The literary scholar in me can't let this go--it's so delightfully stupid, so forgive me. Cashill's arguments are brilliantly idiotic.
Shy of a confession by those involved, I will not be able to prove conclusively that Obama did not write this book. As shall be seen, however, there are only two real possibilities: one is that Obama experienced a near miraculous turnaround in his literary abilities; the second is that he had major editorial help, up to and including a ghostwriter.
1) The first sentence is the money quote: "I will not be able to prove conclusively that Obama did not write this book." Yet he proceeds to a wonderful false choice--he implies that Obama was such an awful writer (based on a single undergraduate poem--a genre different from autobiography) that Obama's ability to write a decent memoir has to be "miraculous". Then Cashill completely inverts the economics of publishing, placing editorial assistance (which comes late in the writing process, long after a contract, and after the book manuscript has been delivered to publisher for revision) at the VERY BEGINNING OF WRITING. In short, Cashill essentially implies that someone, somewhere had such a vested economic interest in creating Obama as a brand that someone wrote a book for him, and slapped Obama's picture on the cover.
With advance in hand, Obama repaired to Chicago where he dithered. At one point, in order to finish without interruption, he and wife Michelle decamped to Bali. Obama was supposed to have finished the book within a year. Bali or not, advance or no, he could not. He was surely in way over his head.
2) It's common knowledge that publishers are very strict concerning contract deadlines. Cashill conflates Obama losing a contract because he didn't finish writing the book on time with a complete inability to write a book.
3) Literary genre and style. Cashill implies that everyday speech, legal writing, poetry, and autobiography would share the same literary conventions and styles, so that we should be able to hear all of these conventions in Obama's daily utterances. Yet he asserts:
One does not hear any of Dreams in Obama's casual speech.
(Insert ominous movie music.)
4) Literary influence. Scholars work to place literature in a historical and social context, and often try to assess similar ideas or styles within texts written in a given period. We try to understand texts in conversation with each other--for instance, how autobiographies "talk" with each other, share themes, conventions, subjects, styles, and narrative progressions, and depart from prior influences, too.
So--in the universe of literary, political, and social ideas, who is Obama's strongest intellectual and literary influence, according to Cashill? A Black Arts Movement writer, such as Amiri Baraka? James Baldwin? A naturalist such as Richard Wright? A whole panoply of writers of American autobiographies and memoirs, whether about social development, political development, biracial identity, racial relations?
NOOOOOOOOOO. Cashill names William Ayres.
It's so brilliant--Cashill takes "consorting with terrorists" meme to such an extreme that Obama becomes Ayres' creation and puppet. Bravo!
