The Bridge: The Life And Rise Of Barack Obama Part 4

To slap an ideological tag on Chandoo and Hamid, let alone Obama, is not only unfair; it also credits them with thinking far more programmatically than they did. "I would say we were idealistic idealistic and well-read in terms of understanding all the ideologies," Hamid said. "I remember going home to Pakistan and sitting across from my mother in the summer waxing eloquent about the benefits of socialism. She said, 'Wahid, this is all well and good, but I think you will grow up.' I guess that's what happened. We weren't Marxists. We were and well-read in terms of understanding all the ideologies," Hamid said. "I remember going home to Pakistan and sitting across from my mother in the summer waxing eloquent about the benefits of socialism. She said, 'Wahid, this is all well and good, but I think you will grow up.' I guess that's what happened. We weren't Marxists. We were idealistic idealistic and believed in the betterment of the lot of the ma.s.ses and not just the few. If you describe that as socialist, then maybe we did have some socialist thoughts at the time. Barack was pretty similar. I don't remember there being a dissonance between us. There was consistency in our thinking. We were all trying to improve." and believed in the betterment of the lot of the ma.s.ses and not just the few. If you describe that as socialist, then maybe we did have some socialist thoughts at the time. Barack was pretty similar. I don't remember there being a dissonance between us. There was consistency in our thinking. We were all trying to improve."

"Barry and Hasan spent a lot of their time soap-boxing about politics," Mifflin said. "One of our friends remembers a group study session at which Obama got up to orate about one political subject or another and at the end someone said, 'You should be the first black President.' But, on the other hand, no one seriously thought of him as 'the one'--the one super-talented person who would become something huge. He was just one of our crowd."

For many years, Obama stayed in touch with his South Asian friends, particularly Hamid, who was for a long time an executive at PepsiCo, and Chandoo, who became a consultant and investor. During the campaign and even afterward, Hamid and Chandoo were wary of talking to the press, lest they say something that could be used against themselves or, worse, against Obama. They were well aware of the fact that some of Obama's most virulent opponents during the 2008 campaign were prepared to manipulate the Obama-as-Muslim myth at a moment's notice. "It got to the point where reporters were banging on our apartment door in the middle of the night," Hamid said.

The political conversation at Occidental when Obama arrived centered on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and Jimmy Carter's reaction to it. There were also candlelight walks against the proliferation of nuclear arms, a rally against Carter's reinst.i.tution of registration for the draft, and, in 1980, denunciations of the election of Ronald Reagan. The Occidental The Occidental published an endors.e.m.e.nt of Jimmy Carter that was less notable for its rejection of Reagan than for its nose-holding support of the doomed inc.u.mbent. The headline was "Lukewarm." published an endors.e.m.e.nt of Jimmy Carter that was less notable for its rejection of Reagan than for its nose-holding support of the doomed inc.u.mbent. The headline was "Lukewarm."

Race, as both an on-campus political issue and a focus of national and international politics, was also at the center of discussion. Before Obama matriculated at Occidental, there had been an incident in which a popular professor of art history, an African-American named Mary Jane Hewitt, was denied a promotion. Two reporters from The Occidental The Occidental heard that there were possible irregularities in the promotion process and, with the help of a cooperative campus security guard, broke into the administration building and got access to the tenure file. The editors of heard that there were possible irregularities in the promotion process and, with the help of a cooperative campus security guard, broke into the administration building and got access to the tenure file. The editors of The Occidental The Occidental did not publish the file but used it to guide their reporting. "We were very paranoid," one editor said. "We sat out on the fifty-yard line of the football field discussing what to do. Smoking pot all the time. It was L.A." Eventually, news of the break-in leaked and the two reporters were brought to an honor court proceeding; two of the more left-wing professors on campus, Norman Cohen and David Axeen, acted as faculty lawyers for the student-reporters. The students were not punished. did not publish the file but used it to guide their reporting. "We were very paranoid," one editor said. "We sat out on the fifty-yard line of the football field discussing what to do. Smoking pot all the time. It was L.A." Eventually, news of the break-in leaked and the two reporters were brought to an honor court proceeding; two of the more left-wing professors on campus, Norman Cohen and David Axeen, acted as faculty lawyers for the student-reporters. The students were not punished.

