I’ve said that books are friends that move with you and I’ve got a few that have done that for years. From high school to college, to the Air Force, then marriage and apartment to house, about 100 stories have followed me around the country in boxes and trunks. My husband swears they’ll get packed into my coffin. That’s fine with me. I can spend an eternity with M*A*S*H. Okay, for anyone whose read this far, if you know the TV series M*A*S*H but not the book, withhold your judgment. Same deal if you know the movie but never picked up Richard Hooker’s novel. If you haven’t read the book, you don’t know M*A*S*H and you can’t really appreciate how the story morphed from one incarnation to the next. I know all three and they are different. I loved the series, I never miss a chance to re-watch the movie but the book….the first time I read it, I nearly ruptured myself laughing. The time is spring of 1976 and I’ve just undergone an unexpected appendectomy. My best friend had left me some post-op paperbacks to while away the recovery time with (those were the days when people recovered in…
There’s something wonderful about discovering a new book. It makes you feel like you have this great, golden, wonderful secret and you want to run up hill and down dale spilling the news. At least it’s that way for me. Nellie Forbush can sing all she wants about her wonderful guy but I need to start a parade: I’ve found a wonderful book. If you have children, go get this one because you’ll want it. If you don’t have children, get it anyway and rent some kids to read it to because this book (besides being wonderful, scary, hilarious and thrilling) begs to be read out loud. Seriously. This is a fabulous read-aloud book. Ready? The Book is A Tale Dark and Grimm by Adam Gidwitz and yes, it’s a salute to the Brothers Grimm. As the narrator points out, fairytales these days have no resemblance to their dark and lovely ancestors once published by the Brothers Grimm. Somebody else retold the story (and changed a few things) then someone else repeated the procedure, ad nauseum, ad infinitum until Disney got ahold of it and really turned the tale into literary pablum. A shot of boredom, straight to the solar…
Both psychiatry and religion care about the human spirit. I know they have seemed like enemies at times and I doubt if the extremists in either practice trust the other but trust has never been high on any extremist’s list, so that’s not a fair comparison. No, at their best, I believe both practices have overlapping interests but by tradition, they’ve rarely worked together. In The Road Less Traveled, Dr. Scott Peck associated the spiritual growth demanded by faith with growing emotional maturity but these were positive associations. To me, his more exciting, revolutionary work was chronicled in People of the Lie: The Hope For Healing Human Evil. In this book Dr. Peck suggested that evil could be cataloged and classified like any emotional illness and, more importantly, it could be treated. Dr. Peck defined evil as when a person uses his or her political power to let some one else suffer, rather than face their own personal shortcomings. The classic example is when one person lets another take the blame for his or her misbehavior. Now, under that definition, everyone has committed an evil act at some point in their lives but committing an evil act doesn’t make a…
I saw Fannie Flagg when I was young. Not as young as my husband, (who remembers her stint as the local weather girl) but in the early 1970’s, when Nixon was still president, my family got to see her on stage in a road-company performance of “Mame” with Bea Arthur supporting her as Vera Charles. It was a night of transcendent joy. Mame is a terrific show and Fannie took over the lead as if it had been written for her, my father forgot he hated all musicals and at the end of the performance the company got the longest storm of applause I’ve ever heard. Seriously, we beat blisters onto our palms that night clapping for that flame-haired woman who insisted life was a banquet and most poor suckers were starving themselves to death. That night, I decided no actress could inhabit Mame’s character well without understanding and supporting this philosophy. Ms. Flagg’s The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion has me thinking I underestimated her years ago. Fannie Flagg understands Everyone and Everything. She certainly understands Sookie Poole, the central character and perpetual mother-of-the-bride in AGFSLR. Sookie’s a member of the sandwich generation, still trying to fill the needs …
I am not a Narnia nerd. When my sister and I were young and used to arguing about everything we would debate the literary merits of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantasy novels. It was a war of worlds and words, the Chronicles of Narnia v. The Lord of The Rings. (The things sisters argue about!) Without angering the full and affectionate hearts of Mr. Lewis’s supporters (including my sister) , my estimation is unchanged: with its created languages, and mythology, LOTR is a broader, more-original creation than the Narnia series. That being said, I am a fan of the work of C. S. Lewis and my favorite is The Screwtape Letters. Screwtape, if you haven’t heard of him, is a demon and mid-level administrator in Hell who writes to his nephew, Wormwood, a newly-minted, entry-level fiend, about the true tie that binds: their work on Satan’s behalf. It seems Wormwood has been assigned to guide some human to despair and a rejection of faith and the rookie needs help from Uncle Screwtape. Screwtape’s advice is sort of a theology in reverse because the guidance is to keep Wormwood’s “patient” from redeeming grace. Screwtape suggests that direct…