Presumed Guilty

On several occasions, I found myself putting down my book -- The Innocent Man by John Grisham -- and shaking my head, declaring that the story was just too outlandish. Who would ever believe such a ridiculous tale, I mumbled? If this had been a novel, it certainly would have been panned for being unbelievable.

Yet the miscarriage of justice not only happened, it was compounded over and over during the course of the history of this case that spanned almost a dozen years.

The Innocent Man is Grisham's version of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. As noted in the Washington Post review:

Many wild and crazy things take place in the 15 novels John Grisham has published about the law and those who play fast and loose with it, but, as he says, "not in my most creative moment could I conjure up a story as rich and as layered" as the one he tells in The Innocent Man. It is nonfiction, a detailed examination of the story of Ronald Keith Williamson, who was wrongfully convicted of a murder in 1988 and who was saved from death by lethal injection only through the intervention of men and women who believed in his innocence and were able to obtain the DNA report that cleared him.

I decided to read Grisham's book after following the Troy Davis case, the Georgia man whose conviction for killing a policemen has been called into question. See Death is Final. In fact, the Supreme Court recently took the unusual step of ordering a hearing into Davis' Claims of Innocence.

Like me, Hilde of wrongful-convictions just finished the book and our opinion of the book is similar:

The book tells the story of Ron Williamson of tiny Ada, Oklahoma. A washed-up minor league baseball player with delusions of grandeur, Williamson was a somewhat unpleasant character who is eventually convicted of murder and sentenced to death because of shoddy police work, tunnel vision, lackluster defense counsel, forensic fraud, and the abject failure of the court to ensure a fair trail. The book could read as a Cliff’s Notes guide to wrongful convictions if it could be boiled down to 10 pages, but that would do it an injustice.

The book’s reputation proceeds it, and it lives up to every word of the praise that has been heaped on it since it was published three years ago. “Meticulously researched,” is a common refrain among reviewers, and they’re dead on. I found it hard to believe, at times, that Grisham was intricately describing reality – dozens of interviews, thousands of pages of documents – rather than crafting a world of his own: his creation is so complete as to be completely engulfing.

Death penalty proponents argue that the system is fair and prevents an innocent person being put to death. However, cases like Williamson's make a mockery of those claims. Another case was detailed in the current issue of the New Yorker, where it is likely that the man put to death for a fire that killed his children was not arson, as had been claimed by the "experts" who testified at trial. See Cameron Todd Willingham, Texas, and the death penalty.

Unfortunately, despite the so-called presumption of innocence in a criminal case, many of those involved in the criminal justice system do not share that belief. Too often, "gut feelings" and biases are involved in the process. The arrogant and dogmatic personality of many prosecutors and officers does not allow them to deviate from the course they are following once they have focused on a suspect, despite indications to the contrary. Naturally, this generalization does not apply across the spectrum, but it happens often enough to be a serious problem -- especially when liberty and life is at stake. As Hilde observes:

And so continues the portrait of America’s criminal justice system that Grisham paints: full of unintentional yet overwhelming absurdity, laced with vengeance, spite, dehumanization, and utterly confusing and overwhelming for whomever should become ensnarled in the maelstrom.

Except for the cruel & hard-hearted, such as some of the very characters that were involved in the prosecution of the case highlighted in the book, this true story of a wrongful conviction in a small town in Oklahoma should be used to establish that the death penalty is too risky for a civilized nation to use. Last I checked, the US is still on the list of civilized countries.

Nineteenth on Grisham’s list of publications, the book aligns with Grisham’s well-known theme of legal drama but takes one major detour from his past work: it is nonfiction. The project forced Grisham to take a hard look at a troubled system in which the consequences of a lost court case are all too real.

“Even if you support the death penalty, you cannot support the death penalty system as it stands in the U.S.,” Grisham said. “My one hope is that people realize this system we have is simply too unfair to continue.”

From a summary of the book at speech at University of Virginia School of Law, Author John Grisham Finds Troubled Story Behind “Innocent Man”.

As Jonathan Yardley said in his Washington Post piece:

The bizarre twists and turns of this case are exceeded only by the calculated efforts by law-enforcement officers to warp and abuse the law to their own ends. Perhaps it really was the passionate conviction of the cops and the prosecutor that Williamson and Fritz murdered Debbie Carter, but what they did to win their convictions made a mockery of justice. They ignored clear evidence of Williamson's mental incompetence, they suppressed a tape recording that probably would have cleared Williamson, they sought out and employed snitches. The convictions they got were wrongful in the moral as well as the legal sense of the word, but, as Grisham says, "until the system is fixed, it could happen to anyone."

For more on Dennis Fritz, who was wrongfully convicted with Ron Williamson, see Barbara's Journey Toward Justice.

Sarah's Simple Story

At yesterday's LLWL lunch, we engaged in our perpetual discussion on the winner of the Palin-Be-Gone Wager. No declared winner yet.

As part of the Sarah table talk, the discussion turned to Palin's upcoming book deal, her opportunity to finally tell her side of the story.

No title yet. However, some great contenders can be found at The Mudflats, with an opportunity to vote on a title. A few of my favs:

The Audacity of Hype
Palin Place
Beyond the Palin
Goodnight Loon
Sarah Vain and Simple
The Lyin’ The Witch and the Wardrobe.

Finally, David Letterman's Top 10 Surprises in Sarah Palin's Memoir:

'The Soloist'

We rarely see a movie in the theater (a Mother's Day outing to see Crash a few years ago may have been the last time), but we decided that the rainy weather was perfect for a family movie night. The Soloist certainly fit the mood of the weather.

My daughter's reading the book now and I'm familiar with the story from reading Steve Lopez' columns in the LA Times when he originally wrote of the story of the mentally ill musician in 2005. Lopez had been one of my favorite writers at the Inky, so I followed his columns when he moved to LA., including his awarding winning series of stories about Nathaniel Ayers, a schizophrenic homeless man who was a gifted musician and had attended Juilliard. These stories comprise the book and the plot of the movie.

The headline of the Philly Daily News review says it all, ‘The Soloist’ not a feel-good film. As Gary Thompson explains:

Did I mention it's also intentionally atonal, this dirge? "The Soloist" is a tough movie built around the difficult friendship between Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez (ex of the Inky) and the homeless man whose life he chronicles.

It begins when Lopez (Robert Downey Jr.) strikes up a conversation with a street musician named Ayers (Jamie Foxx), who's ranting and plucking on two strings of a busted violin.

The man babbles, but Lopez gets his name, hears the word "Julliard," and does a little digging. He unearths (and reports, in a series of columns) the compelling biography of a boy genius whose promise was cut short by madness, a biography that also tells the story of urban homelessness. (As does this movie, with rare emotional restraint.)

Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx gave excellent portrayals of the two men, Lopez and Ayers, as they met and eventually connected, despite their different backgrounds and Ayers mental problems. Lopez, in his own way, had the more difficult task, since he had to overcome the desire to help Ayers "fix" his life by trying to find a way for Ayers to obtain medical assistance. He also had to confront the fact that, as a writer, he connected with others through observation and maintained his distance. As he became involved with Ayers, that solo personality would prevent him from reaching the soloist Ayers. With his severe mental illness, Ayers was unable to change his behavior in any meaningful way. For him, music was the only way that he was able to soothe the voices in his head and sometimes let in the real world. Once Lopez was able to accept that reality, they were able to form a bond of sorts.

