5 comments about Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror (Vintage).

1. This is a must for anyone Jew, Muslim gentile (like me) who despairs at the Israeli/Palestinian problem to be confirmed in the view that there are people of good will on both sides where common humanity exists but unfortunately frustrated by those in power who believe that force is the only way forward



2. This is a very well written book that grips you from the start and makes you want to keep reading to find out "what happened next" in the manner of successful fiction. The events outlined display a considerable amount of courage on the part of Goldberg, who stayed a few weeks in a Pakistani Madrasa, and repeatedly entered the Gaza strip and was alone among what were, officially, his enemies.
   
   While the author's need to see signs of hope as to the future of the Israeli-Palestinian situation via his friendship with his former Palestinian prisoner "Rafik" is constant throughout the book, many of the questions Goldberg raises throughout his journeys are destined to dead-ends because they are based on a perspective that has been subject to a considerable amount of editing. And, as the nature of any quest goes, if you don't ask the right questions, you don't get the right answers.
   
   Whereas the author's pursuit of these signs of hope, even in hostile territory, is admirable, his premise is not as impassive as the synopsis of the book wants us to believe; It tells us that, as a prison guard, Goldberg "realized that his prisoners were the future leaders of Palestine", hence "this was a unique opportunity to learn from them about themselves", but, when you get to that part of the book, Goldberg tells you that one of his tasks in prison (as a member of the military police) was to confiscate any and all signs of Palestinian national aspirations (flags, rocks in the shape of Israel, national songs). These were the pre-Oslo days, when a "Palestinian state" was unacceptable to Israel. And while Goldberg was genuinely curious about understanding his prisoners, he did not think they'd be "future leaders" of any state, as confiscating any signs of such aspirations testifies. It is very interesting to note how taking such liberties in shuffling around elements of the time-line for the sake of a stronger pitch in the synopsis mirrors what happened with the larger picture of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
   
   One of the questions the reader is inevitably lead to upon reading Goldberg's accounts of such confiscations in prison is:
   
   What drives one people to try and confiscate all signs of the identity of another people? Or, more accurately:
   
   How can a people base the security of their identity upon the elimination of that of another?
   
   In Goldberg's latest account of the conflict covering the last few years, he presents it more as one that has its origins in religious intolerance and Muslim extremism. It is ironic that Goldberg quotes Israeli writer "Amos Oz" at some point in his narrative, because it was precisely Oz that repeated that this was not a religious conflict, but a real estate one. While the rise of militant fanaticism in the Muslim world is an undeniable fact of considerable threat to many countries, recasting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as being caused by religious pathos is, again, a reshuffling of the story for the sake of a stronger pitch.
   
   Anyone who is interested in knowing more about what is going on in that unfortunate part of the world could benefit from the account of "Susan Nathan", a British Jewess who lived in an Arab village in Israel, in her book, "The Other Side of Israel", or "Emma Williams", a British doctor who lived and worked in Jerusalem, in her book "It's easier to reach Heaven than the end of the street, a Jerusalem memoir". Both provide some parts of the picture that were edited out of Goldberg's story, courageous as he may be.
   
   Some questions open doors to other questions that may well be very different from the ones the author intended, but which are the only ones that could bring the reader closer to an understanding of the real story.



3. When this book originally came out in 2006, its title was: Prisoners-A Muslim and a Jew across the Middle East Divide. When I received the book to review it had a new title: Prisoners-A Story of Friendship and Terror. I found this very interesting because the new title seemed more hopeful, a strong message woven throughout this book.
   
   Jeffrey Goldberg is the Washington correspondent of The New Yorker. Until recently, he served as the magazine's Middle East correspondent. Before joining The New Yorker in 2000, Goldberg covered the Middle East and Africa for The New York Times Magazine. He is also a veteran of the Israel Defense Forces.
   
   Prisoners is a memoir of his time in the Israeli Army. In 1990, during the first Palestinian uprising, Goldberg served as a prison guard in the largest prison in Israel. He decided early in his service that he would talk to the Palestinian prisoners, mostly out of curiosity but also because he thought it was possible to be friends with them. Rafiq, the prisoner and Fatah activist that he spent the most time with, was as he describes, "a bookish kind of guy who had some ironic distance from the essential absurdities of prison life." Despite their extreme differences, they began a dialogue in the prison that grew into an astonishing friendship--and now a remarkable book.
   
   Goldberg brings real faces to the war on both sides of the conflict, something we don't always get when reading about this topic. He believes this book is meant for anyone who is mystified by the issues in the Middle East. He hopes that, through this memoir he will explain to all sorts of readers why the Middle East is such a puzzling and troubling place.
   
   The message of his book is that it is not impossible--it is terribly difficult, but not impossible--to build a friendship with your enemy. Rafiq said it best: "If a million people in the Middle East could have the sort of friendship we have created--a tenuous, fraught friendship, but a friendship nonetheless--than the Middle East might become a better place." We can only hope.
   
   Armchair Interviews says: A thought-provoking story.



4. Brilliant...Prisoners is a stunningly personal, humorous and poignant memoir that is rare in its scope and reach. In the book, Goldberg deftly presents both his own breathtakingly honest and bittersweet life history as well as the story of his close friendship and kinship with Rafiq - a Palestinian prisoner he was once charged with guarding while in the Israeli army. This account of their conversation through the years explores the possibility of peace in an area of the world fraught with strife throughout the millennia.
   
   Goldberg is a seasoned journalist who masterfully presents the extremely complex situation between the Israelis and the Palestinians in a way that facilitates understanding and renders it accessible to everyone - from novices of the region to experts in geo-politics. Of note, he is fair-minded and even handed in his approach describing the tense conflict between the two sides. Goldberg's deep knowledge of and experience in the Middle East coupled with his evocative writing style produces an exciting and immensely satisfying read. Overall, Prisoners is at times hilarious and others heart-wrenching but ultimately it is a story of hope measured with an experienced and realistic perspective.



5. I read it in 2 nights. It is truly brilliantly perceptive and indescribably sad - he, like so many, see no solution, not really, despite his theme of coexistence. By now there's so much hatred on both sides, so much misunderstanding, so much blood shed unnecessarily, that any happy end is virtually impossible.
   Ruth Weiss, Author, Germany

5 comments about Kaputt (New York Review Books Classics).

