Vinson Cunningham on His New Book, “Great Expectations”

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

The New Yorker

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

4.3 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 12 March 2024

⏱️ 21 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.”

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0:44.1	Things people love.
0:49.4	This is the political scene, and I'm David Remnick.
0:57.8	Okay. This is the political scene, and I'm David Remnick. A young man, a little bit adrift, looking for a job and a sense of purpose, finds his way to working on a presidential campaign.
1:06.7	That's the opening of a new novel by Vincent Cunningham, who's a staff writer at The New Yorker.
1:12.5	The candidate at the center of the story is a long shot, a young, black, first-term senator from the state of Illinois.
1:19.9	I stand before you today to announce my candidacy for president of the United States of America.
1:32.5	Now, you'll surmise that the character is Barack Obama in everything but name.
1:37.7	The narrator of the story, the young campaign worker, is named David.
1:41.7	And though this is a novel we're talking about, David's experiences on the
1:45.6	Obama campaign are closely based on Vincent Cunningham's own life in the years before he became a
1:52.2	journalist. 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 balsy choice. You call it. Great expectations. Great expectations. Why not? Well, yeah. What is so balzy about it is the utter originality. You know, it's just like, what is a title that no one else has ever had? It took me so long to figure out. Of a coming of age novel. That's right. Well, I can tell you that our colleague, our beloved colleague, Emily Nussbaum, at a party, sort of just said it out of nowhere. She's like, you know what would be great if a novel like that could be called great expectations? And I was like, I laughed really hard at that.
2:34.8	And then the next day, I was like, man, it sank in. It's possible that I have to do this.
2:39.1	I still laugh every time I tell someone the name of the book. I just wait for the changes in their
	...

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