"Edge of Darkness" Shines

An intelligent thriller is as rare as a bluebird in winter. One that also tugs at the heartstrings is rarer still.

This is how I saw “Edge of Darkness,” a movie in which Mel Gibson returns after a seven-year hiatus from the screen.

As a detective with the Boston Police, Tom Craven’s world is shattered when gunmen cut down his 24-year-old daughter, Emma, right at his front door.

Gibson can be subtle when he needs to but he is at his best when taking matter into his own hands (Braveheart, The Patriot).

As Craven searches for his daughter’s killers, he runs into a mysterious R&D company that is under contract by the U.S. government to produce nuclear weapons. That’s where his daughter used to work as an intern. He meets with the company’s arrogant CEO to whom Emma was a minor cog in the wheel.

After that, things get pretty dicey.

Craven breaks the rules because the rules don’t get him anywhere. (Everything is “classified.”) Dead bodies show up all over the place but underneath the violence and the corporate and political cover-ups are serious contemporary issues that grip the viewer even more. The chief of the nuclear facility states matter-of-factly that the company will always be off the hook if a bomb were to ever explode, even accidentally, in America because he can prove that it is the act of a jihadist in possession of a dirty bomb.

This is underscored by another corrupt officer of the law when he tries to convince Craven to give up his search for his daughter’s killers because “nothing is what it is. Everything is what it is made up to be.” In other words, spin is king. Anyone watching FOX News will know exactly what he means.

Well, Craven will have nothing to do with such thinking. He is a man who believes that it is wrong to accept stuff from the bad guys and that it is cruel to hurt those who cannot protect themselves. With unrestrained fury, he goes after those for whom the vulnerable are no more than guinea-pigs for their diabolical experiments. On the way, and luckily for him, there is a metamorphosis. A killer suddenly becomes human when he wonders whether it is more painful to lose a child than never to have had one. He share’s Craven’s anguish at the loss of his daughter. He comes to the conclusion that the American people deserve better and … Well, you will have to see the movie to see how all the loose ends come satisfyingly together.

“Edge of Darkness” didn’t quite bring me to the edge of my seat – I found the dialog dragging at times – but it came close. With most movies dominated these days by hi-tech gimmicks and maudlin plots, this is high praise indeed.

Another Game-Changer from Apple?

If there is one company that stands at the summit of marketing, it is Apple. Not Microsoft, not Google, not IBM or HP or Amazon. It is Apple, led by Steve Jobs.

Consider the anticipation and the excitement building up for the Apple Tablet. The company has not disclosed a word about it, other than to announce a media event at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco on January 27, at 10 A.M. Pacific time. Yet the buzz has reached crescendo level. Go to any Website with even a cursory connection to technology or open the technology section of any newspaper or magazine and the leading story you will now see is speculation about this product. Google’s recently launched Nexus One phone didn’t garner even a fraction of the free press Apple is getting.

There is, of course, a reason for it. It’s what the visionary Jobs has accomplished by transforming the music and the phone businesses with the iPod and the iPhone. His magical understanding of what excites and resonates with customers is unparalleled. He has made Apple synonymous with cool products and that’s something that, like love or happiness, money cannot buy.

But returning to the tablet (perhaps to be called iSlate?): Will it be another iPod/iPhone type of gadget that customers will be lining up to buy in the wee hours of the morning? Will this particular computer be used mostly for reading, surfing, playing games and watching videos? But the iPhone and similar products already do that. Will it become everyone’s favorite e-reader, displacing Amazon’s Kindle and other e-readers that are beginning to flood the market? Will it be a general-purpose machine, a jack of all trade but also the master of perhaps a niche? Rumors abound but the last word will belong to Apple’s master impresario.

What intrigues me is Jobs’ attitude toward reading. In comments made last year, he said that the Amazon Kindle was dead on arrival because Americans have, for all practical purposes, stopped reading. “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product (Kindle) is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”

If that is the case, will Jobs be trying to get Americans to do more reading with his tablet, presumably one that is more powerful and intuitive and friendlier than Kindle? Or has he sensed yet another cultural shift that the Tablet will capitalize on, one that will fundamentally change our approach to books, booksellers, publishers, agents and payments, the entire ecosystem of ink on paper?