1. I found myself skipping large swathes of this book to get to the juicy anecdotes about life on the Front. Call me crazy, but reading about the grisly exploits of the Germans and Romanians was more entertaining than Malaparte's effeminate melodrama in Sweden and Finland. Very "modern" book -- he's sooo ashamed to be at dinner with Hans Frank, sooo ashamed and sick that he slept in a deserted villa with a dead horse outside, soooo ironic and detatched that he wants to torment the good, gentle, disaffected nobles of Europe, still daydreaming about Proust and Montmartre, with his gruesome war stories while assuring us that he is really very ashamed and nauseated by the whole affair. Besides that one is treated to endless descriptions of the sky and its colors, the flowers and plains and smells, all of this usually repeated not only in the same paragraph, but bookending single sentences; this is Malaparte's "effect" -- he repeats himself melodramatically, smiles faintly, agrees wryly, disagrees to make sure the reader knows he's really a martyr. Condescending, self-righteous, confused modernist drivel. Worth reading, however, for the aforementioned juicy anecdotes.



2. 
   I read a news article that this was one of Walid Jumblatt's favourite books, he presented it to Robert Fisk, with the above inscription. http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article3010168.ece
   This is hardly a good reason to read a book, but there you are. It is written by an Italian diplomat, who had the freedom to travel through Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe. There are many shocking things in the book, initially the casual treatment of dead bodies in war-zones, but eventually the absolute lack of morality at many levels of society. Through all this, the author, Curzio Malaparte, moves with an air of studied neutrality, despite the barbarities he witnesses, and the psychopaths he interviews.
   In terms of style, there are many flashbacks and references, which can lead to layers of removal and make the narrative difficult to follow. In the end I became quite immune from the shocking barbarity described. I think the book is useful in the sense that it shows the accommodations which occupied societies engaged in during the way years.



3. This book was published in 1944 in Italy and in English in 1946. It covers events the author claimed to have observed in 1941-43, presented in seemingly random order, while he served as a war correspondent for a major Italian newspaper, accompanying the German army on the Eastern Front.
   
   Malaparte (1898-1957) was an early member of the Fascist Party in Italy. A man of letters without political influence, he was expelled in the early 1930s and spent some years in internal exile. Between 1938 and 1943, he was arrested several times and imprisoned briefly in Rome. Still, his party connections, earlier diplomatic experience and status as a writer of note enabled him to work from 1941 on the Eastern Front for the Corriere della Sera. He's been called an enigma, contrary, opportunistic, a political chameleon who changed allegiances several times in the course of his life.
   
   His book began abruptly in Sweden, with no background or context, but after a chapter or two his method became clearer. Most of the chapters were devoted to highlighting one or two locations and powerful images that supported the picture of barbarism he was trying to convey. The Leningrad Front ca. 1942 and frozen enemy soldiers used as traffic sentries. The Ukraine in summer 1941 and a foal born from a dying horse. Finland in April 1943, a frozen lake full of dead animals, and a dream of a crucified horse. Krakow in 1943 and a dinner with Hans Frank, the governor-general of conquered Poland. A banquet in Warsaw in February 1942 with German leaders, contrasted with the desperate conditions he observed in the Warsaw Ghetto. A pogrom in Jassy, Romania in June 1941, and so on.
   
   His descriptions showed the German leaders blinded by their racist ideology, capable of playing Chopin with feeling in an afternoon and shooting at a child hours later. And a Balkan leader expressing his love for his homeland and detailing a high-minded political program while keeping body parts of enemies on his desk.
   
   Initially, Malaparte alternated his description of horrors with memories of better days in prewar times, spent in Paris, Capri and elsewhere with cultured friends from many countries of Europe, and with friends in the diplomatic corps of Spain and Sweden during peaceful interludes in wartime Scandinavia. His description of the culture and civilization shared by upper-class friends from many nations was contrasted implicitly with the breakdown of values observed nearly everywhere during the war.
   
   There were many interesting passages, such as when the German governor-general discussed his policy in Poland toward the church, aristocracy, middle class and workers. Moving passages, as when Malaparte observed the Poles' veneration of the Czestochowa Madonna. And terrible ones, as when he and others searched the countryside for an injured Jewish man who'd been taken away during a pogrom. The description of this pogrom must be one of the very early appearances in literature of the Holocaust.
   
   In contrast to some other readers on Amazon, I felt that Malaparte did express shock and outrage about many of the events he experienced. His feelings were demonstrated, for example, in his remarks to the police chief in Jassy, his admiration expressed for another who denounced the chief, his joining the search to help find a victim, his compassion for girls kept in a brothel, and his frequent mockery and sarcasm in reported conversation with the Germans.
   
   In the book's first half, as the gruesome events and images accumulated, cataloging the cruelty, suffering and betrayal of human values, they brought to mind the darkest paintings of Bruegel or Bosch, depicting the triumph of death or the chaos of hell. Here, the book was capable of searing images into the brain. For me, the most forceful example of this kind of writing was found about halfway through, in a chapter titled "Cricket in Poland," which contrasted a banquet of German leaders in Warsaw with the brutal expression of their thinking in a Romanian village.
   
   The chilling atmosphere and focus weren't sustained. Many of the later chapters were devoted mainly to describing long drinking bouts during stopovers in wartime Finland and Sweden, and recording aimless conversation and gossip at parties in wartime Germany and Rome. He was showing the morally indifferent, pleasure-seeking members of the smart set back home who were well insulated from the war and concerned only with who was in and out of favor, and maybe the reality of alternating wartime horror and civilian boredom. But for me, this could've been described at greatly reduced length and with a far more balanced sense of proportion.
   
   The book concluded with absurd situations such as a general's hunt for the last salmon in Lappland and minute analyses of the qualities of Mussolini's son-in-law and various others in Italian society. By the end, I was left with the feeling that the book was grossly uneven, written by a man who gave equal weight to the terrors of war and the table talk of the upper class in wartime, a man with a descriptive gift who lacked a sustained sense of moral outrage.



4. I am truly shocked at the reasons people have given Kaputt a negative review: too icy? too removed? too horrific? What are we talking about here, Disneyland or war?
   
   I have read many, many novels, memoirs, and essays on World War II and never have I encountered anything quite like Malaparte's accounts. The problem with this book, if there is a problem to consider, is how beautifully Malaparte describes absolute horror. The honey-like flow of his writing fades in and out like one's breath in winter. A particular scene of frozen horses, as another reviewer pointed out, will leave you stunned and emotionally wounded. For some reason everything in the book has a cold, yellowless-blue tint, so particular to the North, which makes what's happening all the more chilling.
   
   I will say I could not, was absolutely incapable of, finishing the book all at once. Even for those with strong stomachs, the book is nearly indigestible. I had to shut the book, more than once, and ask myself, how does one get so far and deep into darkness? It truly doesn't seem possible. Yet one walks away from the book thinking, "I could have been one of those people---on either side of the fence." It is this that probably most upsets readers of this book.
   
