Being Mortal

Over and over, we in medicine inflict deep gouges at the end of people’s lives and then stand oblivious to the harm done. Atul Gawande

We may fear it, deny it, or avoid thinking about it, but in time it will come to all of us. No matter how alive we feel now, eventually we will come to the end of the line. What kind of ending do we hope for?

Unless you carefully express yourself on the matter, it is likely you will end up in a hospital hooked up to a collection of tubes and monitoring machines. Is that what you want? Medicine’s focus is on prolonging your life, repairing the breakdown of your bodies, using its technical arsenal to extend your life.

In Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, Atul Gawande, says this approach has failed. It has failed because it neglects the quality of life at its endpoint.

We are living longer, healthier lives but our body eventually breaks down. Medicine’s model is to fix the broken parts, usually by hospitalizing you, where you are stripped of control of your life and subject to treatments that more often than not only increase your pain.

The story begins with the breakdown of teeth, bone density declines, lung capacity decreases, the brain shrinks, working memory and judgment are impaired. Old age is a continuous series of losses. Eventually these losses accumulate to the point where daily life becomes more than we can physically or mentally manage on our own.

This was not a problem when individuals lived in a multigenerational home where one or more of their children could assist them. In contemporary society this type of household is rare. Very few of individuals in their 70s or 80s live with their children, in fact, most live completely alone.

“There remains one problem with this way of living. Our reverence for independence takes no account of the reality of what happens in life: sooner or later, independence will become impossible. Serious illness or infirmity will strike. It is as inevitable as sunset.”

The consequence is that doctors try to extend life for as long as possible, dosing people with mind-numbing drugs, shocking their hearts back in action, delivering painful chemotherapy with unknown effects. He cites data that 25 percent of all Medicare spending is for the five percent of patients who are in their last year of life and that most of that money goes for care in the last couple of months that is of little apparent benefit.

Gawande reports that medical interventions for people in this stage of life cause more harm and suffering that doing nothing. “…terminally ill cancer patients who were put on a mechanical ventilator, given electrical defibrillation or chest compressions or admitted near death to intensive care had substantially worse quality of life in their last week that those who received no such interventions.”

Being Mortal describes several alternatives to medical treatment at the end of life. Gawande considers nursing homes, most of which have a checkered history and explores the benefits and drawbacks of assisted living centers, hospice and palliative care. There are enormous variations in the quality of care in each of these settings.

He asks readers to discuss the type of life they want at its end with their doctor. Is there anything that makes this stage of life worthwhile? Each of us probably has our own answer. Many want to be at home, others with their family. He describes one program that brought children, plants, and various animals into a senior housing setting. Compared to the period before this intervention, the director reported that drug costs fell by 38 percent and deaths declined by 15 percent.

Most people fail to discuss their end of life care with their physician, leaving them at the mercy of hospital treatment. In the event that happens, it is important to make clear your answers to four crucial questions:

1. Do you want to be resuscitated if your heart stops?
2. Do you want aggressive treatments such as intubation and mechanical ventilation?
3. Do you want antibiotics?
4. Do you want tube or intravenous feeding if you can’t eat on your own?

Ideally you should also give you doctor a notarized Advance Directive Form that is legally binding in your state.

Toward the end of Being Mortal, Gawande briefly discusses euthanasia. He critiques the end-of-life policy in the Netherlands in the belief that as a doctor “our ultimate goal is not a good death but a good life to the very end.”

The book is liberally sprinkled with case histories that document Gawande’s central themes.

“I never expected that among the most meaningful experiences I’d have as a doctor—and, really, as a human being-would come from helping others deal with what medicine cannot do as well as what it can…When to shift from pushing against limits to making the best of them is not often readily apparent. But it is clear there are times when the cost of pushing exceeds it value.”

Being Mortal is a difficult book to read, some will find it irrelevant to their life, others will find it quite timely. Most likely it depends on your age. But its difficulty is more than outweighed by the quality of Gawande’s writing and his honesty in discussing mortality.

The Dictionary

My sister’s faith is in learning. Her sacred text is the Oxford English Dictionary. Elizabeth Gilbert

I have a dictionary on my computer, located in the Dock, as it is called on the MacBook Air. As I am writing something or should I say, typing on the keyboard, I sometimes check the dictionary to be sure of a word’s spelling or if I have used it correctly.

But what does “soulful” even mean? The dictionary has it this way: “expressing or appearing to express deep and often sorrowful feeling.” Zadie Smith

The dictionary also has a Thesaurus if I want to search for an alternative word, something I rarely do and a reference to Wikipedia if I want further information about the word, concept or person.

I ask myself if this digital dictionary is any different from the printed one, that is nearby on my desk? I try to think of how so and can’t come up with any reason to view them differently.

Am I surrendering to the ease of the digital world, like I often feel when I use goggle to find something I should know or remember? Or are these tools, as James Wood says, “both a gift of the digital world and a judgment on my scant acquaintance with the actual world.”

I am reminded once again of the fruitless debate of the differences between the experience of reading a printed book compared to its e-book version. I have no strong feelings about this matter and believe until unequivocal evidence suggests otherwise, reading these two versions of the same book scarcely matters.

I have read the printed and e-book version of the same book, sometimes one version before the other, sometimes, in the reverse order. Regardless, the number of passages I copy, the pleasures I derive from the book, and my recollection of it do not differ.

Yes, this is but one person’s belief that sometimes includes a comparison with a friend who has done the same thing. There is nothing better in the way of evidence at this time or in the foreseeable future.

Not long ago I re-read Pascal Mercier’s Night Train to Lisbon. Five years ago I read the print version, this time I read the e-book version. It remains one of the finest books I ever read. I thought it was time to read it again and I wanted very much to do so.

The best education comes from knowing only one book. James Salter

Other than forgetting a great deal of the detail, I did mark more passages this time in the e-book version. It is difficult to know why. What is important to me is that the novel’s brilliance hasn’t faded.

Recently I read the e-book version of Zia Hader Rahman’s In the Light of What We Know, a book that appeals to me as much as Mercier’s. I know I will read the print version in due course. It is that good, also a philosophical novel dense with ideas and questions that I want to remember.

There are an abundance of words and concepts that have taken me to that little dictionary that resides in the Dock of my computer. Thank you very much all the wordsmiths at Apple.

On Veterans (Armistice) Day

The Anniversary of Armistice Day, now known as Veterans Day, set me to thinking once again about the War, which in my case is the Second World War. I was just a young boy then, scarcely old enough to have any idea what was happening in Europe. We lived at the beach, some distance from downtown Los Angeles. When the Japanese invaded Pearl Harbor, there was concern about an invasion of the West Coast.

So much of what I’ve read lately, and so many of the films I’ve watched center on the War. To a large extent I attribute this to the Holocaust. It wasn’t until I started learning about the concentration camps that I really began to feel Jewish.

My Jewish parents were not religious. Other than a single Passover dinner when I was in graduate school, there were no holiday meals, rituals or celebrations. We had a Christmas tree, celebrated Christmas, not Hanukkah.

Then there is the remarkable courage of so many people—those who served in the military, or risked their life in attempting to save Jews, the members of various resistance groups, and those who suffered greatly in the camps. I’ve never thought of myself as a courageous person, but these individuals remind me of what that calls for.