Undoubtedly, the tablet will offer audio and video and three-dimensional graphics on at least a 10-inch touch-screen. If it becomes integrated into our lives, how will it change how and what we read? How will it reshape the distribution and consumption of content? What will be the future of literature?

I do not share Jobs’ pessimism about the reading habits of Americans. To paraphrase Mark Twain, the death of reading has been greatly exaggerated. In fact, I believe that after people have had their fill with e-readers and tablets, they will return to the traditional form of reading in greater numbers than ever.

But tablets and e-readers will make books cheaper. Self-publishing will become the norm, and even if lack of rigorous editing initially brings down quality of published materials a notch or two, market demand will weed out the pretenders and eventually raise the level of quality to what we are used to expecting.

Tablets are likely to have another salutary effect: articles, stories and books are likely to become shorter and thinner. In a recent piece in The Atlantic, Michael Kinsey observes that “newspaper articles are too long. On the Internet, news articles get to the point. Newspaper writing, by contrast, is encrusted with conventions that don’t add to your understanding of the news.”

What is true of newspaper is also true of many books. If readers begin to vote with their thumbs and tablets, perhaps wordiness by authors will disappear. And if wordiness in print can become a thing of the past, can the verbosity of politicians, teachers and scholars, both secular and religious, be far behind?

Rain and Memories

For five days now it has been raining incessantly in California. Meteorologists have confirmed that we have received more rain than normal for this time of the year. Total seasonal rain in San Jose, where I live, has already surpassed 9 inches. This week alone 3.5 inches of rain has fallen and more is on the way. Streams, creeks and rivers are overflowing. This is good news after three successive years of drought in the Golden State.

Rain falling on roof is an ancient sound. I listen to its cadence in the middle of the night, insistent and hypnotic. It draws curtain upon curtain and wraps the entire earth, so it seems, in the deepest of darkness. I am between wakefulness and sleep and it is as close to a state of grace as I feel in a long, long time.

In this state, my thoughts and limbs spread outward until I become the earth and the rain falls on me. I feel the stirring of the as-yet-unborn wildflowers, lupines, poppies, clovers and honeysuckles, responding to the waters coming down from the heavens. I imagine the fields and the meadows filling with them. We speak in words but nature speaks in songs and somewhere in their confluence lie memories.

On Monday, the hills and the valleys of the Diablo Range around Santa Clara County displayed only a hint of green. By Thursday, plentiful rain had transformed them into the very essence of the color. Gray clouds pour gray rain on them and there is no letting up. Even from the road leading up to the highway, I can hear a stream, hidden by oaks and sycamores flowing restlessly toward the bay.

On Saturday, when the intensity of the rain lessens a bit, I head for the creek within walking distance of my home. All I need is my old but functioning umbrella. Along the way, I hear the trill of red-winged blackbirds in a field full of yellow mustard flowers.

At the bank of the creek, I locate the lichen-covered stone and stand by the water. Two calla lilies sway with the current, their white giving texture to the soft darkness that has descended from the sprawling oaks around. There are eddies here and there but the song of the rushing stream, from whisper to laughter, holds me spellbound. Raindrops create small ripples but the swift, foaming current quickly smothers them. There is a swing someone had hung from a sturdy branch some months ago and the wind moves it back and forth over the water. It is easy to imagine a child on it, only the child is invisible.

This spot, hidden from view, is redolent of childhood. Another day, far removed in time and place, slowly works its way into my mind. I was probably in the seventh or the eighth grade, in my ancestral village in the Old World, and it was raining like this, and I had the time of my life with friends jumping into a pond, dragging myself up over its muddy bank and jumping in again. We were hollering and throwing mud at one another, pushing each other over, attempting to climb the mango and the coconut trees for more spectacular dives. A kingfisher observed us from its perch on a bamboo pole in the middle of the pond, flew away and then returned. It did this again and again, and I knew it was having the time of its life as well.

“The strands are all there,” wrote Eudora Welty. “To the memory, nothing is ever really lost.” So true! I would only add this: More than any other element, it is rain that best brings the strands together.