   I highly recommend readers to browse the NYRB collection for brilliant literature.



5. I have been reading literature for almost 50 years and have been teaching it for many, many years. In all of these years I have not found a novel more powerfully written about the horrors, absurdity, and perhaps sheer insanity of WWII and war in general.D M Thomas' Pictures at an Exhibition, among a few others, like Grosssman's Life and Fate, comes closest, however.
   
   This is not to deny the power of Homer, Euripides, Tolstoy, Mailer, Vonnegut, et. al. They are all great. But the beauty of Malaparte's images, his enormous power of description, the depiction of our inhumanity to one another and the animal world--the title of each of his sections is an animal, Horses, Mice, etc.--is stunning. Much of his enormous imact is created by a profound sense of irony, as when one of the Black Guard, a nordic "angel" follows him through the Warsaw Ghetto, or the deer with the Nazi flag stuck in its back at a Nazi dinner party, falling under the carving knife of Malaparte's "gracious" hostess, for example.
   
   This is a book that should be read slowly and thoughtfully.
   Malaparte's literary talent will elate you even if the subject matter horrifies you--as it should.
   
   This is one of those little-known books that deserves to be universally read and seriously thought about and discussed. Malaparte was one of the great writers of our century and it is wonderful to see his brilliant work back in print.

5 comments about Max Perkins: Editor of Genius.

1. Berg's work rallies all aspiring authors to the cause of sainthood for Max Perkins...maybe even deification. He tracks Perkins's career vis-a-vis the literary careers of important 20th century American authors. Gives a peek at the largely ignored man behind the curtain...and stands as a monument to his contributions to our literary heritage. A must read for anyone who enjoys books.



2. Scott Berg's biography of Max Perkins is a warm, sparkling account of America's greatest editor in the prewar period, the midwife for works by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe in the twenties and thirties, when big-time publishing converged on New York. Berg's book is cunningly organized: the reader steps at once into the rough and tumble of editorial work at Scribner's, leaving Perkins' early life, marriage, and family to be described in concise digressions taken only after we get another satisfying dollop of publishing history. Unhappily, once Perkins has delivered his discoveries to the public, the rest is mostly about their boozy extravagance (Fitzgerald), bullying ego trips (Hemingway), and petulant indiscipline verging on insanity (Wolfe). So even if, for this reason, you stop two-thirds of the way through, your curiosity about this key figure in modern literary history will be very well satisfied.



3. This is a wonderfully written book, very informative and inspiring for authors, editors, agents and anyone else involved or interested in publishing. Berg does a terrific and subtle job of painting these larger than life characters, allowing their own letters to speak for them. He shows remarkable restraint and good taste and yet has created a book that is enriching and very difficult to put down. Highly recommended!



4. Max Perkins was the great editor at Scribners who handled quite a few of the finest writers of the twentieth century, F. Scott Fitzgerad, Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe being especially noteworthy (and dealt with at length in this biography). One might envy such a man with such a job, but Berg makes it clear that having to deal with the likes of these authors was like walking around with a huge millstone around Max's poor neck. His job was endless and thankless (Wolfe actually betrayed him). You see from the many letters quoted that many of them are blatant pleas for money. Saying that Perkins had to coddle some of these authors like children would be putting it mildly. Berg does an admirable job relaying Perkins's life and hard times. Recommended.



5. Scott Berg has written a wonderful biography on one of the most important men in American literature, Max Perkins. Berg's book is well-written and very entertaining. It is more than a biography of Perkins, it is also a biography of Hemingway, Scott Fiztgerald, and Thomas Wolfe, and a portrait of America during the first half of the 20th century. This is one of those books that I could go on and on about. It is a book that everyone should read.

5 comments about Too Soon to Say Goodbye.

1. 
   Over the past four decades our ideas about the human dying process have developed, formed by at least four major thinkers: Cicely Saunders, originator of the hospice movement, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross (Death and Dying), Irving Byock (The Four Things that Matter Most), and Mitch Albom (Tuesdays with Morrie, The Five People You Meet in Heaven). Art Buchwald's "Too Soon To Say Goodbye" belongs next to these four in the death section of your library, sharing with them a focus on examining the death process without judgment and with open-minded curiosity.
   
   Buchwald's medical problems started with a stroke in 2000, which led to chronic renal failure and the amputation of one leg. He learned in January 2006 that his condition had been worsened by the development of acute renal failure and was now life-threatening. His options were thrice weekly dialysis or death, estimated to occur within two weeks. Buchwald was subjected to twelve dialysis treatments and then opted out, choosing a hospice in Washington, DC as his home until he died. He dictated this book as a diary of his experiences and feelings in the hospice, fully accepting his approaching death and intensely curious as to what it would be like. He was keen on sharing all of his experiences with those actually present in his life, as well as with us, his readers. During the eleven months between his death sentence and his actual demise January 17, 2007), he enjoyed meeting friends and celebrities in the common room of his hospice and recording TV interviews and messages to be played to audiences and family after his death. He also went shopping for cremation urns, wrote a commentary on the high price of funerals, lined up speakers for his Memorial Service, received cheesecakes by the dozen from well-meaning friends, rallied for a summer vacation at his home on Martha's Vineyard, and reflected on his life. While Buchwald briefly mentions the trauma of having a remote father and an absentee institutionalized bipolar mother, he does not dwell on his insecure years in foster care and his recurrent depressions. His attention is on a confident understanding of the reason he was put on earth: to make people laugh. The Pulitzer Prize winning humorist is at peace within himself due to his understanding of his raison d'etre and this is a gift which many, including Eddie (The Five People You Meet in Heaven) do not receive until after death, if ever. Buchwald enters his final year of life already well into Kubler-Ross's acceptance stage. We have no glimpse of denial or bargaining. He is true to himself, making us laugh until the end. He is unafraid.
   This book will be of interest to all who work with the human mind and spirit, but particularly to those who identify with Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry and who consult on the dying. It is also appropriate for the elderly or those approaching death, serving as a source of optimism and an invitation to discussion of a subject that may be otherwise difficult.
   
   Dr. Bazemore is Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Family Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, Massachusetts.



2. This is a funny and fun book to read! Facing the wrath of the Catholic Church Martin Luther (1483-1546) declared: "Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree." That is powerful stuff, but because of the long time distance, one does not fully appreciate the gracefulness with which some people welcome difficult challenges. This book tells that same story. Here is a man in a hospice writing a book that covers 19 different subjects, almost all dealing with other people. There are no regrets and little fear of death. The breadth and insightfulness of this books compares favorably to Francis Bacon's Essays, only this one is easy to read.
   
