plausibility threatens the credibility of the whole.

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