Missing the Real Obama

I do not believe, as many Americans do, that Barack Obama has fizzled in his first year as president. But I do believe that he could have done better than what he has, given the support and the goodwill that propelled him to his historic victory in 2008.

Let’s first put the Massachusetts election in context. Republican Scott Brown’s victory over Democrat Martha Coakley for the late Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat does not signal a seismic shift in the political landscape of America. It simply means that Coakley, who ran the most inept and asinine campaign in recent memory, lost to the better and more knowledgeable candidate. Brown may derail the health care reform bill and tarnish Kennedy’s legacy but that will not imply that the Republican Party has suddenly become resurgent and is poised to sweep away the Democratic agenda. In fact, Brown’s victory might just be the wakeup call Democrats needed to stop their internal squabbles and get their bearing right.

But there is little doubt that the euphoria we experienced in the wake of Obama’s election as the first African-American president in U.S. history is rapidly vanishing. There are two main reasons for this: The President’s continuation of his predecessor’s policies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and his inability to turn the economy around.

We have just reached a dubious milestone: The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have topped $1 trillion in taxpayers’ money since 2001, and the President is expected to request another $33 billion to fund more troops in 2010.

To put this in context: 20% of all Americans are either jobless, underemployed or simply have given up looking for work. One out of every eight U.S. mortgages is in default or foreclosure, one out of every four homeowners is burdened with underwater mortgages, and one out of every eight Americans is on food stamps. Hunger and homelessness are on the rise and relief is nowhere in sight.

The stimulus package has not removed or reduced the stress on homeowners and job seekers. The economic “wizard” in Obama’s cabinet continue to spin the fantasy that the recession, at least in their formula-rich spreadsheets, is over. Meanwhile, at least six Americans are responding to each job opening, even if they are over-qualified for it.

Greg Mortenson, author of Three Cups of Tea and Stones for Schools, has built schools in the remotest areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. In his many meetings with hardened Afghan warriors, Mortenson came away with one simple message: education is the best antidote to the Taliban. As journalist Trudy Rubin has reported, the title for Stones Into Schools came from a hardened former mujahedeen commander in the remote Badakshan province of Afghanistan who talked about how much his country needed rebuilding. He told Mortenson that there has been far too much dying in these hills. “Now we must turn these stones into schools.” Even warriors want peace, says Mortenson, a lesson he learned by sitting down repeatedly with shuras (representative gatherings) of elders. He says one of the biggest American problems after the 2001 invasion was the lack of such attention paid to what Afghans themselves wanted. We should have consulted with shuras, and listened to, and respected, elders, according to Mortenson.

Most Americans desperately want President Obama to succeed. One rising concern is that Obama has lost touch with his dedicated and passionate supporters. He has to renew his connection with the grassroots. Many Americans are beginning to view his presidency as imperial and catering to the wealthy. This perception has to change.

A constant in the calculus of American politics is that the presidency changes the President. Some it elevates, others, it drags down. Here’s hoping that, in spite of recent setbacks and falling poll numbers, Barak Obama will quickly find his stride and decisively place himself in the first group.

Haiti's Sorrow

Born in Bangladesh. Experienced devastating cyclones and floods. Saw bloated bodies floating on ponds, rivers and the Bay of Bengal. Cry of orphaned babies pierced the heart. Relief inadequate to the humanitarian disaster.

These random thoughts passed through my mind as images of death and destruction from Haiti filled the media. Hospitals, schools, shops, homes have collapsed from the 7.0 earthquake that struck the island nation on January 12, 2010.

Preliminary reports indicate that more than 100,000 Haitians may have perished. The infrastructure, hardy any to begin with, has been completely destroyed. Rescuing people trapped beneath the rubble seems impossible at the moment.

Fate has dealt Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, a particularly cruel blow. As aid pours in from around the world, the means to distribute food, water and medicine to the approximately 3 million affected Haitians remain precarious.

Whatever we can do to bring relief to the living, we must. When tragedy strikes in any corner of the world, we become aware of our common humanity. For Americans, the Katrina debacle remains a vivid reminder that such lapses cannot repeat. Already the Obama administration has dispatched several hospital ship and planeloads of emergency supplies to the devastated nation.