I tend to agree with Rebecca Murray's Review:

As Lopez gets to know Ayers - as much as anyone can know a stranger with severe mental problems who's not being treated for his disease - he discovers an incredible musician still exists inside the man who 99.9% of the population would go out of their way to avoid eye contact with. What started as the idea for one column turns into a life-changing relationship from which both men benefit, though in vastly different ways.

Is proclaiming Robert Downey Jr one of the best actors of his generation pushing it? Check out The Soloist and tell me Downey Jr isn't at the top of his game as a newspaper reporter who uses Ayers to get a story before finding himself unintentionally becoming the most stable friend the tortured Ayers had during his years on the streets. It's mostly through Downey Jr's eyes that we follow the story, listening in while he dictates what he's learned dealing with Ayers into his tape recorder before writing up his articles for the LA Times. Downey Jr thoroughly and absolutely becomes this veteran journalist who gets too close to his subject and finds himself caught up in Ayers' life to point where an actual friendship has formed.

Jamie Foxx delivers yet another poignant performance as he tackles what just had to be the most difficult role of his career. Whether speaking at a manic pace as Ayers' mind trips out on him or altering everything about his being when Ayers shows moments of near lucidity, Foxx never, ever turns his portrayal of Ayers into a caricature of a mentally unbalanced man.

* * * *

Wright's made an honest, unflinching film that's uncomfortable to watch at times, a pure joy to behold at others, and overall as faithful to its source material as possible while still being cinematically entertaining.

Most of the reviews of the movie were mixed, but the family all liked the movie, despite it's overall depressing theme. I'm glad that I saw the movie before I read the book, to eliminate the comparisons between the two. Both my daughter and the woman sitting behind me kept pointing out differences in the movie. (The Los Angeles Times review notes a few of the variances).

But it was my husband who was most affected, because he worked with the mentally ill homeless about 20 years ago and it brought back a wave of memories for him. In fact, he coincidentally had a meeting nearby this week, so he happened to stop at the agency he had worked. An old colleague is now running the Center. He even ran into an old client, who remembered him. The man, still homeless after all these years, was excited because he thought my husband was returning to the Center.

All in all, we thought the movie was a realistic portrayal of mental illness & homelessness that certainly won't leave you feeling uplifted. Yet, it was well-done & managed to be moving nonetheless.

It's Mine, All Mine

I admit that I was tempted, when I read about the new Kindle. I had been reading about it and then I saw one a few weeks ago. See What is the Floss?. I'm a committed techie after all. I lust for the newest gadget. In fact, I always have to look for a new gadget to lust for.

Other than the ouch price of the Kindle -- $359, which merely gives you the e-book reader, which then allows you read books/magazines once you've purchased them for an additional cost, my biggest beef with the Kindle is the fact that you can't share what you have on it. If I "buy" an e-book or magazine, I want to be able to pass it on, much the same way I do now with hard copies.

As my husband & I discussed the other day, I can't even share a story with him, without having to pass on the Kindle to him. Of course, if he has it, I don't -- which sorta defeats the purpose of this handy take-it-with-you device.

As a piece in Slate observed, The amazing Amazon Kindle is bad news for the publishing industry:

In exchange for this convenience, though, the Kindle locks you down with more rules than the Army Field Manual. The Kindle won't let you resell or share your books. Anything you buy through the reader is fixed to your Amazon account, readable only on the Kindle or other devices that Amazon may one day deem appropriate. (The company has hinted that it'll build an iPhone app that can read Kindle books.) Even worse, you can buy books for your Kindle only from Amazon's store. Indeed, the device makes it difficult to read anything that's not somehow routed through Amazon first—you can surf the Web on the Kindle, and you can convert some of your personal Microsoft Word or text files to the device's format, but doing so is slow and not very reliable. In order to read blogs, magazines, newspapers, and books, you've really got to go through Amazon's store first.

Along with the non-sharing, the Amazon lock-in is bothersome. For example, Google Books offers free classic e-books, but they aren't accessible through the Kindle. It's was that very proprietary lock-in that has caused me to avoid most things Sony and may put a damper on the embers of my Kindle lust.

The Christian Science Monitor also discusses the "dangers of digital commodification" in a piece by Emily Walshe, a librarian & professor, Kindle e-reader: A Trojan horse for free thought:

For now, though, Kindle is on fire in the marketplace. Who could resist reading "what you want, when you want it?" Access to more than 240,000 books is just seconds away. And its "revolutionary electronic-paper display ... looks and reads like real paper."

But it comes with restrictions: You can't resell or share your books – because you don't own them. You can download only from Amazon's store, making it difficult to read anything that is not routed through Amazon first. You're not buying a book; you're buying access to a book. No, it's not like borrowing a book from a library, because there is no public investment. It's like taking an interest-only mortgage out on intellectual property.

* * * *

Why is this important? Because Kindle is the kind of technology that challenges media freedom and restricts media pluralism. It exacerbates what historian William Leach calls "the landscape of the temporary": a hyper mobile and rootless society that prefers access to ownership. Such a society is vulnerable to the dangers of selective censorship and control.

Digital rights management (DRM), which Kindle uses to lock in its library, raises critical questions about the nature of property and identity in digital culture. Culture plays a large role – in some ways, larger than government – in shaping who we are as individuals in a society. The First Amendment protects our right to participate in the production of that culture. The widespread commodification of access is shaping nearly every aspect of modern citizenship. There are benefits, to be sure, but this transformation also poses a big-time threat to free expression and assembly.

Even bigger concerns arise with a digital transformation. Books are more "permanent" than digital technology (and less easily susceptible to alteration). Finally -- and most importantly, is the issue of control over access. As Walshe notes:

Print may be dying, but the idea of print would be the more critical demise: the idea that there needs to be a record – an artifact of permanence, residence, and posterity – that is independent of some well-appointed thingamajig in order to be seen, touched, understood, or wholly possessed.

"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture," Ray Bradbury once said. "Just get people to stop reading them."

Access equals control. In this case, it is control over what is read and what is not; what is referenced and what is overlooked; what is retained and what is deleted; what is and what seems to be.

All in all, I think I'll skip the Kindle, at least until I'm comfortable with the resolution of these issues. Until then, this techie is happy with a book in hand.

(CSM article via buzzflash on Twitter)

What is the Floss?

I finally finished George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss -- only a week after our Book Group met to discuss it.

Since I hadn't finished the book, my first question was "What is the Floss?" OK, I guess I missed the reference to the Floss River in the first paragraph of the book. Of course, that was good for a few dentist jokes. Our book group had a guest attendee, a woman who was a Victorian Literature professor at Kenyon University before moving to Philly who provided a wonderful perspective on aspects of the book that we might otherwise have missed.

A brief description of the story:

George Eliot’s thrilling novel focuses on the loving yet turbulent relationship between siblings Maggie and Tom Tulliver. Maggie is impetuous and fervent while Tom is collected and pragmatic, yet their different natures are united by a strong bond. That bond is tested by many upheavals, including their family’s bankruptcy, the loss of their family’s mill, and their father’s eventual death. Maggie, meanwhile, experiences her own personal turmoil: though the sensitive, hunchbacked Philip is in love with her, she is drawn to Stephen Guest, a prominent town resident who happens to be her cousin Lucy’s suitor. Despite the fact that both of them are involved with other people, Maggie and Stephen cannot hide their feelings—from each other and from other characters. But when their relationship becomes public, Stephen flees the country, Maggie is cast out of society, and the bond between the siblings undergoes its toughest trial. In The Mill on the Floss, Eliot weaves a mesmerizing, devastating tale about various types of love, the deepest of which may be the love between families.