   I was fortunate to hear Mr. Buchwald talk about his conditions with Diane Rehm on her NPR show. The book just capped it all. The people this man knew; how well he knew them; how much he accomplished! Artie, as his friends called him, even personally invited his best friends to speak at the celebration of the end of his life. The invitation on pages 147-148 will make anyone cry.
   
   This book is really good - I mean GREAT!
   
   
   Amavilah, Author
   Modeling Determinants of Income in Embedded Economies
   ISBN: 1600210465



3. I thought this book would be deeper--and lighter but it wasn't either. To dry on important subject--I ask: "When is it Too Soon to Say Goodbye" ? I do want to add the title of the book allowed me to reflect on the statement and sometimes it was a question. It is a catchy title..that gets me every time I read it.



4. My husband is in an Adult Family Home with limited mobility. He knows he will never be completely well again and that his home is now at Serene Gardens. I read this book to him because we have been Art Buchwald fans for many years. This book is "good medicine" -- especially for people who live close to the edge. We both laughed out loud many times. Art Buchwald will live on in our hearts. Neva M. Sullivan



5. I loved this book and didn't want it to end. However, I felt that the eulogies were arranged in perfect order with the beautiful heartfelt words from his daughter last except for the Carly Simon song.
   
   Laughter makes life so much better even when one is dying. To give his readers one last gift of his humor must have given Mr. Buchwald the incentive to go on during some difficult days. When we can turn a negative into a positive, we are winners.
   
   The author allows his readers to see what he is really like. I didn't enjoy all the name-dropping, but readers were forewarned that it was coming. If I knew all those famous people, I might tend to brag a little about it, too.
   
   In addition to the reading material full of out-loud laughs, I appreciated the fact that the font and the white space between the lines were comfortable for my tired eyes.

5 comments about Red China Blues: My Long March From Mao to Now.

1. An enthusiastic young activist, Jan Wong left Canada for Beijing in 1972, in hopes of simultaneously aiding Mao's cause and pursuing her ancestral roots. This well-written, enlightening account of her "journey from Mao to now" takes readers through her six years as a student and subsequent six years as a reporter in Red China's capital city.
   
   Wong was uniquely qualified to write this book, which privileges readers with deep insights into why things were the way they were then, and are now, in China. Having Chinese parents, but being raised in the West, rendered Jan part of both worlds. She experienced the Cultural Revolution and post-Mao China as both an insider and a "foreigner," resulting in a perspective on those periods that only a few can claim, and fewer still have written about.
   
   The first part of the book tells the story of the author's Beijing University days. In 1972, armed with only the vocabulary she had acquired in Mandarin 101, Wong left the comfort and security of her Montreal life to spend a summer in China. Inspired by what she observed in Red China, she found it a natural progression to move from worrying about feminist issues to supporting Maoism. So she petitioned and won permission to stay in the country to study at Beijing University for the next two years. Anti-establishmentarianism was "in," and "China was radical-chic" at the time, she explains. Western youth looked to the East for answers and antidotes to racism, "exploitation" of the masses, and materialism. Becoming a journalist seemed like the perfect job for a young woman seeking to change the world, so she decided to remain in China to learn Mandarin, Chinese history, and Maoism. Her goal was to bring knowledge of all that she thought China was doing well to the West.
   
   As a starry-eyed young Maoist, Wong did not realize how miserable people really were. Instead, when she discovered that she and the other foreign students were being given better rooms and special food privileges, they protested until they were allowed to eat the miserable starvation-level rations given to the rest of the students in their dingy canteen. Then she and her foreign friend petitioned to join their Chinese classmates in undertaking the required physical labor projects they had been exempted from. She was finally allowed to dug ditches, haul bricks, and harvest crops with everyone else.
   
   The author's first clue that Communist China might not be the paradise she had dreamed of came when the school asked her to end her friendship with a young Swedish man or be expelled. The school actually played a distressing mind game with her over this issue. From this experience she learned that in China people were not only unable to do what they wanted, but they were also not free to think what they wanted.
   
   Yet, Wong remains zealous in her attempts to prove that she is a good Maoist. In fact, Part One of the book culminates in her informing on two students who asked for her help to leave China for the US. At the time Wong thought she was doing the right thing by turning them in, but now she regrets her decision and feels great remorse for the terrible fate that probably befell these people after that.
   
   In Part Two, Wong returns to Montreal to complete her McGill University degree. Still supportive of Red China, she lectures locally in an effort to muster public support for the country and its political agenda. After graduating in 1974, Wong won a Canadian government scholarship to study at Beijing University, and off she went for more of the same. In addition to learning more about her school experiences and deepening understanding of what was happening on a personal and political level, the author meets and marries Norman Shulman---an American. After her studies end, she takes a job as a foreign correspondent for the New York Times. She finds that her Chinese appearance and fluency with the language give her a unique ability to get the local people to open up to her, when other reporters are unable to get interviews or comments.
   
   Wong reaches a turning point when Madame Mao and the rest of the Gang of Four are arrested. As she watches people rejoice in the streets, it dawns on her that the people hadn't believed in the Cultural Revolution for a long time. She feels betrayed and foolish because of her blind faith.
   
   Wong left China in 1980 to pursue a journalism degree at Columbia University, and then worked at various prestigious publications in the US and Canada for seven years. But in 1988, she was too curious to know what was really happening in China, so she asked her employer, the Toronto Globe, to transfer her. The third section of the book thus covers the late 1980s and early 1990s. The highlight of her career was covering the Tiananmen Square protests, the resulting massacre, and resulting fall out. This event served as the catalyst for shattering the last of Wong's illusions about communism in China. She declares herself no longer naïve and believes that she finally has a clear view of the "real" China.
   
   The last portion of the book presents some of Wong's most interesting interviews and perspectives on life in China, centering on human rights issues and social problems like how to uncover how many people really died in the Tiananmen Square massacre, poverty, the effects of the economic boom, retardation, drugs, prisoners, kidnapping women as brides, and the new robber barons of China.
   
   Wong left China in 1993 with no regrets. She concluded that without having spent 12 years living in and observing Red China, she would not have realized that what she was striving for all along was the socialist life style she enjoyed in Canada.
   
   Filled with interesting stories and well told, this book is a must read addition to your "good books about China" collection. As more and more people with Chinese roots return to this country, hopefully more voices like Wang's will emerge to give us perspective on what's happened between 1993 and the present, picking up where she has left off.



