It allows him to take up themes like inequality and help bring them into the mainstream once they have been advanced by more ideological players.At the same time, though, it's inevitable that by positioning himself in the centre, Mr Obama will sap some of the momentum of his progressive base, and prompt them to look elsewhere for more energetic leadership.
What galls the self-published authors most is that their works take up themes that are commonly found in books published by serious literary authors, and in countless works of genre fiction produced by the nation's largest publishing houses and movie studios.
The next generation of leading artists took up themes of multiculturalism and identity politics, with audience-oriented sculptural and photographic installations.
At once wry and poignant, this surreal novel takes up themes of aging, terrorism, our labyrinthine medical system, and the old fear of mortality pressing on our modern lives.
The roots of cyberpunk extend past Bethke's tale to the technological fiction of the 1940s and '50s, to the writings of Samuel R. Delany and others who took up themes of alienation in a high-tech future, and to the criticism of Bruce Sterling, who in the 1970s called for science fiction that addressed the social and scientific concerns of the day.
"Crazy Horse," a behind-the-scenes look at a famous Paris erotic revue (and at quite a few behinds) takes up themes that this supremely observant, subtly analytical filmmaker has explored before in films like "Ballet" (1995), "La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet" (2009) and "Boxing Gym" (2010).
Only the occasional Loach film lacks some well-considered left-wing agenda, and Route Irish, his response to the war in Iraq, takes up themes he has pursued on several occasions, including crimes committed in the name of the state, the brutalisation of militarism, the exploitation of the demoralised unemployed and the thoughtless ill-treatment of native populations.
While its first part is mostly concerned with place and history, the second takes up themes of relationship, including "love's erotesis", which is repeatedly displaced: into swans, into the lovers of Hiroshima Mon Amour or into the Song of Songs – a title Boast breaks and shares across her section break.
Here too it becomes apparent that Hegel, taking up themes from the Phenomenology, follows Fichte in treating property in terms of a recognitive analysis of the nature of such a right.
"My generation has to take up the themes Oë has been wrestling with".
In the best bit, Taylor asks Roth about historical events in his fiction: When did you take up these themes of recent books: the Korean war, in 2008's Indignation; or the perils of polio, in last year's Nemesis?