As with most college students, Obama had little notion of how to act on his political impulses. "I want to get into public service "I want to get into public service," Obama told Thummalapally. "I want to write and help people who are disadvantaged." What exactly he might do remained vague. In the eyes of some of his freshman-year friends, Obama became less happy-go-lucky as a soph.o.m.ore. "I did see a change in him," said Kent Goss, a cla.s.smate who played a lot of basketball with Obama. "He was much more serious, more focused, more cerebral.... I saw him hanging out with a different crowd, which was a more serious crowd, a more intellectual crowd."

Obama took creative-writing courses, along with his more academic courses, and sometimes thought he might pursue a career as a writer. He published poems in Feast Feast, the campus literary magazine, and also in a xeroxed magazine put out by one of his friends, Mark Dery, called Plastic Laughter Plastic Laughter. Dery was known as the "punk poet" on campus. The better, and longer, of Obama's two poems in Feast Feast exhibited the influence of the free-verse poets of the time; "Pop" clearly reflects Obama's relations.h.i.+p with his grandfather Stanley Dunham. Obama showed it to his friends without telling them that it was about the man who had played such a big part in rearing him in Honolulu and his struggle, at once, to love and escape him as he made his way as an adult. exhibited the influence of the free-verse poets of the time; "Pop" clearly reflects Obama's relations.h.i.+p with his grandfather Stanley Dunham. Obama showed it to his friends without telling them that it was about the man who had played such a big part in rearing him in Honolulu and his struggle, at once, to love and escape him as he made his way as an adult.

Sitting in his seat, a seat broad and broken In, sprinkled with ashes, Pop switches channels, takes another Shot of Seagrams, neat, and asks What to do with me, a green young man Who fails to consider the Flim and flam of the world, since Things have been easy for me; I stare hard at his face, a stare That deflects off his brow; I'm sure he's unaware of his Dark, watery eyes, that Glance in different directions, And his slow, unwelcome twitches, Fail to pa.s.s....

Not everyone in the Occidental literary crowd liked Obama. One cla.s.smate described him as "too GQ" GQ" and, according to Mifflin, "the artsier crowd said he was too sophisticated, too smooth somehow." and, according to Mifflin, "the artsier crowd said he was too sophisticated, too smooth somehow."

Obama was hardly a joyless artiste artiste. By all accounts he was interested in women and dated fairly frequently, but he had no steady girlfriend in his two years at Occidental. "Some of us were all hooked up, but not Barry," Margot Mifflin said. "I never saw him date one person there for an extended time.... It wasn't as if Barry was just hanging out with the pretty ladies on campus. He was about ideas and engagement. He wanted to be with people who were thinking about things."

"Everybody liked him," Lisa Jack, a friend who took a series of photographs of Obama in 1980, said. "He was a hot, nice, everything-going-for-him dude. If he saw you sitting alone in The Cooler, he would come sit down with you. I don't know about deep relations.h.i.+ps, but he had no problems getting women attracted to him. He wasn't lecherous or disrespectful. He managed to do it in a way that was cool. You couldn't help but like him."

Lawrence Goldyn, one of Obama's political-science professors at Occidental, was one of the very few openly gay teachers on campus. A Stanford-trained political scientist, Goldyn came to Occidental in the late-seventies. Obama took Goldyn's cla.s.s on European politics. Goldyn was miserable at Occidental, where he felt the disdain of the administration. "I was sort of radioactive," he said. "I eventually had to go to medical school to make a living. It was a tough time. They told me I was too stuck on s.e.xual politics ... They looked at me and all they could see was h.o.m.os.e.xual, h.o.m.os.e.xual, h.o.m.os.e.xual." Goldyn became the adviser to the gay student union. "I got the left-outs, the black women, the gays gravitating to me," he said. "I don't think kids of color and gay people felt very welcome there. They felt like outsiders." Goldyn was grateful for students like Obama, who held him in high regard and sought him out after cla.s.s. "There were a few like that--not a lot, a handful," he recalled. "There were some older political kids who gravitated to me because they liked my point of view. That a freshman or soph.o.m.ore would do that showed intellectual courage."

During the Presidential campaign, Obama told a gay magazine, the Advocate Advocate, that Goldyn "was a wonderful guy. He was the first openly gay professor that I had ever come into contact with, or openly gay person of authority that I had come in contact with. He wasn't proselytizing all the time, but just his comfort in his own skin and the friends.h.i.+p we developed helped to educate me on a number of these issues."