2. This is a beautiful book to read. It's well written and you can hardly put it down. Jan Wong let's us be witnesses of her life choices and their consecuences. It's interesting how and why she decides to go and live in communist China, how she strugles to get adjusted to that kind of political system and way of life. She then turns into a great journalist and let's us see some unknown aspects of modern China. It's a good book to learn more about China's history. I enjoyed it a lot!



3. If you want to understand China, you will need to read a considerable range of titles in order to see the country, its history, people, culture and so on from numerous and unique angles. Jan Wong's RED CHINA BLUES offers a very unique angle. Jan was born in Montreal. Her father owned a popular restaurant in that city and by the time he was thirty, he had made his first million. Jan herself, apparently suffering from an identity crisis, became disenchanted with Canada/Western culture and decided to head to China to find herself and her roots - during the height of Maoism.
   
   Young and impossibly niave, Wong hurtled herself into the Chinese world. She learned the language, demanded not to be given preferential treatment, shoveled manure on a pig farm/re-education camp, and worked in a machine factory. Ever so slowly, her idealism faded, but, as other critics have noted, this took a very long time. At one point, for example, she mentioned how at the machine factory the workers spent half their time going to political meetings as opposed to producing. One of the primary tenets or aims of Marxism (to which Wong subscribed) is to creat a "superabundance" so as to achieve economic surplus over material necessity. Only then will art, politics, philosophy, etc. be able to reach fruition. When factory workers ask Wong about conditions and money re a similar job in the West, she is reluctant to tell them. But such isolated inconsistencies didn't dampen her idealistic fervor; not for something like six years anyway. Wong returned to China in 1988, and from here the book really gears down. Because she looks and can speak Chinese, she is able to to go places and do things that real outsiders never could. Her visit to a labor camp is interesting and her first hand account of "the Tianmen Incident," (people being shot right outside her window) is, as you might imagine, chilling. This was either the first or second China book I read, and it made a lasting impression. I highly recommend it.
   
   Troy Parfitt, author



4. Red China Blues is the story of a woman who, in her youth, idealizes communism. This idealization is partly a lack of understanding about how communism in China really worked, and partly rebellion against her own Canadian culture.
   
   As she goes to China and slowly comes to understand the horror of China under Mao, we too see and understand both the regime itself and the ways in which the people dealt with their lot. She wants so much to believe in the dream-China she's created in her head that it's painful and difficult for her to see reality. This is a sin most humans commit at some point in their lives, and many readers will wince as they're reminded of their own delusional moments.
   
   Ms. Wong does not attempt to censor any of her own sins. From simple arrogance to participation in active thought control, she tells us everything she did and leaves it to us to decide what to think of her. The same is true of the people around her: she honestly talks about the good and bad in all the people she describes to us. This lends a wonderful humanizing touch to the book and turns it from the story of a regime into a story about people *in* the regime, living as best they can. You will not be able to forgive some of them, while others will move you. Mostly, Ms. Wong leaves you to decide for yourself which people fall into which category.
   
   In other words, this is a book that lays out facts and lets you decide your opinion for yourself. She gives you the facts, tells you her opinion, and leaves the rest to you. For a clear, honest look at China's people under Mao and after his death, read this one.



5. Jan Wong,a Canadian journalist of Chinese ancestry, in this illuminating volume writes of her experiences as an ardent young Maoist in the early 1970's who actually went to China to work and study.
   She hauled pig manure in a Chinese re-education farm, and at Beijing University she turned in a fellow student who had begged her help to escape to the West.
   Slowly she realized the evil of the Communist system in China and was repatriated to the West in 1978.
   Wong returned years later as an undercover journalist to China where she covered the Tianmen Square Massacre, in which three thousand pro-democracy students were mowed down in cold blood by Red China's army, on the orders of dictator, Jian Zemin.
   She also covered China's contradictory development into a capitalist state under a Communist dictatorship, or a Communist dictatorship with a capitalist economy...akin to Fascism!
   She covers the Tianmen Square Massacre of 1989, letting the the reader know of some of the lesser known details, and how the Communist army opened fire on the students after they began leaving the square:
   "A [...]girl was killed and they just brought her body back...After the third barrage I counted more than twenty bodies. One cyclist was shot in the back right below our balcony. There were two big puddles of blood on the Avenue of Eternal Peace. People carried the body of a little girl towards the back of the hotel. After twenty three more minutes, a few people gathred up enough courage to aproach the wounded. The soldiers let loose another blast, sending the would be rescuers scurrying for cover. The crowd was enraged. I grimly kept track of the time. An hour later, the wounded were still on the ground, bleeding to death.
   She speaks of the great poverty of the new Red China, with inequalities far greater than anything in the liberal democracies of the world, and crushing poverty in the rural provinces. Despite economic changes, China remains a brutal dictatorship, with no political liberalization or democratization having been allowed by the iron grip of the Communist Party.
   Peeople are still opresed in day-to-day life. People are not allowed to own dogs, and to deal with a fad of people acquiring dogs as pets in the early 1990s, special police squads swept through the neigbourhoods, strangling dogs with steel wire looped at the end of metal poles.
   The author recounts some regret at buying into the Communist lie, with the realization that "The Western world, especially Canada, is far more socialistic than China has ever been, with it's free public education, universal medicare, unemployment insurance, and government funding for television ads against domestic violence. China has made me appreciate my own country, with it's tiny ethnically diverse population of unassuming donut-eaters. I had gone all the way to China to find an idealistic revolutionary society, when I already had it right to home."
   She ends of on a positive note, predicting, in 1997, a great change in China , and the death of the Communist Party, and real democracy.
   Ten years later, this is not close to being realized, with a tightening of political control by the Communist dictatorship having taken place.
   Despite being one of the most brutal dictatorships on this planet, China has gained international acceptibility, without improving democracy or human rights!
   Nobody bats an eyelid at the Olympic Games for 2008 being set in Beijing.
   The worst abuses of the Communist regime has it's apologists in the WEst.
   The Stalinist Workers World Party in North America, (which has praised Stalinism in the Soviet Union, and applauded suicide bombings against Jewish women and chidren in Israel) congratulated the Chinese regime after the Tianmen Square Massacre, for having 'won a battle against imperialist and counter-revolutionary forces."
   The fact that such sentiments can be uttered makes one wonder how far the world has actually come.

5 comments about Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative.