In the next few days and nights, Haitian will try to come to grips with what has befallen them. But perhaps they can find some solace in that people from around the globe have opened their hearts and pocketbooks for them, to help them bury their dead with dignity and bring a semblance of normalcy to their lives again.

But after the world moves on to grapple with the next crisis, Haitians themselves must bear the responsibility for reconstructing their country. The history of Haiti is tragic. The French were brutal slave owners and grew wealthy beyond their dreams from sugarcane plantations. Americans occupied the country for almost two decades. Haitian dictators killed their own countrymen by the thousands. Against this backdrop, rebuilding Haiti becomes even more challenging. But unless Haitians step up to the task, they will always be dependent on the generosity of others and that can never be a long-term solution.

Thoreau said: "If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life." Same should be true for nations. In the long run, local leadership that promotes self-reliance will be the only catalyst for fundamental national changes. In the disaster that has hit Haiti, there is obviously the need for as much aid as possible. But a few months from now, Haitians will have to think long and hard about their own responsibility and accountability.

The Joy of "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society"

You know you have read an unforgettable book when you sigh at its completion, relive the dialogues and the wild and vivid characters in it, and hope desperately that the story will somehow continue.

Such was my reaction to Mary Ann Shaffer’s The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

Comprising only letters between the heroine Miss Juliet Dryhurst Ashton, her friends in England, and members of an improbable literary circle in the Channel Island of Guernsey near the French coast, the story seemed so real that I had to repeatedly remind myself it was a work of fiction.

Juliet is a headstrong girl who speaks her mind. Raised by an uncle after her parents are killed in a car accident, Juliet runs away from home, is “captured” and brought back, and finally sent away to an English boarding school.

As she matures, she discovers that books, and people associated with books, are her best friends. She writes a column for a newspaper during World War II, bringing humor to a grim subject, and attracts a huge number of fans. The columns are published as a book and Izzie Bickerstaff Goes to War becomes a bestseller. She achieves a measure of financial freedom, a writer’s dream. She writes funny and opinionated letters to her friends. She is content.

But maybe not. On 12^th January, 1946, out of the blue, she receives a letter from a Dawsey Adams of St. Martin’s, Guernsey. Somehow, a book that belonged to Juliet – Selected Essays of Elia by Charles Lamb – has found its way to him.

“Charles Lamb made me laugh during the German Occupation,” wrote Adams, and the ever-curious Juliet is hooked. “I wonder how the book got to Guernsey? Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers,” responded Juliet.

Meanwhile, a pushy and wealthy American begins pursuing Juliet with a single-mindedness that leaves our heroine out of breath. He showers her with expensive gifts and treats her to the best food in town, a luxury in war-ravaged London. She isn’t sure if she loves him or not but defends his loud ways to her friends.

But gradually the utterly guileless and lovable members of Guernsey’s literary society take her heart over. She makes up her mind to travel to the island against the aggressive pleadings of her American suitor.

And then one day, she does.

I will not spoil your reading pleasure by hinting at what happens next, other than to say only this: Juliet discovers what love is among people for whom every day is a gift, having lived through a brutal occupation. It is as poignant, haunting, witty and uplifting a story as you will ever read.

How this book got written in the first place is a story by itself. In 1976, Mary Ann Shaffer, (born in West Virginia in 1934), visited the island of Guernsey and learned of its wartime experiences during the German Occupation. Twenty years later, she began to write The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. “All I wanted,” she said, “was to write a book that someone would like enough to publish.” Considering what followed, this has got to be one of the most striking understatements of our time.

Before publication, however, the editor requested some changes to the manuscript that required substantial rewriting. By then, in the summer of 2006, Mary Ann’s health had begun to fail. The responsibility fell to the other writer in the family, her niece Annie Barrows. Having grown up in the caring guidance and the story-telling gifts of her aunt, Annie put her heart to the task, reproducing her “aunt’s voice, her characters, the rhythm of her plot,” even though she thought it would be impossible to do.

Mary Ann passed away in February of 2008. Shortly after her death, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society was published. It became an international bestseller and put Guernsey firmly on the literary map of the world.