I often ask myself what is the point of reading another book or seeing another film about the Second World War? Don’t I already know more than enough about the death and destruction that swept over Europe and Asia then? In reading Charles Simic’s review (New York Review of Books, 10/10/13) of Ian Buruma’s Year Zero: A History of 1945, those questions came to mind.

The 50 to 70 million dead, the ruined cities and towns in Germany, Japan, Russia and Poland, the rubble that made it virtually impossible to walk the streets, the desperate hunger, search for food, the atrocities in the camps.

I think there is really only one answer to my questions, namely: the purpose of reading these accounts is to insure they will not happen again.

What a delusion that is. Knowing the horrors of war, knowing the destructive power of modern weapons, knowing the savageness of war, knowing all this does nothing to insure it won’t happen again. Knowing is one realm, behaving is another, the gap between the two is enormous. Simic closes his review in disbelief:

“How is it possible, I ask myself, that out of all the winners and losers in 1945, the United States is the only country in all the years since that has not experienced lasting peace, but has grown more and more enamored of military solutions to world problems and has of late come to believe, at least in some high places, that it may have to fight a global war that will go on for decades”

Saving Mozart

In memory of Kristallnacht, November 9-10, 76 years ago:

Music keeps me going. It’s the only thing I have left.

In a way, Otto Steiner’s act of resistance against the Third Reich was every bit as effective as those performed by the resistance groups throughout Europe. We learn about it in Raphael Jersusalmy’s novel, Saving Mozart, written in the form of Steiner’s diary. It is only in its last few pages that we find out what Steiner did.

Otto Steiner, a former music critic, is now a tubercular patient in a Viennese sanatorium. He has been there for years, first in a private room, then when his funds were depleted in one with a group of near-dead. One by one, they disappear, the place reeks of illness, bad-tempered nurses, and horrible smells.

I went down to the dayroom to have a cup of tea. I don’t go there often. I don’t like seeing the others, the sick. They’re all decrepit. And unshaven. I avoid talking to them. What would we talk about anyway.

Steiner is abandoned by everyone, an outcast, who knows he can’t count on anyone other than himself. Music is his only salvation, as it always was. The Second World War is about to begin, the Nazis have invaded Poland, then Belgium, captured Paris and are battling the Russians on the eastern front.

Parades, public holidays, military balls, walks in the forest. All these things are forbidden me now.

But they have not lost their love of music and begin to exploit the great German composers for their own propaganda ends. They have taken over the annual summer Mozart Festival (Festspiele). Otto is asked by Hans, a friend and former editor, to help write the program notes for the forthcoming occasion.

Even though he is extremely ill, Otto agrees, they go back and forth on the plans and Otto finds himself appalled to learn the program will end with Mozart’s 21st piano Concerto immediately preceded by a rousing Teutonic piece.

Otto asks Hans to precede the piece with a softer interlude. Otto composes the piece, it is performed beautifully, the Nazis are aroused, tapping their feet, all of which Otto finds terribly amusing.

For, in fact, the piece he composed is a variation of an old Jewish folk song. Otto knows his subtle, defiant act of rebellion might cost him his life, but he has made his statement, fooled the Nazis, and doesn’t have much to lose anyway.

Berlin Memories

Today, November 9th, is the 25th Anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It brought back memories of a time my wife and I visited a memorial section of the Wall.

Several years ago a young doctoral student in Berlin read about my research on car sharing when he was studying for his doctorate in Germany. Not long after, he traveled “all the way” from Berlin to meet me. We talked and I agreed to help him with his dissertation.

It was hard work as his written English was an editor’s nightmare. We spoke daily by phone one summer when I was in Italy as he was finishing up, and afterwards I went to Berlin for a few days to serve on his dissertation committee.

The routine of the dissertation committee in a German university was everything you might imagine—formal, austere, unsmiling, tough, and yet conducted in English, perhaps for my benefit. At the end, I was asked for my opinion. What could I say?

He passed the exam, a gang of friends marched in with a bountiful supply of food, and we had a few remarkable days in Berlin, as he and his then-girl friend took us around and treated us royally.

It was enjoyable, Berlin was prospering, and it felt as modern as any contemporary metropolis. I was surprised by how pleasant, how normal it was because being in Germany had always been a difficult experience for me.

This was true in 1954 during my first visit when rubble from the War was still on the streets. It was even more difficult in 1960 the night I stayed with a graduate student friend at his father’s home outside Frankfurt. He wasn’t the least bit friendly and that led me to think or imagine he might have been a Nazi sympathizer.

While lurking in the background of my thoughts, we never spoke of the War during my recent visit to Berlin. It was as if the Holocaust had never occurred. The student and his partner were thoroughly delightful. The same was true of their respective families that we met at a celebratory dinner in a nearby village.

He returned to Portland a few days ago on a leisurely trip of around America with his current girl friend. It was fun to see him again, learn what they were each up to, and recall our times together.

Knowing of my love of Florence, a few years ago they called me after they had climbed to the top of the Duomo. Here I was in Portland, talking to a friend on the top of the Duomo in Florence.

I recalled the long, very steep and dangerous narrow stairway to the top, the wind blowing, the fear of toppling over, with a view out to the fields of Tuscany.

And as I thought back about the experience of helping this student from Germany, it was one of those recollections that continue to astonish me. Could it have been me? Did I really do that? Did he come all the way from Berlin to work with me? What has happened to me in the ensuing years?

A Steady Rain

Last night I sat for a while and watched the rain. It was pouring, windows coated with water, light gray clouds covered the city. You could hardly see the trees on the hills in the northwest part of town, at times you couldn’t see them at all. It was cold, at least cold for me, but I found myself ignoring that as I stared out the windows watching the falling rain.

Normally the rain is a real annoyance to me. It is difficult to walk anywhere, so it becomes a struggle rather than an event to notice, as it became last night. How often have you passed by a building or noticed an often-occurring event for the very first time? That was my thought as I was watching the rain drench this city last night.

The experience reminded of a short story Anthony Doerr wrote in the Summer 2014 issue of Granta. He said he was driving his twin sons home from their football practice one day, when he turned down the road to his home and noticed an old log cabin for the very first time, one that he had passed by countless times before.

It’s a log cabin with a swaybacked roof and a low door, like a cottage for gnomes. A little brick chimney sticks out of its shingles Three enamel signs stand on the south side; a stone bench hunkers on the north.

This took him on a flight back to the log cabin’s beginning in what is now 21st Century Boise, Idaho, his hometown. In 1863 a man by the name of John rode his horse into Idaho Territory and put down his tent by a creek. His wagon was full of tools and he was in love with a woman back in Colorado, born in Ireland. For years he was a sailor, sailed around the world and now he was a prospector.

John unpacked his wagon and began to build the cabin, cutting the logs, clearing the ground, all the while waiting for the woman in Colorado. In time Mary arrived. It took her four months to reach what was then Fort Boise.

The cabin had a dirt floor but over the years a wood floor, oven and bathroom were added. The cabin became a house with glass windows, lawn sprinklers, and began to take on its current form in what is now Boise Idaho, the capital of the state of Utah.