1. I wish I had read this sooner but I had shied away from it because I figured that Mr. Brock was a David Horowitz in reverse (and we know what an opportunistic scum bag Horowitz is). But this is an important and authentic work from an insider who shows us exactly how the neo-nazi, neocon "conservatives" took over and nearly destroyed our American nation (we are a nation, not a "homeland" or "fatherland"). We must take back our country in November (we started that process in the 2006 elections) and be rid of the Republican war criminals but that is not enough: Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Tenet, Coulter/Limbaugh (Goebbels), and those already convicted (Libby, Abramoff, Delay, Cunningham, Foley, Craig, etc.) need to be brought before a duly appointed Tribunal to answer for their crimes against humanity and particularly their crimes against the American people (including our brave soldiers and my friend Pat Tillman, who they killed). Richard Clarke could be the chief witness for the prosecution. We need more jails to house the corporate crooks.
   I had the privilege of meeting Barry Goldwater and his wonderful wife Peggy when I lived in Arizona in the early 90's. Senator Goldwater was an honorable, real conservative and he was appalled by the Falwells, Robertsons, Gingriches, etc. If you consider yourself a principled conservative, you must read this book and help us remove the cancers from our society that Mr. Brock so ably describes. Through it all, I have believed there are more good people than evil people in our nation ("the better angels of our nature", as Lincoln said): some start out evil like Brock but then their human heart and conscience kicks in; let's kick out every last slime bag with an (R) by his or her name this November and rebuild our nation.



2. There isn't much I can say about this book that hasn't already been said in other favorable reviews here. All I'll add is that even if you allow for the zeal of Brock's re-converson to liberal prinicples and some bitterness towards his former conservative and neocon mentors and paymasters, there is much in this book that rings frighteningly true. Most fascinating is Brock's inside look at the anti-Clinton smear machine of which he was part - and which, no doubt, is warming up for 2008. Arm yourself with knowledge that you'll need if Hillary runs for President. Read this book.



3. In his 1950 study of the authoritarian personality, Theodor Adorno constructed a political-psychological profile of people he called "pseudo-conservatives." These were people who called themselves conservatives but in truth adhered to political agendas that betrayed the ideals of individual freedom and free markets. Pseudo-conservatives were motivated by hate, fear, and power, not the desire to conserve or guarantee liberty. A few years later, the eminent historian Richard Hofstadter appropriated Adorno's term in describing what he called "the paranoid style in American politics." In Adorno and Hofstadter's day, this paranoid style of pseudo-conservativism was still in its embryonic state, personified by the rantings of Joseph McCarthy but still far from being the game plan for the Republican Party as a whole. David Brock's Blinded by the Right chronicles how this movement slithered its way into power long before anyone had heard of Karl Rove, whose name isn't even listed in the index.
   
   Blinded by the Right amazingly combines the political history of a loathsome political movement with the personal story of a sympathetic individual who found himself at the center of that movement. Always an idealist among opportunists, Brock's entrée to conservatism was admirable enough, as he was a former Kennedy liberal who was turned off by Berkeley protest-ologists who simply shouted down their adversaries, thus betraying the cause of free speech that had galvanized the campus in the glory years of the 1960s. But those ideals quickly dissolved into an us-versus-them battle which was motivated by a hatred for liberal enemies more than anything else. Ironically, Brock and his colleagues had much more in common with late 60s revolutionaries like the Weathermen, with their constantly escalating rhetoric of destroying the establishment, and Stalinists in the Communist Party, who enforced the party line by threatening dissenters with the charge that they were helping "the other team."
   
   Blinded by the Right is an essential chronicle of a political movement and a historical era, but somehow it is even more than that. Its personal narrative of a young person's rise to power and fame, followed by descent into disillusionment and depression, is gripping enough for Hollywood. Brock came out as a homosexual while he was in college but then shoved himself back into the closet as he ascended to celebrity status on the Right, whose agenda became increasingly homophobic after the collapse of communism left them without the enemy they had depended on for so long. Brock now sees his willingness to parrot right-wing ideology as part of his attempt to fit in with the movement when he secretly knew didn't, and he sees the vitriol that he spewed in his writing as a subconscious expression of his own self-hatred. In fact, Brock offers many penetrating insights into the psychology of his right-wing former colleagues, and for the most part they appear to be a miserable bunch prone to textbook cases of projection.
   
   Brock's break from the right corresponded with his personal move toward self-acceptance. It is heroic act of liberation that sometimes made me want to stand up and cheer for him, but it was clearly a journey full of pain. His liberation proceeds in stages, with Brock initially portraying himself as a victim, and then only later coming to grips with his own complicity and eagerness to serve the movement. Changed but not bitter, Brock comes out the other side as a very wise man who can see clearly now only because he is able to accept himself, his past, and his imperfections. I hope we'll see more books like this in the future coming from the current throng of right-wingers, but I'm not holding my breath, because this required a ton of courage and compassion, and that's precisely what this movement lacks most.



4. After hearing about this book a great deal from many people, I finally had to give it a read. What I got was a mostly well written account about how Brock gave the neo-con movement exactly what they wanted in terms of what can only be called propaganda. Brock does a good job in exposing the oft-ridiculed "vast right-wing conspiracy".
   
   But it makes a boring read at times, what with long lists of people and publications. And it seems just a bit self-serving at times, like he is trying to say, "Oh, how bad I was to do all this, but I was very good at it." And, after all, he does say exactly what I, as a liberal person, want to hear about those on the right who keep insisting that people who believe like me are traitors.
   
   I respect Mr. Brocks conversion to the left, and I like his work with mediamatters.org, but I am not sure I plan to read any more of his books.



5. This book is a terrible exposure of the powers behind the (extreme) right in the US, of their methods, of their foot-folk and their `morals'.
   The powers are the fundamentalist Christian Right, extreme wealthy families and corporate interest. Those powers are firmly anchored in the Republican Party.
   Their means are disgusting smear campaigns, vulgar attacks on political opponents, totally biased reporting, in one word `whournalism'.
   Their working method are `see what you are supposed to see', `turn a blind eye to facts that do not suit your political aims' and `paper over monstrous moral wrongs in the service of the perceived morality of your cause'.
   
   Their foot-folk are members of think-tanks, media men, investigators, journalists, intelligence personnel. The author considered himself as a right-wing hit-man, profiting hugely from his totally biased or completely fabricated scribbles.
   
   This book unveils the raw selfishness, the protection of sinister (Bertrand Russell) interests (`cutting taxes to defund the left') and the blatant hypocrisy and hidden opportunism of many of the members of these groups (`a decadent and hypocritical conservative elite, leading public and private lives that bore little resemblance to each other').
   