The novel was published in 1860 and was Mary Ann Evans' most autobiographical book. It is a variation on her real life and the impact of her affair with a married man. The writing style is much more wordy than we are used to today, but her writing and descriptions are beautiful. The novel definitely holds up as a classic. In fact, the group has put Eliot's Middlemarch on our to read list, now that we're showing a more literary bent (at least for a while).

There are certainly areas where the novel is somewhat dated, such as the sexist roles imposed on women, as seen through the subservient role that Maggie was forced to live, despite her "independent" spirit. Yet, there are also those aspects of the story that are timeless and there were even a few parallels to issues of today. For example, dysfunctional families are timeless and the Tulliver family can keep up with the best of them! Maggie's relationship with her brother is complex and forms the central theme of the book. Her brother Tom is a rigid, judgmental person, yet Maggie adores him. From childhood on, she craves his approval, which is often withheld. Apparently this mirrors Mary Ann Evans' own relationship with her brother, who also rejected her, as did Tom Maggie.

Then there are the issues related to class dynamics and the poverty that Maggie's family faced after her father lost a lawsuit and had to declare bankruptcy, which certainly provides echoes of what we're faced with today. Maggie's relationships with the two men in her life, Philip and Stephen Guest, are set out in light the mores of the time, so are limited based upon family dynamics. Philip is the son of a family enemy, so he cannot ever be accepted for Maggie, regardless of her feelings. Stephen Glass is involved with her cousin Lucy, so Maggie is unable to allow her own desires to prevail. The shunning that Maggie experienced an unchaperoned boat trip with Stephen Glass could only occur in Amish country today, yet the gossip and speculation about Maggie afterwards by the townspeople still rings true today.

Laura McDonald's review of the book at Girlebooks and description of Maggie is on point:

Maggie as a child is a beautiful character; Eliot portrays the workings of her mind so truthfully and compellingly. She is full of fiery defiance and lives for the moment, whether in her need for Tom’s affection or full of bitter regret after she realizes the consequences of her actions. One of the best illustrations of Maggie’s ornery personality is when, after being told since she was young that her looks and behavior are that of a gypsy, she decides to run away and live with “her people”. However, when she actually gets her wish and finds herself among the gypsies with no way to get home, it slowly dawns on her that she perhaps acted too precipitously.

Such stories from Maggie’s childhood prepare us for the challenges she will face as she grows older. Family troubles cause both Maggie and Tom to take on heavy responsibilities at an early age, turning grown Maggie into a shadow of her former self interspersed with flashes of emotion she can’t contain. Alongside their family drama we find several love stories intertwined. With these intertwined stories Eliot explores the themes of emotion over duty, passion over propriety. What if the one you desire is the last person who will make you happy? What place does obligation take in questions of the heart? What place does love of a family member take when conflicted with the love of a lover?

Although I did buy a real copy, the book is even available on Google Books, and I was able to read on the fly on my iPhone when I found myself with a few extra minutes here and there. Not quite the Kindle, of course, which I just saw this week-end for the first time (although I've been reading about it for some time). After seeing it, I think the Kindle is my next gadget "must have," but I can get by with books on the iPhone until then. Luckily, our next book up on our reading list is Crime & Punishment, is also available on Google Books.

No News Is Good News

Media-monger Sarah Palin, she of VP fame & infamy, may yet decide that being in the news isn't all that. Especially when the news, as of late, is all bad.

For example, the latest news from the Alaska shores is that Palin didn't properly pay her taxes. The Washington Post reports, Palin Now Owes Taxes on Reimbursement Payments for Nights at Home, State Rules:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) owes income taxes on nearly $17,000 paid to her as travel reimbursements when she spent nights in her Wasilla residence, according to a state legal opinion that the payments were not legitimate business expenses, a state official said yesterday.

* * * *

Palin's expenses were reported by The Washington Post last year after the Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), named Palin as his running mate. The Post reviewed records from late 2006 through early August 2008, and the story prompted a review by state officials. The governor continued to seek the payments through the end of the year, according to the Anchorage Daily News, which first reported this week that she owed taxes on the payments.

This makes me wonder if, a la Daschle, this means that Sarah Palin can't run for office ever again or accept a political appointment, since non-payment of taxes -- especially for Republicans, seems to be killer offense.

The news on the budget front for Alaska is also not good for high-flying (and spending) Sarah. Even worse, it may mean that she has to focus on the home state, as noted by the AP, Sarah Palin In Trouble As Oil Prices Fall:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's first two years in office have been called a time of milk and honey, when the resource-rich state was flush with wealth from record oil prices.

The second half of her term isn't looking so rosy as Palin faces her first major financial challenge as governor.

The rapid decline of oil prices has left the state in a looming budget crisis and a late-entrant in the national recession. And that could have political repercussions for the former Republican vice presidential hopeful, who has signaled an interest in a 2012 presidential run but must stay visible in the Lower 48 to be successful.

'Given these bad times, she's going to have a much more difficult time traveling outside Alaska,' said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. 'When times are good, people will let their governor roam. In bad times, citizens expect their governor to stay home and work on solving the problems.'

Her job as Gov seems to be giving her headaches even beyond the budget. As Steve Benen of Political Animal reports, in PALIN'S PROBLEMS:

Oddly enough, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was not only in over her head on the national stage, she's also struggling in Alaska.

A couple of weeks before the Alaska legislature began this year's session, a bipartisan group of state senators on a retreat a few hours from here invited Gov. Sarah Palin to join them. Accompanied by a retinue of advisers, she took a seat at one end of a conference table and listened passively as Gary Stevens, the president of the Alaska Senate, a former college history professor and a low-key Republican with a reputation for congeniality, expressed delight at her presence.

Would the governor, a smiling Stevens asked, like to share some of her plans and proposals for the coming legislative session?

Palin looked around the room and paused, according to several senators present. "I feel like you guys are always trying to put me on the spot," she said finally, as the room became silent.

Gone was the self-assurance that Alaska had come to know in its young Republican governor, well before her life and career were transformed by Sen. John McCain's selection of her as his vice presidential running mate. "She looked ill at ease, more defensive than we've been accustomed to seeing her," said one legislator who was there and spoke on the condition of anonymity because he said he might need to work with Palin.

The governor, apparently, isn't having any fun anymore.

It's hard to say with any certainty what Palin's plans are for the future, but she seems anxious to maintain a national profile -- she created a leadership PAC, she's on Fox News, she made an Alfalfa dinner appearance, she's weighing in on Republican primary contests far outside Alaska, etc. Jason Zengerle suggests Palin, if she's serious about seeking national office, should "give up her position as partisan firebrand, focus her attentions on being Alaska's governor, remake herself as more of a pragmatic executive (which, prior to the '08 campaign, is what many thought she was), and then return to national politics."

Then, of course, was the news that her daughter Bristol, who called telling her mother about her pregnancy "harder than labor," also spoke out against abstenence-only policies, Bristol Palin Speaks Out:

Bristol Palin, the 18-year-old daughter of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, told Fox News in her first interiew since giving birth that she would like to be an advocate against teen pregnancy.

'Everyone should wait 10 years,' Palin said. 'I hope people learn from my story.'

