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Laura Bush: More interesting than her husband

Wed, 12 May 2010 19:27:00 +0000

I don't know how I wound up with a curiosity about Laura Bush, a figure I would otherwise not have spent much time considering. Maybe it was when I saw Tony Kushner's 2003 play "Only We Who Guard the Mystery Shall Be Unhappy," in which the "Angels in America" playwright depicted the Dostoevski-loving former first lady reading to a group of dead Iraqi children, an angel telling them, "Mrs. Bush is explaining why you are dead, and in addition to being married to the President of the United States she is also a smart lady, she was a librarian!"

Maybe I became intrigued after reading "American Wife," Curtis Sittenfeld's thinly veiled novel that imagines the life of a smart young woman from West Texas whose early path, marred by a tragic and deadly car accident, leads eventually to her marriage to an improbable president.

Laura Bush’s deadly car crash and my own

Tue, 04 May 2010 00:20:00 +0000

Somewhere in the hard drive that sits on my desk next to a rolling Jesus action figure there are 17 different iterations of the fourth chapter of my memoir. The number of times I rewrote the first paragraph probably scrapes close to 100, but eventually, I settled on plain-speak: "Two days before my father's sixty-second birthday, I killed an old man with my car."

I go on to describe the details of the accident, the whole ugly, sad unfurling of events: how I'd been driving down a main thoroughfare in Quebec City when a human form appeared out of nowhere in front of my windshield. The sound his body made as it ricocheted off the hood of the green GMC Jimmy, a loud, lone pop of a firecracker. My babble as I asked my boyfriend over and over whether I'd hit him. Peter's queerly calm answer that yes, I had.

Laura Bush has a similar story in her memoir, "Spoken From the Heart," which comes out today. It is the most profound revelation in the book and an event she has avoided talking about openly until now.

Sex, power and Laura Bush

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 10:40:00 +0000

Curtis Sittenfeld's third novel, "American Wife," was published, smartly, smack in the middle of last week's Republican convention.

What this meant, in addition to politically plumped coverage, was that rabid fans of Sittenfeld's first two novels (the debut smash "Prep" and its follow-up, "The Man of My Dreams") who rushed out and bought "American Wife" probably found themselves experiencing an unwelcome familiarity last Tuesday night. That's when George and Barbara Bush (whose unchanging heft and visage make her look like a carved stone monument to imperious matriarchy) took their seats at the Xcel center to watch daughter-in-law Laura introduce the ignominious, boo-proof video feed of her husband slurking through a brief speech from the Oval Office.

Why I love Laura Bush

Thu, 29 Jan 2004 11:49:00 +0000

I'm a 28-year-old woman, a registered Democrat, and a staunch enough liberal that I take would-be epithets such as "flaming," "knee-jerk" and "bleeding-heart" as compliments. I believe that George Bush's policies are at best misguided and at worst evil. And yet I love Laura Bush. In fact, there is no public figure I admire more.

Looking back, I can see that the love that dare not speak its name came over me gradually. In January 2001, I found watching George W. Bush's inauguration on television so surreal and horrifying that I had to call a friend, and the two of us just sat there in our separate apartments, not really talking except to say, "I can't believe this. Can you believe this?"