   This book exposes relentlessly huge monuments of vulgarity and ghastly political horror stories.
   It gives a terrible picture of extremely powerful political groups within the US society.
   Not for the faint-hearted.

No comments about The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood.

5 comments about Soldiers of God: With Islamic Warriors in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

1. I developed quite a dislike for Kaplan as I read this book, but the subject matter was sufficiently fascinating to help me forgive his not-entirely-subtle dislike of Asians. This book provides an on the ground view of the Soviet Invasion and subsequent chaos. The glimpses of Afghani society, although mostly confined to men involved in war, and the physical descriptions of Afghanistan's landscape were captivating. Kaplan seems quite enamored of the Pashtun culture, especially in comparison to Pakistan, which is portrayed unflatteringly but not entirely unfairly as a potential terrorist breeding ground. He seems to see himself as a brave, hugely suffering war reporter, although the most extreme suffering he appears to undergo is occasional separation from soft drinks. Obviously my disinclination for the author colored my view of the book, but I feel it was worthwhile reading as it increased my knowledge of the Soviet-Afghan war and my conviction that terrorism has its roots in poverty and desperation rather than pure ideology



2. Really another outstanding book by Kaplan. In depth and personal view of the mujahidin in Afghanistan in the 80's. Kaplan may be a little biased, or wonder struck by the personalities he interviewed and lived with, and at times is self-congratulatory about his prescience, however, he acknowledges both facts in his re-written foreword. Neither of these points dilute the quality of this book, though. For me, it was a great read that illuminated class and clan struggle in Afghanistan, and a wonderful distinction between religious fundamentalism and politically institutionalized religious extremism.



3. I read Soldiers of God at the same time that I read The Bookseller of Kabul (for book club) and found Soldiers to be an enlightening companion read because while Bookseller focused on one family in Kabul, its interpersonal dynamics, and how religion and culture affected its members, Soldiers gave a broader view of various groups and their political and personal dynamics in Afghanistan. Also, both books were written by Western journalists, which gave the books a somewhat similar (though by no means identical) perspective on Afghanistan, although differing in scope.
   
   Specific to Soldiers, I enjoyed Robert Kaplan's story telling (part travelogue, part reportage), his ability to gain access to some very insular groups, and his obvious desire to present them and their goals as accurately as possible. It was compelling reading for me as I knew little about the country, its myriad elements and history.



4. Kaplan is an American journalist who made several trips into Afghanistan during the time that the Soviet Union had occupied Afghanistan and was intent on turning Afghanistan into a communist country.
   
   In his trips, Kaplan experienced and describes the life common to all mountain peoples, the cruelty and gruesomeness of war especially in its counter-insurgency edition, and the traditions of the different Afghan tribes. He describes the leaders of the resistance, except for the Islamist factions, who are all but ignored, and the various rather eccentric Europeans and Americans who joined their cause.
   
   This book is moving - what else would one expect of a people that was willing to sustain a million fatalities in order to maintain their customs and not be occupied by a foreign power?
   
   To use a colossal understatement, Afghanistan is a very colorful place, nothing at all like American suburbia. Anyone who wants to understand Afghanistan must recognize this fact. The best parts of the book, which alone are worth the price of the book, are the many thumbnail descriptions of the eccentric people and surreal situations that Kaplan found in Afghanistan.



5. As a college student, I am required certain books for my history class. The firsthand account books I have read this semester have been very enjoyable (Kaffir Boy & Son of the Revolution). However, even though Soldiers of God is a firsthand account of Robert Kaplan traveling in Afghanistan & Pakistan during the Soviet invasion & occupation, it was one of the most boring books I have ever read. I could barely read 3 pages without beginning to doze off. The action is limited and sporadic and the commentary is less than stellar. If you are looking for another Kaffir Boy this book is not the one to pick.

5 comments about A Reporter's Life.

1. Walter Cronkite who at one time was among the most famous and celebrated Americans tells his life- story . He does this with the dry and clean prose of the good reporter. He tells of his childhood and early years in Kansas City and in Houston, of his work with UP and later on with CBS, his adventures as a war- correspondent. He traces his career in television including the dramatic coverage of what would be the most politically well- covered in his judgment convention of all, that of 1952. He also writes about his wife Betsy their three - children and his family. He in the end provides an analysis of TV journalism and where it has gone wrong, been replaced by considerations of entertainment. This is a decent book by a very decent and modest man.
   In his final chapter he says that he asked himself whether he could say he had really made a difference. Surprisingly and modestly his answer was 'no'. But for many Americans for many years he was the embodiment of the honest and reliable journalist.



2. To live the life of Walter Cronkite is to live a thousand years. For nearly half a decade Walter Cronkite served as the voice of reason to millions of Americans who looked to his print, radio, and television reports for information and reassurance. This autobiography covers the life of Walter Cronkite from his early life as a lowly radio announcer to his ultimate stand at the pinnacle of journalism.
   
   As usual, Cronkite's wit is second-to-none and comes through clearly in his prose. Still, he never pulls punches and minces no words regarding the multitude of famous and powerful men and women he met along the way. His engrained honesty and objectivity is a refreshing look to when journalism was an honest art, plagued not by corporate sponsorship.
   
   Cronkite's work not only serves as an interesting look at "Cronkite, the man," but is a work of modern American history, written by the man who lived and reported it all. For a readable, enjoyable look at Cronkite's America, "A Reporter's Life" is one of the best.



3. In a fascinating and thought-provoking autobiography (1996), Walter Cronkite reflects on his career in journalism, from the earliest days in which he listened to radio on a crystal set, through his own participation in world events as a television journalist. Without the ego one usually associates with newscaster-celebrities, Cronkite gives the history of journalism--radio, newspapers, news syndicates, and television--by giving anecdotes from his own long career, always showing what he learned from his mistakes (which he is remarkably candid and often humorous in describing), and giving ample credit to the people who helped him. His thoughtful observations about the impact of television and its negative effects on voting participation, along with his predictions for the future of this country, offer a broader perspective and warning about our national vision.
   
   Cronkite's sense of excitement about journalism is obvious from the earliest days of his career, when he used brief, coded teletype messages to invent play-by-play accounts of football games for his radio audience. By career's end, he was participating in world events, his interview with Anwar Sadat and its follow-up bringing Sadat to Israel in a precedent-setting meeting with Menachim Begin and an eventual peace treaty. As he takes the reader step-by-step through this career, he describes his goals as a young man, his earliest jobs at local newspapers and radio stations, his work with United Press, his press responsibilities overseas during World War II, his work in Russia, and his early foray into television, when other serious journalists were avoiding this medium.
   