* * * *

Bristol Palin described to Fox's Greta Van Susteren the moment when she, her boyfriend, Levi Johnston, and another friend told her parents that she was pregnant. She described that moment as "harder than labor."

But this was not the only surprise Bristol Palin said she had for her mother, Alaska's youngest governor. She told Van Susteren she had only told her mother she was doing this national television interview - in which Van Susteren and crew flew to Alaska - one day prior to the taping.

And, at the same time she's out there shopping her book, an unauthorized biography about her is being published this week by a People editor. The book, Trailblazer: An Intimate Biography of Sarah Palin, is not a flattering portrayal, as noted by The Politco, Palin disputes 'fantasies' in new book:

The book spends little time on Palin’s experience as the GOP vice presidential nominee, delving mostly into Palin’s childhood, family and interaction with friends. Of the book’s 228 pages, Benet’s account of the campaign makes up roughly 30 pages.

Much of the rest of his account of Palin’s political rise portrays her as an ambitious and aggressive politician, determined to gain a prominent job and plagued by a contentious relationship with the press.

Shortly after being elected mayor of Wasilla, Palin is quoted by friends as saying, “I want to be president.”

Soon after becoming mayor, her interactions with the media grew heated. “My goodness, I’ve been here 11 days. Give me a break, please,” she said at a press conference.

“I don’t remember other mayors getting grilled like this,” she is quoted as saying later. The book also states that Todd Palin got into a feud with a local editorial cartoonist over the drawings of his wife.

Benet asserts that Palin changed her tune after becoming governor and sought ways to use the press to polish her national profile. He writes that Alaska spent $31,000 in state funds on media consulting for the governor in attempts to book her for major television and newspaper interviews."

I'm not sure that this is the type of media attention that we had in mind when I made my wager with one of the LLWL gang. Our bet was whether Palin would continue to remain a force in politics (or become a media personality & land a show on Fox News). Of course, this just means we have something fun to argue about until the Ides of March (& then we'll spend some time arguing about how we decide who won the bet).

Pocket Book

Moving to the top of my book list, I'm fast & furiously trying to finish George Eliot's "The Mill on the Floss" for my book group meeting this week-end. I also recently made a neat discovery. The book is available on Google Book Search, which now includes a mobile version for the iPhone. So, now I can carry the book in my pocket & read a few pages if I have a spare minute where ever I am.

Taking it to the Street

I've been suffering through a nasty cold that's lingering on a bit past its prime. Unheard of for me, I even left the office early yesterday and got a bit of rest. I also did a little reading & finally thinned my book pile by one.

After a violent incident involving a homeless man occurs at the big DC firm where Michael Brock works, his world -- and high living life style -- suddenly is meaningless, along with his marriage. He discovers a secret that ties the firm to Mister, the homeless man who took several of the lawyers at the firm hostage and his attempt to gather evidence of the misdeed leads to his theft of a client file.

After he departs from the firm, and his chance at partnership, Brock joins a legal clinic and becomes an advocate for the homeless, which gives him a perspective on a world he never even noticed before. Along with Mordecai Green, the driven lawyer who runs the clinic, they try to solve the plight of the homeless and expose the firm's wrongdoing. Reviewing the book, the Pittsburgh Post Gazette describes Green:

[A] firebrand in his early 50s who represents the poorest of the poor. He educates Michael and the reader about the elimination of low-cost housing and the trend in America to criminalize homelessness.

"The big cities have passed all sorts of laws designed to persecute those who live on the streets. Can't beg, can't sleep on a bench, can't camp under a bridge, can't store personal items in a public park, can't sit on a sidewalk, can't eat in public," Mordecai says, before moving on to "sweeps" such as the one that removed homeless people from Atlanta's streets before the Summer Games.

"The Street Lawyer" is not just a primer on the poor. It's a legal thriller about Drake & Sweeney's connection to the hostage-taker - it wouldn't be a Grisham book without a corporate conspiracy or cover-up - and how Michael puts his very livelihood on the line.

The book was written over 10 years ago, but the novel, The Street Lawyer, is especially timely today in these dire economic times, addressing the issue of homelessness. In his usual fast paced, page-turner style, Grisham depicts homelessness in a sympathetic, yet realistic manner, showing the degree of research he did for the novel.

I think the January Magazine Review sums it up best: "The suspense and tight drama that readers of earlier Grisham novels lapped up like so much honeyed milk is absent from The Street Lawyer. And though this is not an inferior novel, it reads more like a Jerry Maguire than a Firm or a Pelican Brief. A feel-good movie with masculine themes; a Fried Green Tomatoes for guys."

The Confession

I spent most of my life being monogamous. In recent years, however, I admit that I ventured into polygamist relationships -- and now, there doesn't seem to be any going back.

Of course, I'm not talking about my sexual proclivities. I'm talking about my reading habits.

Posing the question at Read Street, Are you a monogamous reader?, Dave Rosenthal of the Baltimore Sun thereafter penned an amusing piece on the shocking (to him) habit of many readers of reading several books at once. Do you read multiple books at a time?.

I have always been an avid reader and consumed at least a half a dozen books a month. As I mentioned before, as an English major, in my younger days, I fancied myself to be a purist. That is, I tried to read "literature" and was guilty of sneering at popular fiction. As time went on, I expanded my horizons and permitted the occasion light reading. I was able to keep up the habit even through law school and the grueling big firm days (I'm sure it helped keep me sane). Same during my daughter's childhood, even when juggling a busy law practice. Then, for some reason, I just stopped reading books. See And They Didn't Read This, Either.

Luckily, I began reading again, and even joined a book group. However, my reading habits have changed a bit. For one thing, I read more non-fiction than I used to. And, I've started to read more than one book at a time. I'm not even quite sure how it began. In part, I suppose it's due to my book group, which causes an overlap of a book for the group with another that I am reading on my own. But, things have gotten out of hand.

I'm now in the middle (or somewhere in the book) of 4 books, with a back-log of another 7 books (not counting the other dozen or so unread books on the shelf waiting to be picked up "when I'm in the mood."). As pictured above, I'm reading:

The Mill on the Floss, by George Eliot. The latest book for my book group. I missed our last meeting, but we somehow switched from being the Jewish Book Group to the Literary Guild (next up is Crime & Punishment, as seen in the to-be-read pile).

The Almost Moon, by Alice Sebold. One of the LLWL gave me this one to read. I liked Sebold's The Lovely Bones, but this tale of a mother/daughter bond that ends in murder has been a difficult read.

The Street Lawyer, by John Grisham. Someone gave me a few Grisham books (& I just picked up his latest). This one's a quick, fun read that I took on my trip to South Florida. Almost done with this one.

White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga (not pictured). My book group's last pick, which I didn't finish yet (and then left at a friend's place).

I'm trying to resist starting any of from the Next Up pile, although a few are calling out to me.

The Myth, Redux

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Ronald Reagan
Born this day in 1911

So my book arrived yesterday and, low & behold, it was the subject of discussion on the Rachel Maddow Show last night. Will Bunch, of Philly Daily News & Attytood, discussed his new book on the mythification of Ronald Reagan, Tear Down This Myth: How the Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics and Haunts Our Future.

Like you-know-what, Bunch was also on Fresh Air with Terry Gross.

I wrote about Bunch's book before, The Legacy Lives, and predicted that the myth machine is no doubt gearing up for Bush. Of course, it will have to work overtime to try to rehabilitate his image. But knowing what masters of propaganda the GOP are (helped by the short memories of the public), I have no doubt they will spin him into a misunderstood man, who worked his genius behind the scenes or some such. That's why books like Bunch's are important -- to remind us of the truth.