I began this short review by writing that I longed for the story to continue after I had finished reading the book. I now know that the story indeed continues. After all, thousands have reviewed it, yet more readers discover this gem everyday and feel the need to share their joy with others. That’s how the story of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society lives on, in the heart of its ever-widening circle of grateful readers.

Ellen Goodman Writes Her Final Column

First, it was Anna Quindlen. Her farewell column, “Stepping Aside,” appeared in the Newsweek issue of May 18, 2009. (Please see my May 12, 2009 blog entry).

And now it is Ellen Goodman. Her final piece, “Letting Go,” appeared on New Year’s Day in The Washington Post and other syndicated newspapers.

Who will replace them? As far as I can tell, no one.

I looked forward to Goodman’s columns because they made so much sense. Two things were special about her writing: She could see the universal in the commonplace and she could see connections between people, events and ideas that eluded most of us. That’s why her columns were so anticipated. Reading her made us pause and exclaim, “So, that’s how it is! I wonder why I never thought of it that way.”

What distinguishes memorable columnists from the merely good ones is their sheer professional longevity. Goodman began writing her columns in 1974, always with verve and wit and always on target. If this isn’t brilliance, I don’t know what is.

Readers can choose from hundreds of her pieces to prove her versatility, passion, insight and facility with words. I will pick only two to make my point.

When I read “Letting Go,” I immediately remembered the column that first indicated her unique voice. But that was so many years ago! All I could recall about it was the revealing role a bird played in the midst of a make-believe world. A quick Web search, with my vague recollections as keywords, brought it all back.

The article was published in March of 1979, and began this way: “The moment of truth came at 3 p.m. on our second day in the Magic Kingdom. There, in the middle of Fantasyland, a small brown bird got up and flew away.”

Goodman was visiting Disney World in Florida. The sight of a real bird put the entire Disney creation in context for her. And through her insight, our sights also opened up.

“In Disney World, they (the birds) may sing, they may bob their heads, kick their legs, move their beaks, blink their eyes and flap their wings. But they do not fly away.”

She was not complaining. She “loved the rides, loved the fantasy and the monorails.” But her point was this: “You don’t have to be a Save-the-Snail-Darter fan to see something weird about the idea of taking acres of natural land and carving out artificial streams and waterfalls – each with its own plastic inhabitants … Standing there, watching the flight of the brown bird, I thought of that 1960s song, ‘Pave paradise, put up a parking lot.’ The writer was way off. If we were to pave paradise, we’d put up a perfect imitation, plastic apple and all … We are much more fascinated with the man-made than with the natural. We are more impressed with what we have made than with what is just there … It’s a form of human narcissism, I suppose. We find teensy transistors more marvelous than seeds, Disney lands more extraordinary than natural ones. But it is the sort of pride that can be shaken by a small brown bird in a big plastic world.”

I can almost hear Henry David Thoreau, Aldo Leopold and Edward Abbey applauding.

The other column is more recent. It's reflection on a summer holiday Goodman spent in Casco Bay, Maine, in 2008. The island scene is typical. You and I would pass over it with probably no more than a glance. But from the ordinary, Goodman evokes the poignant sense of mortality, rebirth and the mystery of time. As well as any writer, but within a 750-word constraint, she could see “the world in a grain of sand, and heaven in a wildflower.”

“Along the dirt road there is a dilapidated stone wall. Blueberries and chokecherries, wildflowers and bushes have pushed their way around and under the remains, toppling what once marked the neat border of a seaside farm … Permanence and transience are on my summer mind … But if transience is on my mind, if the luxury of summer comes with its own penumbra of loss, it's largely because there is a dying in my family. My Aunt Lorna is facing death with the trademark honesty and character that have marked her life and her approach to an unforgiving illness … A few weeks ago, a new grandson arrived in the midst of her dying. She has already built a web of memories with her adored granddaughter. Now comes this little boy. A boy who will know her only through our stories. It was, she told me in one succinct word, bittersweet … So here I am this morning, out where the land has upended the human wall, casting stones aside. Enough berries have grown in its place to fill my bucket to the brim. And the day is bittersweet.”

I will miss Ellen Goodman’s columns, and I know you will too.