Doerr concludes: What lasts? Is there anything you made in your life that will still be here 150 years from now? …What does not last, if they are not retold, are the stories. Stories need to be resurrected, revivified, reimagined; otherwise they get bundled with us into our graves…

The Children Act

When a court determines any question with respect to … the upbringing of a child … the child’s welfare shall be the court’s paramount consideration. —SECTION 1(A), THE CHILDREN ACT, 1989

In his latest book, The Children Act, Ian McEwan presents the reader with a series of moral conflicts that do not lend themselves to an easy solution. The setting is London, a summer of incessant rain, when Fiona Maye, a British High Court Judge in the Family Division, must resolve the disputes of families, the faithful, and infirm.

There is also the nasty business of her private life. Her long time husband wants to embark upon an affair with 28-year-old statistician. He has no desire to leave Fiona, but rather wants “one big passionate affair” before he drops dead. Fiona kicks him out of their home, changes the lock on the door, and tries to get on with her work.

She must decide the fate of the children of divorcing Jewish parents who are disputing the nature of their daughter’s education. There is the case of Catholic parents who refuse to separate their conjoined twins, even if it means they will both die. If she permits the separation, only one will die, leaving the other to live a fairly normal life.

…she found her argument in the doctrine of necessity, an idea established in common law that in certain limited circumstances…it was permissible to break the criminal law to prevent a greater evil…Regarding the all-important matter of intent, the purpose of the surgery was not to kill Matthew but to save Mark.

The surgery was performed, all concerned viewed her decision as correct, and public interest almost instantly faded and moved on.

But the heart of The Children Act deals with a young Jehovah’s Witness leukemia patient, Adam Henry, whose parents refuse to permit a blood transfusion that would save his life. Jehovah’s Witnesses expressly forbid blood transfusions that would mix their blood with that of another human being.

Yet, Adam is only a few months shy of his 18th birthday; under British law he would be allowed to decide for himself. The issue is coming to a head, as Adam is nearing the end of the period when transfusions can save his life.

The hospital requests an emergency hearing to treat Adam with a transfusion. Adam, under the sway of his parents and religious beliefs does not want a transfusion. Fiona listens to the arguments in court.

It is argued that the court should be extremely reluctant to interfere in a decision regarding medical treatment made by a person of evident intelligence. In opposition, a case is made that the court should be guided by an earlier decision in which it was affirmed that the welfare of the child should dictate any decision.

How should Fiona rule? To decide, she first takes the unorthodox step of visiting Adam in the hospital. She observes a highly intelligent young man, who writes poems, reads them to her, and plays the violin with a fair amount of skill. They talk, she asks questions, become friends in a way, and Fiona leaves with a clear view of how she should rule.

“Consequently, I overrule the wishes of A and his parents. My direction and declaration are as follows: that the agreement to blood transfusion of the first and second respondents, who are the parents, and the agreement to blood transfusion of the third respondent, who is A himself, are set aside. Therefore it will be lawful for the applicant hospital to pursue the medical treatments of A they regard necessary, on the understanding that these may entail the administration of blood and its products by transfusion.”

The story does not end there. It is best left unrevealed to a future reader. The moral quandaries of The Children Act and the way they are presented by McEwan captured my interest from the first pages. The ending did surprise me, but in no way diminished the pleasure of reading yet another fictional gift from Ian McEwan.

On the New York Review of Books

On February 1st 1963 The New York Review of Books published its first issue during a printer’s strike that had shut down all seven New York City newspapers. Over the years, the scope of its coverage has expanded to the extent that it has become the leading cultural periodical in this country. I recently purchased a copy of that first issue. The editors introduced the publication this way:

The New York Review of Books presents reviews of some of the more interesting and important books published this winter. It does not, however, seek merely to fill the gap created by the printers strike in New York City but to take the opportunity which the strike has presented to publish the sort of literary journal which the editors and contributors feel in need in America….The hope of the editors is to suggest, however imperfectly, some of the qualities which a responsible literary journal should have and to discovery whether there is, in America, not only the need for such a review but the demand for one.

After more than 50 years of publishing a new issue almost every two weeks, there is little doubt there both a “need” and demand for a publication of this sort. David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, once the foremost literary publication in this country, has said it was “surely the best first issue of any magazine ever.” The quality of the essays in the succeeding issues has continued that tradition.

The first issue has superb reviews of well-known authors by well-known writers. Mary McCarthy reviewed William Burroughs’, The Naked Lunch; Susan Sontag reviewed Selected Essays by Simone Weil; W. H. Auden wrote about David Jones’ Anathemata; Dwight Macdonald reviewed The Politics of Hope by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. etc., etc.

Separately, the first issue contained new poems: Robert Lowell’s Buenos Aires; John Berryman’s Three Dream Songs; Robert Penn Warren’s "Lyrics" from Delight, as well as reviews of several books of poetry. And there were a great many pages advertising new fiction and non-fiction books.

I always look forward to the next issue. Will there be topics that interest me, writers who impress me with their erudition, and writing that will amuse and educate? There always are; here is an example.

In the August 8, 2013 issue Freeman Dyson reviewed a new biography of Robert Oppenheimer, the troubled genius I so admire, that focuses on his work in physics. Dyson knew Oppenheimer and believes that his work in physics was of minor importance.

But he thinks highly of his many other contributions—role in building the first cyclotron at Berkeley, teaching graduate students, leading the development of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, and serving as Chairman of a committee of the Atomic Energy Commission.

Still, it is his failure to break new ground in theoretical physics that disappoints Dyson. He attributes it to a lack of what he calls “Sitzfleisch.” “Sitzfleisch” is a German word that means “the ability to sit still and work quietly. He could never sit still long enough to do a difficult calculation. His calculations were always done hastily and often full of mistakes.”

I have no way to evaluate Dyson’s claim. But the concept of Sitzfleisch interests me and as I think about it, I realize it applies widely. I know how fruitful it can be to concentrate for an extended period on a topic. And I know others who are simply unable to do that, to their detriment and ultimate regret.

Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi have recently made a film, The 50 Year Argument that is an in-depth-portrait of the periodical. It draws upon rare archival material, interviews, and the work of some of its writers to illustrate the range of the magazine during the past five decades.

The film premiered on HBO at the end of September. I trust it will eventually become more widely available.

Janet Yellen on Economic Inequality

Speeches by government officials on economic inequality are rare. You recall the speech President Obama delivered some time ago in which he said it was the defining issue of our time. We haven’t heard a word from him since, let alone any major policy changes to remedy the situation.

But Janet Yellen, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, spoke out forcefully on this issue last week (10/17/14). In her speech to the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston she said:

"The extent of and continuing increase in inequality in the United States greatly concerns me. … It is no secret that the past few decades of widening inequality can be summed up as significant income and wealth gains for those at the very top and stagnant living standards for the majority. I think it is appropriate to ask whether this trend is compatible with values rooted in our nation’s history, among them the high value Americans have traditionally placed on equality of opportunity."

From all accounts this is the first time a Chairman of the Federal Reserve devoted an entire speech to economic inequality in this country. In 2007 when he was Chairman, Ben Bernanke did talk about the issue but lamely concluded,

“I will not draw any firm conclusions about the extent to which policy should attempt to offset inequality in economic outcomes; that determination inherently depends on values and social trade-offs and is thus properly left to the political process.” Talk about passing the buck.

In contrast, Yellen identified a number of areas that called for action. She said it was the Federal Reserve’s responsibility to do all it could to promote economic opportunities in this country, called for efforts to reduce the enormous debt students incur in attending college, as well as promoting early education and affordable higher education. She noted that mobility is lower in the United States than most other advanced countries and urged the creation of new businesses that would give individuals a chance of moving up.