I figured this was truly a fitting tribute to Reagan on his day.

The Legacy Lives

One of my favorite bloggers (who is also a pretty good journalist, I might add) has just published a new book on the legacy of another former President, Ronald Reagan.

Will Bunch, who writes Attytood, is a daily read for me. Discussing his new book, Bunch describes his literary effort, in Why Reagan still matters: A sneak peek at "Tear Down This Myth":

Jan. 20, 2009, was such a transformative day in American politics that it was easy to forget it also marked a 20th anniversary as well. The inauguration of President Barack Obama also meant it was two decades to the exact day since Ronald Reagan last sat in the Oval Office. When he and his wife Nancy boarded the Air Force One jetliner – the one that was later decommissioned, de-assembled and reassembled at the Ronald Reagan Library (and mostly paid for by oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens) – for the long trip back to California, it wasn’t clear how the world would remember Reagan’s presidency.

For the majority of his second term, Americans told pollsters that the nation was on a wrong track, and in 1987 a 55-percent majority said we needed a new direction away from Reagan’s often divisive policies. But in little more than five years after leaving Washington, the Great Communicator would be silenced by Alzheimer’s -- and a new generation of neoconservatives would construct a mythologized, iconic version of the 40th president that increasingly bore little resemblance to the flesh-and-blood Ronald Reagan. It is that modern version – and warped policies that could be collectively called Reaganism – that has given us an unfathomable national debt, a wide gulf between the nation’s rich and poor, the denial of basic science on energy and the environment, and which was even used to justify an unjustifiable war in Iraq that the real Gipper himself would never undertaken.

Twenty years gone – but Reagan still matters. About this time one year ago, unceasing Reagan idolatry hijacked the race for the White House. Sometimes it was voiced in the name of policies on immigration or toward Iran that were the exact opposite of what really happened a generation ago. The power of this political fantasy – expressed mainly, of course, on the GOP side but occasionally even spilling over to the Democrats – caused me to begin work on a book about the Ronald Reagan myth.

As I've said before in another context: "I'm sure that it won't come as a shock to anyone who knows me that I've never been a fan of the Reagans. The Dear Departed Ronald Reagan was a so-so actor and he never rose that far during his presidency. See e.g., The Race Goes On and Truth is Complicated -- For Republicans. Of course, the fact that he suffered from Alzheimer's during at least a portion of his term in office didn't help." And then, of course, there's Reagan's racist legacy that somehow isn't part of the myth. See Hatefest.

For most people (even some Democrats, I'm afraid), however, Ronald Reagan has become this mythical, legendary figure. It's nothing more than the great myth at work.

Yet, as I read Bunch's words on Reagan, I was suddenly struck by the thought that the legacy tour that Bush began even before he left office is his attempt to adopt the Reagan model of mythology. As much as I've snickered about Bush's "history will judge my presidency" rap, I realized that the re-writing of history for Bush has only just begun, a la Reagan. Bush was able to sneer at us to the end because he knows the tendency of the American public to forget the past. And then it hit me -- it could happen with him as well if we aren't vigilant. Of course, the Republicans excel at telling tales. After all, the whole myth of modern conservatism is nothing more than a tall tale. See The Faustian bargain.

My husband is an advocate of remembering history and its importance to our future. As he would say, it's important for us to remember the real story. History is not merely a subject we study in high school. It's what happened yesterday -- and the day before.

I ordered my copy of Tear Down This Myth: How the Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics and Haunts Our Future today.

Words To Speak & Be Remembered

The National Constitution Center has joined with Smith magazine to solicit a few good words -- Six Words to Inspire a Nation.

As the Inquirer reports, In a nutshell, advice for Obama:

Six little words can speak volumes.

Nothing to fear but fear itself.

Franklin Roosevelt said that.

To bind up the nation's wounds.

That was Lincoln, at his second inaugural, with the end of the Civil War in sight.

Pay any price, bear any burden.

Kennedy.

Of course, like his predecessors, Barack Obama will employ hundreds if not thousands of words when he addresses the nation upon being sworn in as president on Jan. 20. But between now and Jan. 5, the National Constitution Center and SMITH online magazine are asking Americans to offer the next president an idea, a turn of phrase, a slogan, some guidance - and to do it in a half-dozen words.

"A little haiku of citizenship," said NCC president and CEO Joseph Torsella. "We've been surprised by the things we've done from time to time that touch a nerve - this has been one of them."

Six words is not very long. Only as long as this sentence.

But so far more than 1,800 people have logged onto www.constitutioncenter.org and posted their reflections to "Address America: Six Words to Inspire a Nation." The best entries will be delivered to Obama's speechwriters.

As noted by the caption & as I've said before, I love the 6 word story & have penned a few words on my life several times, see The Mini Memoir.

This time, my contribution to the six-word aphorism to inspire the next president:

On the precipice. Change required.

The Team of Readers

Although there was a split of opinion about the selection of the month, it did engender a lively discussion among the members of my book group.

Beforehand, we chuckled over the book club piece in this week's Style Section of the NYTimes, Book Club Trouble Often Has Little to Do With Books. Sad to say, our book group doesn't have anywhere near the drama depicted in the article. We've certainly have had our share of lively discussions over various books, as well as book picks, but it's all good-natured. We also tend to veer off into discussions of politics and life (above cartoon personifies us, sans TV), but we all seem to be similarly inclined, from a political and philosophical perspective.

In fact, my law partner refers to my book group as my Jewish Book Club (even though she's the one who's Jewish, not me). Although only half of the group is Jewish, a significant number of books we read tend to be written by Jewish writers or focus on stuff like the Holocaust. Not so much with the chick-lit.


Continuing the theme from last month, this month's selection was The Reader by Bernhard Schlink. It's another book that probes the Holocaust from viewpoint of Germans who lived through the war, rather than victims of the Holocaust. As described by The Boston Bibliophile:

Bernhard Schlink's meditation on guilt and accountability is set in post-World War 2 Germany, as a young man named Michael Berg embarks on a sexual affair with a mysterious, 30ish woman named Hanna who lives alone and works on a trolley. She is passionate but curiously withdrawn- and then one day she is simply gone. When she reappears, she is on trial for crimes Michael never could have imagined- and she has a secret.

The Reader received critical acclaim and a few members of the group loved it. There is much to praise. The complexity of the issues is aptly pinpointed by Suzanne Ruta's description, in a review for the NYTimes, Secrets and Lies:

Learning that the love of your life used to be a concentration camp guard is not part of the American baby-boomer experience. No matter. This offbeat novel, by a German writer born in 1944, about a high school kid in love with a woman formerly employed at Auschwitz, leaps national boundaries and speaks straight to the heart. Spare and direct, it follows a pair of star-crossed lovers across the decades, with the kind of transparent yet mysterious, even outre, narrative line that you find in the 19th-century German novellas of, say, Heinrich von Kleist or Kafka's favorite, the Austrian Adalbert Stifter.

* * * *

In Germany, one often hears the doubtful phrase ''the lucky late-born'' for those too young to be held accountable for Nazi crimes. But what's so lucky, German writers wonder, about having to ask, ''What did you do in the war, Daddy?'' What's so lucky about loving your suspect parents and feeling complicitous in their crimes? Or, alternatively, hating your suspect parents and losing your humanity in ''swaggering self-righteousness''? Recent history complicates family relations in Germany in ways that are hard for Americans to imagine.