There were many professors on campus who had been active in the sixties and who regaled their students with tales of civil-rights and antiwar demonstrations. That generation of professors was gradually replacing the men and women of the Second World War generation. "The transformation was happening right when Obama was here," Roger Boesche, who had been politically active as an undergraduate at Stanford in the sixties, said. Hearing about the exploits of those young professors was both fascinating and deflating. Among Obama's friends--among so many young people going to college in the seventies and eighties--there was a feeling of belatedness, a sense that political activism had lost most of its energy. They had come along too late for the March on Was.h.i.+ngton, Black Power, the Stonewall riots, the antiwar and women's-liberation demonstrations. Rightly or not, many of them felt they had the desire but not a cause.

Among campus political groups, the Democratic Socialist Alliance was one of the few with any energy and capacity for organization. A student named Gary Chapman, who now teaches technology policy at the University of Texas, formed the Alliance not long before Obama came to Occidental, and its supporters strung up a huge banner over the central quad bearing a portrait of Karl Marx. In 1978-79, the year before Obama matriculated, some students sympathetic to the Alliance had tried to push a political agenda--against apartheid; for increased diversity on campus--by running a slate of left-leaning candidates for student government. Caroline Boss, a friend of Obama's and one of the main leftist political leaders at Occidental, said that the college soon became the scene of intense discussion about American foreign policy, women's studies, gay rights, Latino studies, urban studies--and, especially, the apartheid regime in South Africa.

"A lot of work had been going on for the previous three years getting the campus more aware of practices at the college, looking at what was happening in South Africa," Caroline Boss said. "Already, before Barry, we'd had these rather sad, but nonetheless real, marches to Bank of America, to withdraw my twenty dollars."

Boss and many others began a campaign to get the board of trustees at Occidental to sell off stock invested in multinational corporations doing business in apartheid South Africa. The divestment movement had come to some notice in 1962, when the United Nations General a.s.sembly pa.s.sed a non-binding resolution calling for economic sanctions against South Africa. In 1977, a Baptist preacher and civil-rights activist, the Reverend Leon Sullivan, thrust the issue into the press. Sullivan, a board member of General Motors, the biggest American employer of blacks in South Africa, led a campaign of corporate responsibility directed against G.M. and other U.S.-based companies with an interest in South Africa. His draft of a code of corporate conduct, the Sullivan Principles, mandated that these multinationals provide equal rights for their black workers. On campuses across the country, students asked boards of trustees to divest from businesses that continued to work with the apartheid regime, and at some schools--Hamps.h.i.+re College, Michigan State, Ohio University, Columbia University, and the University of Wisconsin--the protests made a significant impact. There were pickets, sit-ins, teach-ins, the building of shantytowns, and other gestures modestly reminiscent of the civil-rights and antiwar movements. Nelson Mandela later said that the divestment movement helped hasten the collapse of the apartheid regime, by isolating it and causing billions of dollars in capital flight. The critics of divestment either accused its advocates of hypocrisy--why did they not ask the same of investors in Communist countries?--or, like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, argued for a policy of "constructive engagement."

At Occidental, a small core of students put together a report for the trustees saying that divestment was the right thing to do, and that it would not demonstrably hurt the school's endowment. They were backed by the Democratic Socialist Alliance; an African-American student group called Ujima; Hispanic and gay groups; and a coordinating alliance called the Third World Coalition. But there was also a great deal of apathy on campus, especially among the pre-professional and fraternity crowds.

Obama went to meetings of these various groups, but not very often. "Obama was a person who was mainly an observer," Boss said. "He came into it gradually, but increasingly, in the political sense. He had strong intellectual curiosity. He was frustrated at the idea of living life pa.s.sively. During his soph.o.m.ore year he definitely had a distinctive kind of self-awareness that he grew into, a sense of purpose. That was really striking about him--for instance, when he announced himself as 'Barack' and not 'Barry' anymore. It came to him. And we talked about it, and he talked with others, too. He just announced it and said, 'Listen, I am using my full given name.' He a.s.sociated it with connecting to his father. He was proud of his father and his heritage, even though he hadn't researched it yet. But he had this sense of his father as a man of destiny, as someone who could start as a goat herder and become a government figure. It was a legacy and something to take forward.