All in all, a very concrete set of proposals, an impressive statement from the Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Let’s hope it isn’t Yellen’s last word on this issue. She obviously cares about the problem, so I don’t think it will be.

Yellen alluded to the possibility that income inequality could be a significant factor in the overall weakness in the economy. According to Neil Irwin (Times, 10/17/14) the logic of this conjecture goes like this:

"The wealthy tend to save a large proportion of their income, whereas middle and low- income people spend almost all that they earn. Because a rising share of income is going to the wealthy, spending—and hence aggregate demand—is rising more slowly than it would if there were more even distribution of income."

If true, this hypothesis provides additional support for using fiscal policy and congressional action to lessen the extent of economic inequality in this country. The benefits are clear. Other than fiscal policy, the likelihood of congressional action now is virtually nil, an outcome that is deeply distressing to this writer and I imagine to Yellen too.

The Rescuer

What do these well-known individuals have in common: Hannah Arendt, Marc Chagall, Arthur Koestler, Claude Levi-Strauss, Marcel Duchamp? They are among the many individuals, currently estimated to be over 2,000, that Varian Fry helped to escape from Nazi Germany and occupied France during World War II. They were largely Jewish individuals who were well-known cultural figures—artists, writers, musicians and scientists.

Fry began his work by volunteering to serve on the Emergency Rescue Committee, headquartered in Marseille that aided persons fleeing the Nazis. When he began, the group had the support of the State Department, but that ended 13 months later as the Department slowly turned against it in favor of the Vichy Government that, with the State Department’s agreement, eventually arranged his arrest and expulsion from France.

Before then he had successfully procured forged identity cards, visas to America and arranged passage on ships leaving from Marseille or smuggling those in flight across the border to Spain or Portugal. When asked about his motives for his extremely risky activities, Fry responded that when he had visited Berlin in 1935, he saw Gestapo men assaulting Jews in the city’s streets, and he felt he could no longer remain indifferent.

''I remembered what I had seen in Germany. I knew what would happen to the refugees if the Gestapo got hold of them ... It was my duty to help them ... Friends warned me of the danger. They said I was a fool to go. I, too, could be walking into the trap. I might never come back alive."

In her book about Fry, The Rescuer, Dara Horn is less generous. She attributes his reasons to a mental illness, characterized as a manic-depressive struggle that occupied his entire life. She writes that his son held a somewhat similar view. He is quoted as saying, “Maybe you need to be a little unhinged to do something foolhardy like that. If Prozac had existed in the 1940s, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

I regard both accounts as irrelevant to his work. What he did is far more important, indeed of historic and cultural importance, than his motives, motives that neither Fry, his son, biographer or anyone else can ever hope to fathom.

Unfortunately, Fry was never honored or received the kind of gratitude from those he saved that Sousa Mendes did from the individuals he helped escape from Nazi Germany. Mendes was Portugal’s consul in Bordeaux when Germany invaded France. The Times reported that 40 of them made a pilgrimage to Portugal recently to pay homage to the man who saved their lives.

It is estimated that Mendes issued at least 30,000 (1/3 of whom were Jews) Portuguese visas to individuals seeking to flee the Germans. “He issued many of the visas personally and also persuaded some others on the Portuguese diplomatic staff stationed in France to do the same.” This was contrary to the policy of Fascist government in Portugal that tried and subsequently dismissed him from the diplomatic services, canceling his pension rights. He died in poverty in 1954.

Like Fry he has been honored in Israel as one of the “Righteous Among the Nations.” One of the people who made the pilgrimage to honor Mendes said, “You hear about people who argued that they couldn’t help because it was wartime and they had their own family to worry about, but here was a man with a career, a wife and an incredible amount of children who certainty did do something for others.”

The Liar's Wife

Mary Gordon’s The Liar’s Wife consists of four novellas, each about an individual at a different stage of their life. Most look back on previous times, reviewing mistakes that were made and how their life has changed since then.

In the first titled novella, an elderly, retired scientist recalls her brief marriage to a lying, deceiving Irishman and her life in Dublin before she simply walked out on him. Many years later, he and his new wife, both looking like hippies, visit her at her home in Maine. After the night they spend there, she realizes, “Without Johnny she wouldn’t have known, really, who she was. Because he had taught her who she was not.”

In “Simone Weil in New York,” French born Genevieve, now living in New York with her husband, child, and brother, who suffers from cerebral palsy, is troubled by the forthcoming visit of Weil. She and her parents had fled France to escape the Nazis who had overrun the country. Weil decides to visit Genevieve, once a student in her classes.

Genevieve dreads having to spend time with her, day after day listening to her moral hectoring and is no longer interested in engaging in the unanswerable questions Weil keeps pestering her with. Eventually Weil leaves for England to join the French Resistance group there. Genevieve asks, “How is she able to say these things; how did she become the way she is. She comes from a loving family… a maimed genius? A Saint? A madwoman?”

Bill Morton a 90 year-old retired physician looks back on “the greatest day of my life” in the third novella, “Thomas Mann in Gary, Indiana.” Young Bill Morton was chosen to introduce Thomas Mann to his classmates when he visited the school after fleeing Nazi Germany.

Bill’s reminiscences as he unfolds the visit are moving. He recalls Mann’s speech to the students was “electrifying.” It was almost as if were being given shock treatments…but instead of torment, being replaced by nullity, the nullity of my own life…of what it meant to be human in a world that was full of evil and greatness, of terms and conditions larger than I had ever imagined.

Mann remarks: I have spoken to you of truth, justice, civilization, democracy … Civilization is in retreat. A period of lawlessness and anarchy reigns over the outward life of people…Evil has been revealed to us in such crassness and meanness that our eyes have been opened to the dignity and simple beauty of the good…I salute you in this country that is conscious of its own human inadequacy, a country that perseveres in a faith which is sound and utterly necessary to life—faith in goodness, in freedom and truth, in justice and in peace.

Many years later Bill enters the University of Chicago during the era of Robert Hutchins. It was the first time he had lived away from home. His excitement at reading the Great Books is an experience well known to me, the study of the Socratic method, the insistence on rigorous scientific evidence, debates about he theory of a just war and moral responsibility. It was one of the golden ages of academic education.

While he loves the study of the literature, Bill knew he would never be a great literary scholar and he saw no point in pursuing the subject unless he was going to be great at it. And so he devoted the rest of his life to medicine.

In “Fine Arts,” Theresa Riordan, a brilliant student in Catholic seminary, is sent by the nuns to a highly regarded university. While there she discovers her love of arts and in particular a rarely known Italian sculptor. After a brief, disastrous, affair with her married professor, she is granted a stipend that enables her to spend a month in Lucca studying the 15th century sculptor, Mateo Civitali.

While there she meets a wealthy, elderly collector, Signore Allard, who has several works by the sculptor. He becomes her guide and mentor as they meet for meals each day and visit museums that have other works by Civitali. After dinner one night the aged Signore Allard is killed as his car runs off the road on the way to his villa.