Notions of guilt and shame are explored in various ways, between the characters and the generations, throughout the book. The moral issues involved in the book, as experienced by those who confronted the reality of Nazi's during the reign of Hitler are thought-provoking, to say the least.

Yet, I thought the detachment of the characters -- to each other and the reader -- is the very thing that allows the type of environment that happened in Germany to occur. Ironically, Schlink mentions a book written by a holocaust survivor in the novel, saying "that it is the book that creates distance. It does not invite one to identify with it and makes no one sympathetic," which also describes the detached observer of the narrator in his novel. And, it is this very distance that creates the situation where a group massacre can happen. I'm sure that was his point, but this very distance precludes an affinity with the characters, which could lead to the kind of undertsanding that can help avoid a similar result in the future.

Echoing that sentiment, in the second section of the book, where Michael is a law student watching the trial of his former lover, Hanna, he travels to a concentration camp during a break in the trial. On his way, he engages in a conversation with the taxi driver, who wryly says:

"Ah, you want to understand why people can do such terrible things. . . . What is it you want to understand? That people murder out of passion, or love, or hate, or for honor or revenge, that you understand?"

I nodded.

"You also understand that people murder for money or power? That people murder in wars and revolutions?"

I nodded again. "But..."

"But the pople who were murdered in the camps hadn't done anything to the individuals who murdered them? Is that what you want to say? Do you mean that there was no reason for hatred, and no war?

I didn't want to nod again. What he said was true, but not the way he said it.

"You're right, there was no war, and no reason for hatred. But executioners don't hate the people they execute, and they execute them just the same. . . . No, I'm not talking about orders and obedience. An executioner is not under orders. he's doing his work, he doesn't hate the people he executes, he's not taking revenge on them, he's not killing them because they're in his way or threatening him or attacking him. They're a matter of such indifference to him that he can kill them as easily as not."

I think that is the part that disturbs me most about this book. Even though it is no doubt an accurate reflection of the reality of the time, the fact that the Holocaust, when all was said and done, was such a mundane part of life during the Nazi regime, is the true horror of it all. That and the fact that Hanna's secret -- her illiteracy, is a source of greater shame to her than her role as a guard at Auschwitz and the other war crimes she participated in. That her inability to read equates with her role in the Holocaust, is in fact so repugnant to her that it seals her fate in the trial. That is, her silence results in her conviction of war crimes, as Richard Bernstein notes, in his Times review, Once Loving, Once Cruel, What's Her Secret?:

What is striking is that Hanna refuses to defend herself, even though she is being made a scapegoat by the others. As Michael soon understands, she has been falsely accused of primary responsibility for the worst of the atrocities committed against the inmates of the camp. The truthful Hanna is sentenced to life imprisonment while the mendacious, opportunistic others get briefer terms.

Suddenly Michael understands that Hanna has a secret unrelated to her wartime activities that prevents her from defending herself in court. It would be unfair to reveal that secret here. But it is a secret that makes a whole of Hanna's life and it changes, not everything, but a great deal, for Michael and for us as we attempt to judge the degree of culpability that should be put to Hanna's legal and moral account.

Although some members of my book group could understand the depth of self loathing intertwined in being illiterate, I -- as well as a few other members -- found this particular aspect of the book to be unrealistic and overshadowed my view of the story. I think my opinion is best expressed by The Literary Wombat:

This book = eh.

I’m [not] really sure how much I liked it. I know that I DID like it, but I suppose I just didn’t find it as compelling as a lot of other reviewers do. The book starts out explaining a meeting 15-year-old Michael Berg has with an older woman when he becomes sick walking home from school one day. She finds him and helps him. After he recovers, he tracks her down to thank her and eventually forms a sexual relationship with her. Later on, she leaves him behind, he grows up and becomes a law student and the next time he encounters her it’s in a trial that he is watching for a seminar.

The story is well done. The characters are interesting and unique. The writing, though not complex (actually very simple) is appropriate to the story and it IS well-written. However, I just wasn’t able to get very emotionally involved in the story. I understand the parallel Michael and Hanna’s relationship is at with the gap between pre and post-WWII German generations, and I find that interesting and all. I just don’t know.

We didn't realize it when we selected this book, but a movie version is coming out this week. See Translating Love and the Unspeakable. Not sure that I'll see it.

At What Cost

The latest selection from my book group, Those Who Save Us, by Jenna Blum explores Nazi Germany and its aftermath from the perspective of a German mother and her daughter. It is a point of view not often considered -- that of the Germans who lived through the Nazi era.

Family secrets buried in the ruins of Nazi Germany form the basis of this page turner of a novel told in the voices of a mother and daughter, alternating between the present, in New Heidelberg, Minnesota, to the small town of Weimar near Buchenwald during World War II. Hardly the stuff of your typical mother/daughter relationship angst. Here, the post-war silence from the mother who survived the war precipitates the daughter, a professor of German history, to undertake a project interviewing ordinary German women about their roles during World War II.

As Charlie Lee-Potter writes, in The Independent:

This novel asks that nagging question: 'What would you have done?' Would you have helped the oppressed, would you have colluded with the enemy, would you have sold your soul to feed your child? Jenna Blum is good at asking questions. She spent four years as an interviewer for Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation documenting the experiences of Holocaust survivors.

Likewise, Amy at Gather summarizes the novel:

What would you have done if you were an ordinary German citizen during World War II? Would you have risked your life to hide some Jews? Or turned them in? Would you have joined the Resistance? Or would you have just done whatever you had to do to survive? These are some of the questions posed in Jenna Blum's first novel, Those Who Save Us.

Anna Brandt is a cold, silent woman who never speaks of the past. In her view, the past is dead and it should be left that way. Her daughter Trudy has always known that her mother's American husband, Jack, isn't her real father. She knows that Jack married Anna at the end of the war and brought her and Trudy back to Minnesota with him. But who was her father? And why won't her mother tell her anything? The only clue Trudy has to her past is a photograph from when she was only a few years old. She is sitting on her mother's lap and an SS officer is standing behind them. Was the SS officer Trudy's father?

Trudy is now a professor of German History and one of her Jewish colleagues is involved in a project recording the experiences of Holocaust survivors. Perhaps out of guilt over her own German heritage, or perhaps because she has so many unanswered questions, Trudy decides to undertake her own project that researches the point of view of ordinary Germans during the war. She felt their unique perspective was going to be lost if it wasn't documented and she wanted to know. What did the people do? Did they know what was happening to the Jews? Did they feel guilty or do anything to stop it?

As the novel's title suggests, explorations of the relationship between the saved and the savior are also an important aspect of the novel. Anna saves Trudy's father, a Jewish Doctor, for a time, by hiding him in a crawlspace in her home. She later is saved by a woman who owns a bakery, who works for the Resistance, and they both smuggle food to Jews imprisoned at Buchenwald. Later, she and Trudy are saved by an SS Officer, who helps them survive the War, then later by an American soldier, who likely saved Anna from punishment as a collaborator with the Nazis.