   The landmark TV coverage of the 1952 political conventions opened the eyes of the country to how the political system worked in reality. The Nixon and Kennedy interviews in 1960 (and Theodore White's book, The Making of the President), show the power of television to affect outcomes. He gives candid, personal insights into various Presidents, from Franklin Delano Roosevelt through George Bush Senior, including fascinating insights into Eisenhower (far more aware of issues than often thought), JFK (with whom he had mixed experiences), and Jimmy Carter (in his view, the most intelligent President).
   
   It is Cronkite's candor and his ability to see himself as a facilitator of communication, rather than as an ego-driven reporter looking for the landmark "scoop," that makes this autobiography so compelling. When, in his conclusion, he modestly offers his own observations about the end of the twentieth century, based on his experience, the reader pays attention. Mincing no words, Cronkite describes the social, political, and economic evolutions taking place around the world and their potential as revolutions, warning, "They have man's dreams on their side. We don't want to be on the other side." Elegantly written, this is a landmark book in the history of journalism. n Mary Whipple



4. For me who watched Walter Cronkite almost every night from the 1960's to the 1980's when Dan Rather took over, this is most enlightening book. Behind the scene stories were given for a lot of news stories. Unlike Eric Sevaried, Cronkite never stated any of his personal feelings and comments on the air. Quite a lot of them were found in this book.
   
   Two things bother me. None of the chapters in this book had a topic so the reader is completely unaware of what is in there when he/she starts reading a chapter. In addition, no index is avalable and locating a topic or name is very difficult and time-consuming



5. This book contains the memoirs of Walter Cronkite, pioneering television journalist. Cronkite begins by describing his childhood briefly, noting that even as a youngster, he was pulled to journalism. He credits a volunteer journalism teacher in his high school for introducing him to the rigors of print journalism, but once started, he was hooked. It was this teacher who taught him the prime importance of getting the facts correct, a value that he would hold primary throughout his career. As a high school student, Cronkite competed in statewide journalistic writing tournaments, and won. After high school, he enrolled in college for a while, but decided that pulling in an income was more important than getting a degree (this was during the Great Depression), a decision which he later came to regret. On a lark, he landed a radio news announcer job in Oklahoma City. Later, he worked for UPI, where he honed his collating and rewriting skills under pressure of constant deadlines. The experience from all of these jobs was to prove invaluable later when he landed a job announcing the news on CBS television. Cronkite was not only one of the first early TV news broadcasters, but the word `news anchorman' was even invented just to describe what he did (or so he claims).
   
   In this book, Cronkite reminisces not only about his career, but also about the big news stories of day. He discusses how television came to play a strong role in politics, starting with the 1952 party conventions, which were the first to be televised. He enumerates the presidents he has known, from Hoover through George Bush, senior, and he compares the effectiveness of each, as well as their relations with the media. He analyzes the forces behind the fateful American build-up in Vietnam, and the eventual pull-out. He also relates how he inadvertedly became involved in negotiating peace between Egypt and Israel. All in all, his tales are fascinating. I usually find political discussion hideously tiresome, but Cronkite manages to make even politics interesting.

2 comments about The Year of Magical Thinking: The Play.

1. The Year of Magical Thinking possesses hauntingly concise prose. It is a one-woman show that reads like having a conversation with Didion. The telling is intimate enough to make it feel as if it is an older and wiser sister telling you what you may likely confront in your lifetime. It is detailed enough to make tangible for theatergoers in New York City and Los Angeles face what one wishes was unimaginable. It is phenomenal enough to show why Didion is one of the best writers of our times and that there is seemingly nothing that she fails to find the words for.
   
   That there will be a moment in time when you feel unquestionably safe--and the moment following, one of the most important people in your life may pass on. She tells the reader about how she handled the passing of her husband as a journey--from being the cool, methodical thinker, as his passage from this life was confirmed, to being unable to give away his shoes because he would need them when he came back, to being able to come to terms with his absence.
   
   Her daughter fell ill before her husband passed. While her daughter is in the hospital in California, Joan Didion faces more than treading on doctors' toes and doing everything possible to pull her daughter through the illness. She also faces streets full of memories ready to take her away into magical thinking. In order to keep away from the memories, she takes well-planned routes from her hotel room to her daughter's hospital room. Didion tells the story of seeing her daughter come out of illness, and then being unable to protect her from falling ill again, and her passage from this life.
   
   The play is not filled with an overwhelming sense of hope, but hope still finds a home in the play. While reading it I couldn't help but think of those I know who have passed on and how I would handle it if my own husband and daughter were to pass out of this life before me. I imagined the unbearable grief as I read. By the end of the play I could feel how to make it through, to survive something that one would rather not.
   
   Armchair Interviews says: It is that quiet, affirming hope that Didion's play possesses.



2. The Year of Magical Thinking a Play by Joan Didion is based on her memoir. This play gives you a voyeuristic journey inside a woman's grief. Ms. Didion, a noted author and playwright lost her husband in 2003. Within a short period of time, less than two years later, she would also lose her daughter. That kind of loss is unimaginable to most people. We all have experiences with losing loved-ones, but rarely two in such a short span of time. Ms. Didion's prose is written quite sparely and almost from a distance but it is no less wrenching. She appears to view her pain from a distance while feeling the full impact of it.
   
   The play starts out with this passage; This happened on December 30, 2003. That may seem a while ago but it won't when it happens to you. And it will happen to you. The details will be different, but it will happen to you. That's what I am here to tell you. I felt those words down in my very being. Though the words were simple, they were poignant, heartfelt and oh so true. Anyone who has ever lost a loved one will feel the impact of her prose.
   
   After her husband John Dunne passes, Joan appears to be in a state of suspended expectation. The most difficult thing for her to accept is that he is not coming home. In fact for many weeks she expects him to return. It's sad to read how hard it is to accept her lost.
   
   Shortly thereafter when her daughter becomes ill, she has something else to be concerned with. She immerses herself in research about her daughter's illness to try to fill the void in her life. It is wrenching yet dispassionate in so many ways reading about her daughter's illness and ultimate demise. Ms. Didion has exposed her love and pain in an amazing way.
   
   In sixty-two pages this play takes us through a roller coaster of feelings. What impacted me so was how the words were never overwrought, but so strongly felt. I loved the way she evaluated the relationship she had with both her husband and her daughter. The simple what-if-onlys. The Year of Magical Thinking allowed me to realize there is no set way to grieve and that we all react differently. I recommend this play and the aforementioned memoir to Joan Didion fans and to anyone who has experienced the loss of a loved one.
   Angelia Menchan
   [...]