The fairy tale story ends when, back in America, Theresa receives a telephone call from Allard’s attorney with the following bit of news: Signore Allard has provided very handsomely for you. The villa and its contents belong to you; he has arranged that the staff be kept on, that they be paid an annuity only as long as they continue to work there. And has left you a very large sum of cash because he makes a point that you will be responsible for the upkeep of the villa as he left it....I hope you can come to Lucca as soon as possible.

It is difficult to identify any underlying theme that connects the four novellas. There are ideas that crop up in some, but not all—beauty, affliction, privilege, injustice, responsibility. But otherwise each tale stands alone in my mind, a set of short stories that in no way diminishes the pleasure of Mary Gordon’s The Liar’s Wife.

On Libraries

During World War II in the neighborhood where I lived, a small lending library of current fiction and non-fiction books was maintained in a nearby home. Anyone could pay a modest fee to borrow a book for a week or so, making it unnecessary to purchase a copy or wait until one became available at the distant public library. It wasn’t so easy to buy books during those wartime years so the little lending library around the block became a popular and much appreciated neighborhood center. Whatever happened to those small private lending libraries? I suspect they have all but vanished from this country.

About the time I entered Junior High, I began to study at the nearby library in my hometown. It was a small library located in the City Hall of what was then a village, albeit no less fashionable than now. The library was not far from my home and eventually I began biking or taking the bus there several times a week. It was quiet. The tables were hidden from one another in between the open stacks that filled the rooms. The books that I needed then were readily available. But mostly I would go to study and read. It was more than enough to simply be amongst those books for an hour or two in the afternoon.

I recall an older man was always there when I arrived. Now that I think about it, he must have been about the same age as I am now. Perhaps he was a writer for he was always scribbling something on a pad of yellow paper. I suspect I was rather impressed by his devotion to writing and seriousness of intent. Strangely, after all of these years, I’ve not forgotten him or that strange blend of paper, leather, and dust that I inhaled each time I stepped foot in the little library in my hometown.

In his blog (10/16/14), Anecdotal Evidence, Patrick Kurp describes a somewhat similar experience, updated for modern times. Every weekday in my university library I see a diminutive elderly man seated in front of a computer near the main reference desk. He wears an olive-drab bucket cap with the cord fastened below his chin and a sweater with holes at the elbows. His nose is inches from the screen, against which he holds a pocket magnifying glass. Beside him is a pile of books and papers. His gaze is intent.

Since the days of my youth, I have been to many fine libraries: Widener, Bodleian, the libraries at Stanford and Berkeley. I am overwhelmed with gratitude each time I step foot in one of those places. The first time I wandered in to the great reading room of the New York Public Library I had to stop and catch my breath.

Before me were row after row of tables with hundreds of readers peering at their books. I walked down one of the long aisles lined with book shelves glimpsing the titles of reference books most of which I didn’t even know existed, crossed over to the other side with a comparable collection that I would love to be able to get my hands on. It was hard to leave. While I usually work alone, after being in that room, I realized for perhaps the first time that I could actually read and write in the reading room of the New York Public Library and that if I lived in New York, I would probably go there every day.

And yet, as rich as are the resources of the New York Public Library and other comparable collections, the little library in the City Hall of my hometown, like any first love, will always remain my favorite. It is where I would want to be when it comes time to read my last book. I am sure the card catalog will still be there. After all, the librarians would never think of abandoning it for something as racy as a computer.

Is anyone going to the library now? To find out I went over to the Portland State University library the other day. I walked in the main entry and was immediately confronted by a room full of computers, with a student working at each console and a long line of other students waiting for an opening.

I counted about 50 workstations and as I walked up and down row upon row of them, I failed to see a single person reading a book. Some were taking notes from a website, others were writing text, while still others were composing e-mails. I went upstairs and observed much the same at about a dozen round tables each with five radiating computer stations, fully occupied with students peering at the screen.

As far as I could tell, not one was reading from a book. Where were the books, anyway? What a barren place I thought. Off to the side there were a few scattered readers. Most of them were taking notes from textbooks not anything from the library collection. However, I did see a fair number of students listening to their iPods and talking on their cell phones.

Up to the third, fourth and fifth floor with progressively fewer students but almost without exception each one working away on their laptops. These floors were largely devoted to the library’s open stacks, aisle after aisle of book shelves crammed full of books, journals, and monographs. I walked down the central aisle of each floor, glancing to my left and then to my right and I did not see a single individual browsing through these books.

I did see a few library personal returning books to the shelves. That was reassuring. And there were a small number of students reading at the largely empty tables on the perimeter of each floor, but not one by a pile of books that they had collected from the stacks or checked out from the library. So many books, so many unopened, untouched books, so few, if any, readers, year after year.

Books by Bike

Every time I return to Portland, Oregon, where I am now, I’m astonished at the number of bikers on the street. Portland is often referred to as the biking capital of this country, although I am sure there are other cities with numerous bikers on its roadways.

I’ve never understood how there could be so many bike riders here. For nine months of the year it often rains, with occasional periods of freezing cold, once in a while it snows, and during those nine months, clouds and dense fog frequently settle over the city. How can they do this day after day? What hearty souls they must be.

Meanwhile, city planners keep adding additional bike lanes to the dismay of automobile drivers. A two-lane avenue can quickly be reduced to one lane, plus a separate bike lane, leaving those in their cars stuck in long lines of traffic, while the bikers go speeding by.

The Times recently (10/10/14) reported yet another biking development in Portland. It is said to combine its bike-friendly (“if not bike-crazed”) tradition with its literary, environmental and liberal history. The development is known as Street Books, a service designed to deliver books to the countless homeless individuals who live throughout the city.

The number of homeless individuals that live in Portland also astonishes me. When it isn’t raining or cold, they sleep anywhere they can find a legal space. When it rains, they move under bridges, highways, or deep in building alcoves that protect them from the elements.

Street Books is a non-profit book bike-delivery service to “people living outside.” It was founded by Laura Moulton, an artist and adjunct professor of creative nonfiction. She started Street Books from Kickstarter backers and raised additional funds from various grants and foundations.

Together with three part time salaried employees, she travels around the city handing out books to homeless readers. One of the employees who pedals the bike around the city commented:

“Taking books to the streets sends the message that poor and marginalized people are no so different from the “us” that defines the educated literate mainstream of the city, whether in its hipster, computer geeks or bankers. It transcends the bookish culture of Portland, though I think it’s perfect for the bookish culture of Portland.”

That’s Portland at its best. I’ve lived here for over 47 years, ever since I came to teach at Reed College. I recall visiting Portland when I was a graduate student during a summer job with an advertising company. That was more than 50 years ago.

The city then was a far cry from what it is now—old and run-down, without city planning, an environmental movement or leaders like Tom McCall who was governor of the State from during the 60s and 70s and Neil Goldschmidt who really transformed the city when he was mayor in the late 80s to 1991.

I found Portland dismal, dreary, and disappointing during that initial visit and vowed to myself that I will never live there. And look what happened!

On the Ebola Virus

At the time of this writing, the Ebola patient in Dallas is “fighting for his life.” As of now he is the only victim of the disease in this country. More than 7,000 people in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, Senegal and Sierra Leone have contracted Ebola in this latest outbreak, the biggest on record. More than 3,000 victims have died.

The disease continues to be spreading. Meanwhile, medical aid centers from several countries are gradually being established in the hardest hit areas. While the conditions in which the virus is transmitted are well known, it remains uncertain how many more individuals will be infected.