The interspersing of good and evil serve to highlight the complexities in distinguishing them, especially in difficult times, like war. Although she is repulsed by the SS Officer, Anna nonetheless realizes that "We come to love those who save us." The loss of her lover and the guilt over her relationship with a SS Officer no doubt causes her to close herself off from the past. However, it is unfortunate that she mainly acted to save her daughter Trudy, yet her later silence about the past served to alienate them through most of Trudy's adult life. She cannot overcome her shame, even when it means that her daughter is left believing that she was fathered by a Nazi, rather than revealing the truth.

This book generated the most discussion we've had in a long time during our Sunday morning book group meeting. After our catch-up chit-chat, we usually have a short conversation about the book, then verve into a discussion of politics and kids. However, we had a lively discussion of the issues raised by this book, such as how far we would go to save ourselves and our family, as well as the risks we would take to save others.

For another review, see The Wrinkled Page and an interview with the author, see Murphy's Law.

God is on My Side

Wayne Stayskal

Reading this Washington Post story about evangelical ministers flouting federal law, which prohibits endorsements of political candidates from the pulpit, by explicitly endorsing McCain, 33 Pastors Flout Tax Law With Political Sermons, reminded me of my recent family reunion.

The Post story reported:

Defying a federal law that prohibits U.S. clergy from endorsing political candidates from the pulpit, an evangelical Christian minister told his congregation Sunday that voting for Sen. Barack Obama would be evidence of "severe moral schizophrenia."

* * * *

Johnson and 32 other pastors across the country set out Sunday to break the rules, hoping to generate a legal battle that will prompt federal courts to throw out a 54-year-old ban on political endorsements by tax-exempt houses of worship.

The ministers contend they have a constitutional right to advise their worshipers how to vote. As Johnson put it during a break between sermons, "The point that the IRS says you can't do it, I'm saying you're wrong."

The fundamental problem with the premise espoused by these fundamentalists is that it is not illegal to a Church to endorse a candidate. It merely means that they cannot do so and take advantage of the advantages of tax exempt status afforded to churches and other non-profit entities. No one is forcing these ministers to accept the benefits of being a tax exempt entity under IRS rules. Just say no to tax exemption and endorse away! As the Post article notes:

Yet while the ministers say the rules stifle religious expression, their opponents contend that the tax laws are essential to protect the separation of church and state. They say political speech should not be supported by a tax break for the churches or the worshipers who are contributing to a political cause.

A few weeks ago was our annual family reunion in Lancaster. I've mentioned before that on Saturday, before the family dinner, there is a liturgy of the mass. Give Me Some of that Old Time Religion. The priest from the Lebanese parish in Scranton comes to celebrate mass. I've also mentioned that I'm probably the only person there who doesn't attend. I figure that there has to be one heathen in every gathering and I volunteered to be it.

During the Cocktail hour after mass (now, that's something I could believe in), several of my relatives were discussing the fact that the priest had addressed the election during his sermon and admonished them not to vote for any candidate who supports abortion. Not only was I shocked to hear this blatant political talk from the pulpit, but I was also appalled that my cousins (and spouses) were mentioning this approvingly. They felt this justified a decision not to vote for Obama. So much for Biden having much influence over the vote in Scranton.

The next morning, Father ended up sitting next to me at breakfast. I thought long and hard about expressing my dismay over his conduct, but decided to let it go, since the reunion is a family gathering, not a political forum. At least I would honor that tradition. However, I wanted to ask whether next week's sermon was to advocate against voting for anyone who supports the death penalty or unjust wars (isn't that what the Pope called Iraq?). I wonder whether he really wants all Catholics to sit out the election, since they can't vote for either candidate if that's the case.

My musings also reminded me how much the Catholic Church has changed from the Church that I remember. As a follow up of sorts to my post on Banned Books week, I was an English major undergraduate and attended Marywood College in Scranton, which was then an all girl's Catholic college. The school was run by the IHM (Immaculate Heart of Mary) nuns, so it was not exactly UC Berkeley on the Lackawanna.

Yet, as inconceivable as it sounds today, I actually took a course in college entitled "Literature in Pornography." We studied several of the books on the banned book list I noted, such as Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence, Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov, Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller and of course, Portney's Complaint by Phillip Roth. I am also certain, despite our supposedly more enlightened times, such a course would never be offered today.

Sad to say, but for many, religion has become the refuge of the small-minded.

Read a (Banned) Book

Via Vagabond Scholar, see Banned Books Week and the National Book Festival, 2008, this week (September 27th to October 4th ) is Celebrate Your Freedom to Read!
Banned Books Week.

Each year libraries, schools, and book lovers come together for Banned Books Week, a celebration of the freedom to read without censorship. Of course, if McCain/Palin get elected, they will probably ban Banned Books Week, so be sure to participate this year. The Free Library of Philadelphia has an event October 1 at 7:30 PM. See Phawker for details.

Amazingly, many of the top 100 books have been on Banned Book Lists:

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
The Color Purple, Alice Walker
Ulysses, James Joyce
Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison
Beloved, Toni Morrison
The Lord of the Flies, William Golding
1984, George Orwell
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Lolita, Vladmir Nabokov
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
Their Eyes were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
Native Son, Richard Wright
Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey
Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut
The Call of the Wild, Jack London
Go Tell it on the Mountain, James Baldwin
All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren
The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
The Jungle, Upton Sinclair
Lady Chatterley's Lover, DH Lawrence
Sons and Lovers, DH Lawrence
Women in Love, DH Lawrence
A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
A Separate Peace, John Knowles
Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs
The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer
Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser
Rabbit, Run, John Updike

From Banned and/or Challenged Books from the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century (source cites reasons why book is banned).

Think about those statistics: Of the Top 100 Novels, 44 have been banned/challenged.

Out of those, I've read all but the following:

Ulysses, James Joyce
The Call of the Wild, Jack London
Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs
An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser
Rabbit, Run, John Updike

In honor of Banned Book Week, read a banned book. I think I'll read The Tenth Circle by Jodi Picoult, which is on a list of books banned in 2007-2008, which I found on my daughter's bookshelf.



(Photos via Phawker)

The House Painter

My latest read is a book that was recommended by a friend of the family. A big part of the appeal of the book for me was the fact that it covers both Philly and Scranton.

Of course, that's not the focus of the story. Rather, the book, "I Heard You Paint Houses," is a true crime genre by Charles Brandt, which tells the story of what really happened to long, lost Jimmy Hoffa. As described in Hoffa Solved, the website devoted to the book:

"I heard you paint houses" are the first words Jimmy Hoffa ever spoke to Frank "the Irishman" Sheeran. To paint a house is to kill a man. The paint is the blood that spatters on the walls and floors. In the course of nearly five years of recorded interviews, long-time Hoffa suspect, Frank Sheeran - nearing the end of his life and seeking redemption in the Catholicism of his Depression Era youth - confessed to Charles Brandt that he handled more than twenty-five hits for the powerful Mafia boss Russell Bufalino, and for his friend and Teamsters mentor Jimmy Hoffa. Sheeran learned to kill in Europe during World War II, where he waded ashore in three amphibious invasions and marched from Sicily to Dachau, compiling an incredible 411 days of active combat in General Patton's "killer division." After returning home he married, had four daughters, became a truck driver, and met Mafia boss Russell Bufalino by chance at a truck stop in 1955. At age 35 Frank Sheeran's life changed forever. He began doing odd jobs for Bufalino to earn a few bucks, getting deeper into the Mafia way of life. Sheeran soon was killing on orders again. Eventually he would rise to a position of such prominence in the Teamsters and the Bufalino family that in a RICO suit then-U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani would name him as one of only two non-Italians on a list of 26 top mob figures. When Bufalino ordered Sheeran to kill his friend and mentor, Jimmy Hoffa, Sheeran followed the order, knowing that if he ever said no to Russell Bufalino about anything . . . .