"He stepped from an international world and a Hawaiian world replete with ethnicities, very much the cosmopolitan," Boss continued, "and then he comes here and steps onto the continent, and gets with a crowd of African-Americans who have a keener sense of what that means and a deeper understanding of a slave history and the American experience. And so he was interested in what that meant for him personally. This discovery process, it's a bildungsroman, a person who is the quintessential cosmopolitan in this process of self-discovery, grappling with this question of 'Who am I?'"

Chandoo, Obama, Caroline Boss, and several other students, some from the Democratic Socialist Alliance, some from various ethnic a.s.sociations on campus, planned a divestment rally for February 18, 1981. This was Obama's first foray as a public political actor.

It was, as Margot Mifflin recalled, a "sun-bleached winter day," with about three hundred students--activists, black and international students, blond surfers--milling outside c.o.o.ns Hall, the main administration building, which was nicknamed "the Chrysler showroom" for its charmless, gla.s.s-paneled architecture. The board of trustees was scheduled to meet inside. The organizers of the rally came up with a list of speakers that included an American history professor, Norman Cohen; a visitor from South Africa named Tim Ngubeni; and a range of students: Caroline Boss, Earl Chew, Chandoo, and Obama. Students held signs reading "Apartheid Kills" and "No Profit from Apartheid."

Obama was to open the rally. In his memoir, he writes that, as he prepared his brief speech, he remembered his father's visit to his fifth-grade cla.s.sroom and how he had won over everyone with his words. "If I could just find the right words," he thought. If he could do that, he could have an impact. He took the microphone in a "trancelike" state. The sun was s.h.i.+ning in his eyes, but he could see in the distance, over the heads of the demonstrators, someone playing Frisbee in the distance.

"There's a struggle going on," Obama began. He could sense that only a few people had heard him. He raised his voice. "I say, there's a struggle going on! It's happening an ocean away. But it's a struggle that touches each and every one of us. Whether we know it or not. Whether we want it or not. A struggle that demands we choose sides. Not between black and white. Not between rich and poor. No--it's a harder choice than that. It's a choice between dignity and servitude. Between fairness and injustice. Between commitment and indifference. A choice between right and wrong ..."

Obama was neither the best nor the most dramatic speaker at the rally. The school paper made no mention of him. What most people remember about his presentation is that, before he could get very far, two white students, acting the role of South African police goons, dragged him from the podium in a gesture of prearranged guerrilla theater. His moment was over.

The impact of the other speakers was greater. Ngubeni, who, as a student in South Africa Ngubeni, who, as a student in South Africa, had been a member of the gra.s.sroots Black Consciousness Movement and an a.s.sociate of Steve Biko, the martyred anti-apartheid leader, declared that the movement had to begin in the United States because "all the bosses are over here."

By the time the demonstration was over, Obama's euphoria had evaporated. He saw some white trustees watching them from inside the building, laughing. He worried that the protest and his own speech had been a childish farce. "After the rally, a pair of folk singers "After the rally, a pair of folk singers harmonized as we wandered off to cla.s.s, feeling groovy," Mifflin wrote years later. harmonized as we wandered off to cla.s.s, feeling groovy," Mifflin wrote years later.

But Obama had made a slight impression, at least on some. "He spoke much the same way he does now--reasoned, with pa.s.sion, but not some hot head spouting off," Rebecca Rivera, a fellow protester, said. "Then, before he could finish, the stupid skit they had planned took him offstage. He was just getting going. I just remember thinking, Who is this guy? And why haven't we heard from him before? As people were dispersing, I remember saying to Barry, 'That was a great speech, I wish you would get more involved.' And, of course, that was the spring and soon he was gone. He was off to bigger and better things."

Obama's involvement in student politics had been earnest, but infrequent, cool, and removed. ("I was on the outside again, watching, judging, skeptical.") Rivera, and many others, remembered Obama as only fitfully engaged. "The impression he gave me was 'I get involved when it is important enough,'" she said. "The stuff we minority students were arguing about seemed important, but it was pretty small potatoes."

The faculty at Occidental had been opposed to apartheid, voting unanimously to divest, but the trustees stubbornly resisted; as late as 1990, with the white South African government in retreat, the trustees fended off a motion to divest. "And then it was clear," Boesche said, "that Nelson Mandela would have to take care of all this for us."