I was reminded of a blog I wrote earlier this year about two films that deal with the spread and consequences of viruses. I am reposting it today.

Deadly Viruses
In 1918 a deadly influenza virus swept over the globe. It infected 500,000,000 people and was responsible for the death of an estimated 50 to 100 million –3 to 5 percent of the world’s population. It was no doubt one of the worst natural disasters in recorded history. From time to time a severe virus infects a significant number of people in this country and elsewhere, but not anywhere like the 1918 Flu Pandemic, as it has become known.

Just yesterday there was a report of the arrival in this country of a new virus that spreads from person to person and is often fatal. It is known as the MERS, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, that has so far infected three people in the US and many more in sixteen other countries. In Saudi Arabia alone, 157 have died from this virus. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports the virus is from the same family as the common cold and severe acute respiratory syndrome virus (SARS).

Early last month there was an outbreak of Ebola virus in Guinea. As of April 17th, over 200 cases had been reported, including 137 deaths. Liberia and Sierra Leone, both neighboring countries, have also reported Ebola cases. Research on its origin and treatment has just begun.

The outbreak of such a deadly disease is the subject of two films I saw recently—Contagion and Outbreak. Contagion deals with a killer virus that originated in Hong Kong, spread rapidly to Chicago and elsewhere in this country. A team of researchers was recruited from the World Health Organization, the CDC and a professor in San Francisco. People were advised to wash their hands, avoid shaking hands, be mindful when you open doors in public places, or pressing elevator buttons, etc. The toll the virus takes upon an infected body is horrible to behold.

Outbreak opens deep in an African rain forest where a monkey has infected a small village, killing everyone who lived there. Again a team of researchers descends upon the village in an effort to understand the source of the virus and contain it, insofar as possible. They are unsuccessful, as one of the disease carrying monkeys is imported to this country and escapes into a forested area close to a small town. Eventually most of residents who lived there are infected with the virus, whereupon the military is ordered to quarantine the town so that no one can leave.

Outbreak is the more significant of the two. It explores a complicated issue after the President, at the request of a sinister general in cahoots with a drug company, orders the military to bomb the town with a weapon that will destroy all its inhabitants. The issue that emerges from this order is the moral legitimacy of such an action, one that will kill a relatively small number of people to save millions of other individuals throughout the country.

In philosophy this is known as the trolley problem. In one variation of this hypothetical, you are standing by the side of a railway track as a train, whose brakes have failed, approaches. You note that 5 people are tied to the tracks that will be killed unless you pull the switch you are standing by, sending the train to a sidetrack. Then you observe one person is tied to the sidetrack where you could send the train.

What do you do? Do stand by helpless as the train kills five people or divert it so that it only kills one?

The answer to this question is by no means simple and has been the subject of considerable philosophical debate. It is also the question set before the commander of the plane about to be sent to kill all the inhabitants of the quarantined town. Meanwhile, you are aware that researchers are working feverishly to find a vaccine that will destroy the virus.

A Break

Marks in the Margin is taking an unexpected break for a while. Hope to be back soon.

God's Country

In 1979 Louis Malle, the much respected French film director, visited the town of Glencoe, Minnesota, population 5,000. I have no idea why that town. But while there he made a 90-minute documentary, God’s Country, of some of the residents who lived there. I was totally engrossed by each of the individuals he interviewed.

Glencoe is about 60 miles west of Minneapolis and is a farming community with a population that is mostly of German extraction. We meet seed farmers, dairy farmers, those who raise and bred cattle and pigs. There are 9 churches and most of the people are religious.

Malle spends a fair amount of time probing the individuals he depicts in the film—an elderly woman who tends a large garden, a free-spirited woman who works in the Social Security office, a policeman, residents of a nursing home and several farmers. He is amused by how much lawn mowing they do. (Soon the communities in drought-stricken California will be forbidden to have lawns.}

What struck me most about these people was how articulate they were, the intelligence and downright wisdom they display in responding to Malle’s questions. Several had not graduated from high school, none had attended college. And yet they conveyed the kind of intelligence you might find in any group of college graduates.

Yet, not everyone in Glencoe is so open-minded. No African Americans live there, and there appears to be a great deal of prejudice against them, as well as gays. One farmer makes it clear he resents Jews who, he claims, govern the market for his products. A bright young woman claims that Glencoe men “have never had a conversation with a woman.” I doubt Glencoe is unique in that respect.

Many of the younger people are moving elsewhere, giving up on a long family tradition of farming. They feel there is no longer any financial future is staying on the land. One seed grower reported he lost $100,000 the year before he was interviewed.

I imagine the people who live in Glencoe and the life they lead there are not a great deal different than anywhere, big city or small. People get by, they have successes and failures, some years are better than others, and everyone keeps dreaming.

Six years later, Malle returned to see if anything had changed. To some degree it had. Farm prices were down even further and the economy was struggling. The film concludes at the family dinner of a Glencoe lawyer, who says the country now has,

“an obsession with greed… it’s horrible but good people won’t take it much longer: They aren’t going to subscribe with this philosophy of greed.”

Sounds pretty contemporary, doesn’t it?

Hitler's Children

The documentary Hitler’s Children is not about the life and times of his offspring. In fact, it is presumed he never had any children. Rather, the film portrays a small group of descendants of some of the highest-ranking Nazi leaders.

All of them appeared to be grappling with considerable conflict. One did everything to avoid talking about it. Another broke down at Auschwitz. One traveled the country to speak about his experiences.

An Israeli filmmaker interviewed each of them about their life now and what it meant to be closely related to a high-ranking Nazi leader. All of them found it difficult to answer his questions, there were many long pauses, a few tears, confessions, denials.

Bettina Goering, the grandniece of Hermann Goering, left Germany, changed her name and lives in a house in the desert near Santa Fe, New Mexico. She wants nothing to do with her past.

Niklas Frank, the son of Hans Frank, Governor General of Nazi occupied Poland, travels throughout Germany delivering lectures, many to young students, denouncing his father and the Third Reich. His actions cost him many friendships, including members of his family who disbelieve Frank’s account of what he did in Nazi Germany.

Monika Goeth, daughter of Amon Goeth, commandant of the Nazi labor camp in Plaszow in Poland, spoke eloquently and with considerable emotion about her memories and the guilt she experiences to this day. She quite clearly displays her shame and distress about her heritage.

None of these individuals lives at peace. No doubt their grief and guilt comes and goes. But it is always there, impossible to ignore, a presence of times not so long ago.

Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century has been on the Times Hardcover Best Seller list for the past 20 weeks and is currently ranked #15. The book is a dense, lengthy treatise on the distribution of income and wealth in more than twenty countries. Piketty attempts to explain its underlying mechanisms and future dimensions. Who would have believed that a rigorous economic analysis like this would be so popular?

I also wonder how many purchasers actually read the entire book, 577 pages plus another 177 pages of detailed notes. But Piketty, who has become something of a rock star, does provide a cogent Introduction that pretty well outlines his major points. A summary follows:

Discussion about economic inequality has been largely based on prejudice, opinions and very little on facts or research. Piketty calls it a “dialogue of the deaf.” At the same time he acknowledges that even research is always provisional and tentative.

His goal is to provide comprehensive and historically accurate data on income, inheritance and taxes in every country where it is available. It is also supplemented by historical data from other investigators.