Sheeran is a Philly native and Bufalino is from the Scranton area, so the local connections made the story especially interesting to me. As I've mentioned before, Russell Bufalino was the head of the Bufalino family when I lived there and I remember being shocked to read a story in Time Magazine in the early '70s, listing him as one of the top Mafia heads in the country -- living in little old Scranton (or even smaller Old Forge). See The Electric Connection. However, it wasn't until much later that I realized that he was a major mafia Don, who was linked to the FBI plot to assassinate Fidel Castro Mafia Spies in Cuba:, and the disappearance of former Teamster President Jimmy Hoffa, The American "MAFIA".

The recent grand jury investigation and indictment of Louis DeNaples, the owner of Mount Airy Casino in the Poconos has resurrected many of those memories -- of Scranton and its Mafia don, Bufalino. As I noted in It's All Who You Know, DeNaples was accused of allegedly lying about his relationships with organized crime figures to win a lucrative gambling license in the Poconos. That is, he is accused of denying his relationship with William D'Elia, the current reputed head of the Bufalino crime family in Scranton and Bufalino himself.

The book's focus is primarily on the disappearance and death of Hoffa, describing Sheeran's relationship with Hoffa as well as Bufalino, who is the one who put the hit on Hoffa. As Brian Burrough, who reviewed the book for the NYTimes, said in Killing Him Softly:

The book Brandt has written gives new meaning to the term ''guilty pleasure.'' It promises to clear up the mystery of Hoffa's demise, and appears to do so. Sheeran not only admits he was in on the hit, he says it was he who actually pulled the trigger -- and not just on Hoffa but on dozens of other victims, including many, he alleges, dispatched on Hoffa's orders. This last seems likely to spur a reappraisal of Hoffa's career. The book's title, in fact, comes from the first words Sheeran says Hoffa ever spoke to him. To paint a house, Sheeran explains, is Mafiaese for killing someone, from the blood that splatters all over the, well, you get the picture.

'' 'Houses' '' is a cut above the usual Mafia memoir. Brandt keeps the focus tightly on Sheeran and Hoffa, quick-marching the reader through Sheeran's rise from carnival gofer to klepto-trucker to union organizer to trusted assassin. The story is told mostly in Sheeran's voice, with Brandt intervening to provide chapters on Hoffa's career and the legal troubles that sent him to prison.

The juxtaposition of the narrators Sheeran and Brandt works quite well in this case, since Sheeran's words don't give the historical perspective that Brandt does in filling in certain sections with details left out by Sheeran. Based upon Sheeran's background and personality, his clipped rendering is part of his character:

Sheeran is Old School, and his tale is admirably free of self-pity and self-aggrandizement. Without getting all Oprah about it, he admits he was an alcoholic and a lousy father. His business was killing people, and, as he learned to do as a soldier at Anzio and Monte Cassino, he did it with little muss, fuss or introspection. He recalls his first assignment from the Philadelphia mob boss Angelo Bruno, whose sole directive was ''You gotta do what you gotta do.''

''You didn't have to go down the street and enroll in some courses at the University of Pennsylvania to know what he meant,'' Sheeran explains. ''It was like when an officer would tell you to take a couple of German prisoners back behind the line and for you to 'hurry back.' You did what you had to do.''

Sheeran had to do a lot, it seems. Working for Hoffa one memorable day, he says, ''I flew to Puerto Rico and took care of two matters. Then I flew to Chicago and took care of one matter. Then I flew to San Francisco . . . to meet up with Jimmy and give him the report.''

'' 'Houses' '' provides two story lines that, if true, further darken Hoffa's legacy. One involves cash payoffs Sheeran says he delivered to Richard Nixon's attorney general, John Mitchell, in return for Hoffa's presidential pardon or parole. The other is a heavy dollop of circumstantial evidence that Hoffa and his Mafia allies really were behind the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The evidence, however, is limited to spoken threats and spooky asides, as when one Mafia don asks Hoffa for a favor. For what? Hoffa asks. For Dallas, the don says. This, alas, does fall somewhat short of a smoking gun.

As mentioned by Burroughs, an interesting aside to the story was the bitter relationship between Hoffa and Bobby Kennedy, with the unstated suggestion that the mob was responsible for John Kennedy's assassination as a way to put a stop to Bobby's unrelenting obsession with bringing down the mafia. Surprisingly, despite Bobby's campaign against organized crime -- and Hoffa -- while he was attorney general, the book does not suggest that the mob was behind Bobby Kennedy's killing.

All of the local Philly politicians, such as Arlen Specter, Joe Biden and Frank Rizzo make appearances at one point or another during the early days of their careers. The gossipy tidbits, the inside view of the mob and the story of what really happened to Jimmy Hoffa, all combine to make this a fascintating read.

A Life of Stone

I just finished The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields, the next book for my reading group, which meets this week.

The story, a series of vignettes or diaries, provide snippets of the life of Daisy Goodwill, from her birth in 1905 to her death, sometime in the 1990s. The chapters follow different stages of her life, from her birth, childhood, marriage and old age and is presented as a combination autobiography and biography.

The manner in which the story is told, as well as a detailed family tree and an assortment of family photos makes you wonder if the tale is true. In fact, at one point, I found myself looking to see if the book was fiction or non-fiction. The inside cover confirmed that it was a novel.

There is much to enjoy in the book and its simple story of Daisy and her life. However, the life of Daisy, which starts upon the death of her mother during her birth, is not a happy one. The characters that intersect with her, friend and family alike, are all complex in their ordinariness. However, to one degree or another, each lives a life that is unfulfilled and alone, as does Daisy. From her father, who was in love with her mother Mercy, who never truly felt anything for him, to the next door neighbor Clarentine, who raised Daisy after she left her husband. From her first husband who died on their honeymoon, who was never mourned or mentioned again by Daisy to Clarentine's son Barker, who loved her from childhood, but wasn't able to express his feelings, although they eventually married and had a family.

Daisy's life was typical for a woman of her time, but was permeated by her loss of her mother at birth, followed by an eleven year separation from her father while she was raised by Clarentine. After she was reunited with her father, a stonecutter (who built a stone monument to her mother that became famous), they moved from Canada to the States. They had a normal life, but she was never especially close with her father. Daisy had 3 children, who were somewhat disappointing and distant from her (both literally and figuratively). She managed to make a decent life, with joys and highpoints, but reflected at her death that she was like the stones that surrounded her life.

In addition to the oppressive sorrow that she bore for most of her life, including a period of deep depression that paralyzed her, the biggest flaw in the book for me was the continual narration shifts from one point of view to another -- sometimes in the same paragraph, which detracted from the story at times. It wasn't that I couldn't follow the story line due to the changing points of view, but I sometimes felt that the shift was accidental rather than an intentional literary device of the author. I like the diary format and there were parts where the narration by other characters was very good, such as the reflection by friends and family as to the cause of Daisy's depression.

Overall, my view of the book was mixed. It was well written (narrative changes aside), easy to read and Daisy's story was interesting, but I certainly wouldn't call it one of my favorite books. But what do I know? After all, the book won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award and several Canadian book awards, and it received a glowing NYTimes review by Jay Parini (a Scranton native), Men and Women, Forever Misaligned.