Despite all his political frustration, Obama enjoyed Occidental, but he wanted a bigger, more urban environment. He wanted to get away from the hothouse feeling of a small college. "I was concerned with urban issues "I was concerned with urban issues," he said years later, "and I wanted to be around more black folks in big cities." He wanted to go East, preferably to New York. He looked into the possibility of transferring to Columbia University.

"We felt like we were in a groove and we wanted life to be more difficult," Phil Boerner, who also applied to Columbia that spring, said. "It was a country-club atmosphere. We wanted to make things harder for ourselves. Obama used to tell his friends that he wanted to go somewhere where the weather was cold and miserable so that he would be forced to spend his days indoors, reading."

Caroline Boss recalls Obama at college with admiring affection. "It's a story of self-discovery, isn't it?" she said. "He wants to get his feet wet, learn about the U.S. and being black as part of an American history and condition, and he gets that in California. And then California feels too pat, he is too dissipated, he is getting away with too much, hanging out too much, so he says to himself, Go put yourself in a very cold place. He picks Harlem."

Except for those he knew best, Obama seemed to slip out of sight with barely a word. Ken Sulzer, one of Obama's earliest friends on campus, recalled, "I remember in senior year, someone said, 'Hey, where's Obama?' We didn't realize he'd gone. But I thought, Good for him. A decade later, when I read about him becoming the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review Harvard Law Review, I said to myself, What the h.e.l.l? Barry Obama. He's Barack now? Who knew?"

In the summer of 1981, before arriving in New York, Obama traveled to Asia for three weeks, first to Pakistan to visit Chandoo and Hamid, and then to Indonesia to see his mother and Maya. "They took a trip in Pakistan together that Fox News tried to twist into something awful," Margot Mifflin said. In fact, the trip reacquainted Obama with some of the realities of the developing world. "When Obama came back," Mifflin said, "he said he'd been shocked by many things, but especially the poverty. When they rode through the countryside, he was amazed at how the peasants bowed to the landowners in respect as they pa.s.sed. It blew his mind."

"It's true," Hamid said. "The trip gave him a grounding of sorts. To be exposed to a place like Pakistan as an adult, he saw how differently people live. He stayed with me and Hasan in Karachi, but he also wanted to get out in the countryside, and we went to rural Sindh, to the lands of a feudal landlord who was in school with me in high school and before. We went to this person's lands, where the feudal system is still strong. Barack could see how the owner lives and how the serfs and workers are so subservient.... Barack also met an individual there of African descent. Africans were brought to Pakistan years ago by the Arabs--part of the slave trade, though in another direction. And to see people like that was very striking for Barack. He sat across from him and, even though they didn't share a common language, they tried to communicate. It was a moment that stayed in his mind."

Obama spent much of his time in Pakistan with his friends' families--Chandoo's family is fairly wealthy, Hamid is upper-middle-cla.s.s by Pakistani standards--but he also played basketball with kids in the street and explored the neighborhoods of Karachi during Ramadan. By talking with his friends, he got a deeper sense of the political and religious divisions of an infinitely complex political culture. "I am from the Sunni sect and Hasan from the s.h.i.+a, so he learned a lot about the dialogue between the two," Hamid said.

As a transfer student, Obama wasn't able to get Columbia housing, and so for the next couple of years he lived in a series of cheap off-campus apartments. The first year he had made arrangements to share a third-floor walkup with his Occidental friend Phil Boerner, at 142 West 109th Street, off Amsterdam Avenue. They split the monthly rent of three hundred and sixty dollars. The apartment's charms included spotty heat, irregular hot water, and a railroad-flat layout. They adjusted, using the showers at the Columbia gym and camping out for long hours at Butler Library.

Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1965, leading protesters in Selma across the Edmund Pettus Bridge

Obama and John Lewis at Brown Chapel AME Church in Selma, on March 4, 2007, commemorating "b.l.o.o.d.y Sunday"

Tom Mboya (rear, left) (rear, left) with scholars.h.i.+p students leaving on the "airlift" for Kenyan students to the United States with scholars.h.i.+p students leaving on the "airlift" for Kenyan students to the United States

Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., as an exchange student in Honolulu, in 1962

Obama, age two, at home in Honolulu, in 1963, with his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham

Ann Dunham with her second husband, Lolo Soetoro; their infant daughter, Maya Soetoro; and Obama, in Jakarta, Indonesia, 1968

After transferring to Columbia, Obama with his grandparents, Stanley Armour Dunham and Madelyn Lee Payne Dunham

Obama at Occidental College, in 1980, clowning and smoking a cigarette

During his first trip to Kenya, in 1987, Obama posed with members of his Kenyan family, including his half-sister Auma, lower left; Auma's mother, Kezia; and his grandmother Sarah

Obama's grandmother Sarah, at home in the village of Kogelo in northwestern Kenya

Obama at Harvard Law School, in 1990, just after being elected president of the Harvard Law Review Harvard Law Review

Obama's leaders.h.i.+p of the Project Vote registration drive in Illinois during the 1992 elections gave him a political boost, especially on Chicago's South Side.