Piketty’s findings point to a sharp rise in overall income taken by the top ten percent of households after the decade following the Great Depression. During World War II until 2007, the income of the top 10% and within that group the top 0.1 stayed relatively constant and then rose sharply to its steadily increasing level.

In addition to income, he believes it is essential to assess the distribution of wealth. Wealth is determined by the amount of unexpended income and inheritance that accrues to individuals and families on a year-to-year basis. Piketty believes wealth contributes far more to rising inequality than most people had realized. His analysis of wealth may be the most original contribution of his work.

People with inherited wealth and surplus income are able to save a fair amount of capital each year. Piketty then suggests that, “When the rate of return on capital significantly exceeds the growth rate of the economy then it logically follows that inherited wealth grows faster than output and income.”

This is the condition in the developed world today and the reason the income levels of the top 10% and higher is rising so rapidly. In a sense we have become a “patrimonial society,” of the sort that existed in the mid-19th and early 20th centuries when inherited wealth and family dynasties played such a dominant role in the economy.

It also suggests that great wealth brings with it considerable political power that only reinforces the increasing concentration of wealth at the higher brackets. This is also a feature of current political reality that, in my view bodes ill for breaking the cycle of the rising political power of the rich and very rich.

Then there are the rest of us--the not-so-very-rich, the middle class and the poor, whose economic conditions have stagnated and continued to decline in recent years.

Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winning Economics professor at Princeton says Piketty “gives something we didn’t know we needed—a sweeping, elegant integration of growth theory…and the personal distribution of income and wealth.” He also confesses to a certain jealousy that he didn’t write the book that Piketty did.

I am left with the question when and how is economic inequality going to be reigned in and, thereby, making possible a more equitable distribution of the economic resources of this country. Piketty does suggest a worldwide wealth tax but implementing this idea is utterly fanciful in today’s political climate.

Piketty concludes on a modest tone: “Since history always invents its own pathways, the actual usefulness of these lessons from the past remains to be seen. I offer them to readers without presuming to know their full import.”

Labor Day Rerun: The Role of Place in Literature

In yesterday’s, Bookends (Sunday Times Book Review) Moshin Hamid and Thomas Mallon were asked to comment on the role of where you live in how and what they write.

Both agreed it has considerable influence. Hamid suspects Nadine Gordimer would never have written July’s People if she had not lived in South Africa. And Tolkien’s The Hobbit might have been quite different had he lived in Osaka instead of Oxfordshire.

Mallon says much the same things with two examples. “One wouldn’t take Booth Tarkington out of Indiana any more than one would remove Proust from Paris.” And then he isn’t entire sure. “And yet Joyce wrote the most local novel of all time, not in Dublin but in Trieste and Zurich and Paris.”

I imagine a little of local place and imagination is responsible for the work of most novelists. The issue interests me every time I move from one town to another, although I’ve not noticed any difference in what or how I write.

Currently I’m in Honolulu, where surfing and the military seem to dominate local life. Yet, I’ve not written about either. Then again, I’m not a novelist but I have written about the subject and copied what I said below.

In Florence I begin to wonder about the role of place in literature. So many writers have come to this city--Montaigne, Shelly, Byron, Elizabeth and Robert Browning, Henry James, George Eliot, Goethe, E. M. Forster, Aldous Huxley, D. H. Lawrence, and Dostoevsky.

Some settled here for long periods, others stayed for only a short time during their travels, and many have returned time and time again. More often than not they come to Italy and to this city in Tuscany to escape the cold, damp areas of the North and for some hoping that its sun and warmth will cure them of some ailment, primarily tuberculosis. However, once winter arrives in Tuscany they very quickly learn it can be as bitterly cold and damp here as it is in the North

How has living in Florence affected their writing? Would they have written differently had they remained in the city they left? If being here influences their work, does that depend on how long they stay?

Lawrence Durrell wrote, “What makes a “big book” is surely as much to do with their site as their characters and incidents." Eudora Welty agreed that, “fiction depends for its life on place. Location is the crossroads of circumstance, the proving ground of What happened? Who’s here? Who’s coming?”

We know that Florence has been the setting of the many of the writers who have come here. One need only think of Forster’s A Room With a View:

“It was pleasant to wake up in Florence, to open the eyes upon a bright bare room, with a floor of red tiles which look clean though they are not, with a painted ceiling…It was pleasant, too, to fling wide the windows, pinching the fingers in unfamiliar fastenings, to lean out into sunshine, with beautiful hills and trees and marble churches opposite, and close below, the Arno, gurgling against the embankment of the road.”

Yes, very pleasant!

But what we really want to know is whether or not being here shaped their style or turned them in a new direction or solved a writerly problem they were facing. In general, is being here a source of literary inspiration?

Albeit a single example, I think the clearest answer to this question is provided by Dostoevsky, who came to Florence for the second time in 1868, then to escape the “damp and cold of Milan, where he and his wife [Anna] had been living for two months.”

In her Reminiscences Anna records how thrilled Dostoevsky was to be in Florence and that he was working productively on The Idiot. Yet, it did not take him long to realize there is more to writing than being in this benign place. He soon began to miss his friends or any form of congenial company. Anna writes in Reminiscences:

We did not know a single soul in Florence with whom we could talk, argue, joke, exchange reactions. Around us all were strangers, and sometimes hostile ones; and this total isolation from people was sometimes difficult to bear.

And in a letter to his niece, Dostoevsky wrote: I cannot write here. For that I must be in Russia without fail, must see, hear and take a direct part in Russian life; where’s here I am losing even the possibility of writing, since I lack both the essential material, namely Russian reality…and the Russian people.

Then the summer arrived and he and Anna found it almost unbearable to deal with ever increasing heat of this city. Some people seem to thrive in hot weather. Apparently Dostoevsky was not one of them, for he found it almost impossible to write under such “hellish” conditions.

At other times he felt differently. When the sun shines, it is almost Paradise. Impossible to imagine anywhere more beautiful than this sky, this air, this light.

In A Literary Companion to Florence, a rich source of information for this post, Francis King claims that Dostoevsky not only completed The Idiot in Florence, “but also began the gestation of The Possessed and The Brothers Karamazov.”

Let us just say, then, that being here in this Tuscan town can offer some writers a comfortable place to work and sometimes give spark to their work. But that these sparks can occur just about anywhere, regardless of place and climate.

The life that Dostoyevsky led in Russia gave him a subject matter that ultimately led to his masterpieces. However, he did not have to be there to write them, at least, not all of the time. Eventually, he needed to return to the source of his tales. And while he did not write novels about the people or places he knew in Florence, he was able to write well while he was here, but only if it wasn’t too hot.

In answer to the general question about the role of place in literature, let us conclude that, as with all general literary questions, there are no general answers. Place has a role, but its role is highly variable and dependent on so many other factors that it is impossible to disentangle their effects from all the others that influence a writer.

Our Broken Constitution

Late last year Jeffrey Toobin wrote an important essay on what he calls “Our Broken Constitution” (New Yorker 12/9/13). Most everyone believes our government isn’t working now. Toobin asks is that the result of the Constitution? He reviews the history of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, the views of the founders, and some recent critiques of the Constitution

But nowhere does he propose a formal solution. He laments the difficulty of the amendment process and discusses some ideas about why we have such an obstructive Congress and a semi-paralytic Senate.

