Vinson Cunningham on His New Book, “Great Expectations”

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Obama, News, Wnyc, Washington, Barack, President, Lizza, Wickenden

4.2 • 3.3K Ratings

🗓️ 12 March 2024

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Like most Americans, Vinson Cunningham first became aware of Barack Obama in 2004, when he gave a breakout speech at the Democratic National Convention. “Very good posture, that guy,” Cunningham noted. “We hang our faith on objects, on people, based on the signs that they put out,” Cunningham tells David Remnick. “And that’s certainly been a factor in my own life. The rapid and urgent search for patterns.” Although Cunningham aspired to be a writer, he got swept up in this historic campaign, working on Obama’s longshot 2008 run for the Presidency, and later worked in his White House. Cunningham’s adventures on the trail inspire his first novel, “Great Expectations,” an autobiographical coming-of-age story about where and how we seek inspiration. Cunningham recalls that Obama was seen as the “fulfillment” of so many hopes and dreams for people like himself. Now he wishes the former President were playing a larger role. “I will admit that it has been dispiriting,” in Obama’s post-Presidential life, “to see him making movies and being on Jet Skis as the world burns. … more like a movie star than someone whose great hope is to change the world.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the political scene and I'm David Remnick.
0:07.0	A young man, a little bit adrift, looking for a job and a sense of purpose, finds his way
0:17.1	to working on a presidential campaign.
0:20.1	That's the opening of a new novel by Vincent Cunningham,
0:22.9	who's a staff writer at the New Yorker.
0:25.8	The candidate at the center of the story
0:27.5	is a long shot, a young black first-term senator
0:31.2	from the state of Illinois.
0:33.0	I stand before you today to announce my candidacy for President of the United States of America.
0:50.0	Now you'll surmise that the character is Barack Obama in everything but name.
1:06.0	The narrator of the story, the young campaign worker, is named David. The are closely based on Vincent Cunningham's own life in the years before he became a journalist.
1:17.0	Vincent, I haven't enjoyed a novel this much in a long time and I want to start with the very beginning. The novel begins with an incredibly bally choice, you call it.
1:20.6	Great expectations.
1:21.6	Great expectations. Why not?
1:23.0	Well, yeah, what's, what is so bally about it is the utter originality.
1:27.0	You know, it's just like, what is a title that no one else has ever had?
1:31.0	It took me so long to figure out.
1:32.0	Of a coming of age
1:32.8	novel. That's right. Well I can tell you that our colleague, our beloved
1:37.7	colleague Emily Nusbaum at a party sort of just said it. I don't know. She's like,
1:42.1	you know what would be great if a novel like that could be called
1:44.4	great expectations?
	...

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