Barack and Mich.e.l.le Obama at their home in Hyde Park in 1996, photographed by Mariana Cook, who interviewed them for her book on couples

Chicago mayor Harold Was.h.i.+ngton was a political role model for Obama.

Campaigning for the Illinois State Senate in 1996 on the South Side

Bobby Rush and Fred Hampton as Black Panthers

As an inc.u.mbent congressman, Rush easily defeated Obama in 2000--a race that Obama considered his political education.

Obama speaking at a 2002 anti-Iraq War rally, in Chicago--an event that was a boost to his Presidential hopes six years later

Obama campaigning in 2004 for the U.S. Senate

The Obamas soak in the applause after his keynote address to the Democratic National Convention, in Boston, on July 27, 2004.

Another moment of triumph as Obama easily wins a seat in the U.S. Senate, defeating Alan Keyes.

Getting a haircut at his barbershop in Hyde Park

Rus.h.i.+ng up the Capitol steps to a vote in November, 2005

Obama and John McCain, at a Senate hearing room in February, 2006, pose like fighters after a heated exchange of letters during a dispute about ethics reform.

A frosty moment with Hillary Clinton before a primary debate at the Kodak Theatre, in Los Angeles

Obama with his friend and pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, in March, 2005

The Reverend Joseph Lowery was one of the civil-rights-era leaders who was with Obama from the start of the 2008 Presidential campaign

John Lewis, one of Obama's heroes, started out loyal to Hillary Clinton and then switched sides after sensing he was "on the wrong side of history."

The Election Night celebration in Grant Park, in Chicago

One of more than a million people who gathered in Was.h.i.+ngton for the inauguration of Barack Obama on January 20, 2009 Obama's academic emphasis was on political science--particularly foreign policy, social issues, political theory, and American history--but he also took a course in modern fiction with Edward Said. Best known for his advocacy of the Palestinian cause and for his academic excoriation of the Eurocentric "Orientalism" practiced by Western authors and scholars, Said had done important work in literary criticism and theory. And yet Said's theoretical approach in the course left Obama cold. "My whole thing, and Barack had a similar view, was that we would rather read Shakespeare's plays than the criticism," Boerner said. "Said was more interested in the literary theory, which didn't appeal to Barack or me." Obama referred to Said as a "flake."

In his spare time, Obama wandered around the city, taking in Sunday services at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, a socialist conference at Cooper Union, African cultural fairs in Brooklyn and Harlem, jazz at the West End. He took long walks and runs in Riverside Park and Central Park. He shopped at the Strand downtown and Papyrus and the other bookstores around the Columbia campus. When Hasan Chandoo visited, they went to hear Jesse Jackson speak in Harlem. There was far less partying now. This was the beginning of what Obama has wryly referred to as his "ascetic period."

"When I transferred, I decided to buckle down and get serious," Obama told the Columbia alumni magazine two decades later. "I spent a lot of time in the library. I didn't socialize that much. I was like a monk." to buckle down and get serious," Obama told the Columbia alumni magazine two decades later. "I spent a lot of time in the library. I didn't socialize that much. I was like a monk." Obama often fasted on Sundays Obama often fasted on Sundays, vowed to give up drugs and drinking (he was less successful with cigarettes), and started keeping a journal, including, by his own admission, "daily reflections and very bad poetry." He wrote in the journal about his childhood and adolescence, and these entries helped feed the memoir that he wrote years later. He took a vow of self-improvement. He was a member of the generation primed to join and enjoy the first big Wall Street boom of the early eighties, but he was determined to resist the era's financial temptations. A certain self-righteousness and self-denial crept into his being: "Fearful of falling into old habits, I took on the temperament if not the convictions of a street-corner preacher, prepared to see temptation everywhere, ready to overrun a fragile will."