Anyone who reads the daily newspaper knows how dysfunctional Congress has become. We have read about it for years, a popular President from one party and a majority in Congress from the other party and so a Congress that does little else but argue and gets scarcely anything done, year after year.

We live in a time of rapid change that requires a more responsive legislature. The Constitution is clearly out of step with 21st Century. More recently Toobin continued this theme with a post about the unanimous Supreme Court ruling (the Noel Canning case) against the method by which President Obama made recess appointments.

The Constitution gives the President power to make such appointments because in the early days of the Republic travel was slow and the Congress was often in recess. That is clearly no longer necessary, yet the provision remains.

Perhaps part of the problem stems from the bicameral legislature mandated by the Constitution. This is unlike most countries in Western Europe that have a unicameral legislature, with a much greater turnover of members than we have in this country. This makes for a more responsive government, one that can adapt more quickly to change, and is less likely to get bogged down by an obstructive minority, especially one that is persistently so.

Would we have a more effective government with a unicameral legislature? We might at least avoid the inevitable conflict between a President of one party and a Congress from another. We would have a more experimental government, trying one approach and if it didn’t work, trying another.

I suppose we’ll never have an answer to this question. It is almost impossible to amend the Constitution. The country is too large and complicated now, the commitment to the Constitution is too firm, and the citizens of this country have little disposition to have a more experimental government.

Toobin concludes: The Noel Canning case is a reminder that nine Justices can agree on an interpretation of the Constitution that will, objectively, make the government function less well, less justly, and less democratically that it does now. This does little honor to the Constitution itself or the country that continues to venerate it.

We are supposed to have a government of laws, not men—a myth if there ever was one. Consider how current Constitutional law and the course of this country would be, if the Supreme Court in December of 2000 had decided not to end the recount of the Florida Presidential vote. It thereby handed presidential power to George W. Bush who became president with half- million fewer popular votes than Al Gore.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alioto would not be members of the Court today. As David Cole pointed out a recent issue of the New York Review of Books, affirmative action would be on firm constitutional grounds, the Second Amendment would not protect the right of private individuals to own guns, the rights of women to terminate a pregnancy would be protected and so too would regulations on corporate political campaign contributions.

Those are but a few of the differences that would exist today, if Al Gore had served as President. How dramatically different the recent history of this country would be if Roberts and Alioto had not been appointed to the Court.

Words and Actions

My drama, like everyone’s, goes on upstairs, in the head. And I don’t think you can write the drama of the mind. All you have are the things people do. It’s always about what they do. Zia Haider Rahman

The people I admire most are those who translate their beliefs into action. Knowing and thinking is not enough in my book, nor are the words I write. Yet I am as guilty as anyone in failing to meet this standard.

From my first encounter during the Free Speech Movement while I was a graduate student at Berkeley, to the years not long after when this country was at war in Viet Nam, my beliefs were not followed by deeds. Instead, I stood by to complete my dissertation and teach my classes, while all around me my friends, students, and colleagues were out on the streets protesting.

The life of the nameless narrator of Zia Haider Rahman’s recent novel, In the Light of What We Know, was not unlike mine. It’s true that I’ve lived as someone who stands aside, choices determined by the sweep of ease and opportunity—and the corollary of standing by is not participating.

So it was that I was deeply impressed with what I learned about a man by the name of Andy Bachman, who lived and worked in the affluent Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn. Andy Bachman was a much-loved Rabbi at a Reform Congregation that drew more than a thousand families, including some of the well-known writers who live in the area.

To everyone’s surprise, Rabbi Bachman recently resigned from his congregation and his other Jewish obligations. He said he wanted to help the poor, regardless of their religion.

“I think that I deliver really good and really inspiring sermons about social justice, but is that really enough. It’s crazy to thank that’s enough. In order to maintain my sense of integrity and to keep the flame burning strongly about my commitments, I knew it was time to step away.”

Insuring justice and acting to preserve it are long-standing Jewish traditions. Bachman no longer felt he really was doing that. And he didn’t feel leaving his congregation was abandoning Judaism. Rather he was simply going to express it in a different way.

Like Rabbi Bachman, Simone Weil is another individual who put their convictions into practice. Weil graduated from the prestigious Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, became a professor of philosophy and teacher at a number of schools throughout France. But that was not enough.

She worked as a laborer among the working class at factories in France. While there she conducted classes for the workers. She did the same with each of the farm families where she lived, harvesting the crops, milking the cows, cleaning up the barns etc.

She said, “From the moment that I act, I make myself exist….What I am is defined by what I can do."

Weil felt that hard labor is the truest road to knowledge, not the academic world in which she excelled. And so, like Andy Bachman, she “resigned” from her academic profession to devote her life to the plight of the working class. She believed it demanded the best efforts of each of us.

She also believed that physical work was important for an intellectual, “lest the mind become all too taken with itself, all too removed from the concrete realities of everyday life, the burdens that rest upon the overwhelming majority of the earth’s population.”

Both Andy Bachman and Simone Weil are among those individuals who serve as models of intelligent activism for me. It wasn’t sufficient for Weil to worry or feel compassion for the poor, nor was it enough for Andy Bachman to preach the importance of justice.

Rather what was required was acting in accordance with their convictions, even if it meant depriving themselves of ordinary satisfactions.

Henri Cole's Paris Diary

In the Summer Issue (#209) of the Paris Review, Henri Cole remarks that poetry is primarily “finding the right words and getting them in the right order.” Later when asked why he writes, he replied:

For the completely selfish pleasure of composition, which for me surpasses the trumped-up pleasures of eating, drinking, and sex. Since I do not write to teach anybody anything, it’s a completely selfish act, but it gives me a sense of equilibrium and a reason for existence. Nothing gives me as much pleasure, when I’m doing it well, as writing.

I have had the same experience, as I write almost entirely for myself, viewing it as an exercise to put my thoughts to words as clearly as I can. If I didn’t write, those thoughts would never be put to the test, to see if they had any merit. Writing clarifies. Writing corrects.

Writing also takes me away from myself. This happens when I have something to say. I write and the time flashes by. Sometimes I look at the clock and cannot believe what time it is. When this happens writing becomes a kind of mindlessness.

But I have also come to recognize that in part, I write to converse, to make contact with someone, even though the person isn’t present or offers a reply.

Henri Cole is a prize-winning poet. While I’ve not read many of his poems I have come to know him through the poetic-like prose-picture essays he has been writing on the New Yorker’s web site. The most recent installment of his Paris Diary, “Street of the Iron Po(e)t” describes the early arrival of Spring in Paris.

A mild winter has prompted the vegetation in Paris to wake up early. Since February, plum, cherry, and almond trees have been blossoming in France, and the buds on the hazelnut trees are releasing grains of pollen into the wind. Has grim winter really ended?






It is followed by an extensive photo-essay on bees, their arrival, the role of each bee in the hive, and reference to the poetry of bees.

Here in France, bees, symbolizing immortality, were once an emblem of the sovereigns. Napoleon Bonaparte wore them embroidered into his regal garments and they ornamented many of his possessions. Surely the idea of a kingdom originates in nature with the bees. Perhaps the kingdom of poetry is not so different from that of a bee hive.

**Note: The latest chapter in Cole's Paris Diary can be found here.