Sarajevo

Pretty Birds, by Scott Simon, is a troubling, fascinating chronicle of the effects of modern warfare. The city of Sarajevo is under siege during the war in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, its citizens held captive by the firepower of nationalists seeking to create an racially monolithic Greater Serbia. The novel centers around a teenaged girl, Irena, who becomes a sniper as part of the efforts of Sarajevans, many of them secular Muslims, to fight back.
You may know Scott Simon as the anchor for National Public Radio's Weekend Edition Saturday. He was a war correspondent for NPR during the war in Yugoslavia, and he's said in interviews that much of the novel is based on his first-hand observations. He talked about the novel, his first, with Terry Gross on the radio program Fresh Air. Listen to the interview here.
On my friend Kristin's recommendation, I then read a memoir called War Cake by Linda Flynn Beekman, who lives in the Tampa area. She subtitled the book, "A Witness in the Siege of Sarajevo," and it's a first-person account of her travels back and forth during the war. Beekman would bring small amounts of medicine and supplies to the people, with the additional goal of serving as a witness for peace. Many of the details in "Pretty Birds" and "War Cake" are identical, such as the people going to the old beer factory for water because its sits over natural springs, or the tunnel dug over the course of months as a secret way for people to leave the city.
One of the many things that fascinates me about these books is that both Beekman and Simon say they were generally pacifists, but changed their minds once they were on the ground.
Beekman writes:

I came to Sarajevo believing I am a pacifist, but now I join Sarajevans in hoping for NATO air strikes. I believe NATO has the capability to bomb the tanks and weapons on the mountains surrounding Sarajevo without killing anyone if they give the aggressor ample time to leave before the attack. Civilians in Sarajevo are hostages in their own homes. The attackers have cut the electricity, water, and food supply, and bombard residents daily with mortars and sniper fire. They deliberately shoot children. Sarajevans deserve to be helped or at least allowed to defend themselves. The one time in my life I am in favor of U.S. intervention, it does not come.

Both books also show the everyday effects that warfare has on a modern city. It's impossible not to think that this is close to what a war in the United States might look like. Not that I think a war on U.S. soil is likely. But given the way warfare seems to be such a lingering blight on all humanity, it also seems foolish to think it could never happen here. These books made me queasily consider what that might be like. And that made me think a little more deeply about my opinions on U.S. foreign policy.

Newspapers report on The End of the World

Those fine folks at McSweeney's have imagined "Anecdotal Leads For News Stories Reporting The End of the World."
Sample:

Mo Bushnell was not happy.
Not happy at all.
With a wheezing gust from his 84-year-old lungs, the opinionated former Ashtabula steelworker had managed to blow out all the candles on his large chocolate layer cake. But it was abundantly clear that Bushnell's birthday wish would not be coming true.
Not this year.
Not ever.

Read 'em all here.

Unhappy Families

One of my favorite opening lines for a novel is: "Happy families are all alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." That's from Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.
I'm in the midst of two novels about unhappy families. The first is "The Winter of Our Discontent" by John Steinbeck, the other is "Out" by Natsuo Kirino.
"Winter" is about a man of reduced circumstances whose wife and children don't think he makes enough money. He's about to do something desperate to try and make more money, I suspect. In "Out," a woman kills her husband for spending their life savings on prostitutes and gambling; her factory co-workers help her cover up the crime.
PS I'm visiting dear mama and her Internet connection is slooooooow, hence no groovy links on this post.

Half-Blood Prince Review (no major spoilers)

I bought "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" on Friday night/Saturday morning at midnight at a book release party hosted by Inkwood Books. I finished it about 9 p.m. Saturday night. National Public Radio has an amusing report on people who read the book over the weekend. It begins, "If it is possible to 'chug' a novel, then that is exactly what countless Harry Potter fans were doing over the weekend." (Listen to it here.) What an apt analogy!
On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate it about an 8. It has a compelling storyline, with a good deal about the origins of uber-bad-guy Lord Voldemort. There's much teen romance among Harry's cohort, and a lot of that bit is quite funny. But I'm not particularly objective about Harry Potter, because I'm so very fond of the characters.
There is one notable, disturbing, saddening death at the very end, and thematically it felt quite similar to the notable death in the previous book, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix." I keep wondering why J.K. Rowling kills off her best characters. I don't see why these characters have to die. In literature, we expect characters' deaths to serve a narrative purpose, and I don't really see what that is in these cases, except to show that Lord Voldemort is evil, evil, evil and wants to kill all the good guys. But we knew that already.
Of course, a narrative purpose could be revealed in Book 7, and I think it likely will be. But that's about two years from now! Meanwhile, I feel pretty darn depressed. Rest in peace, oh notable character from Harry Potter, whose name I will not reveal here!
A lot of the Harry Potter fan web sites essentially shut down on Saturday to allow the web masters and the fans time to read the book. Some of those fan sites are already back online, and the commentary and theories are fascinating. My favorite, Mugglenet.com, comes back online on Monday. This is one of the best parts about Harry Potter, that there's an online community willing to discuss the book ad infinitum.
One thing I know for sure ... When the next and final installment of Harry Potter comes out in a few years, I'm going to buy it at midnight, and then I'm going to stay up all night and read it in one sitting. I won't bother going to bed!
UPDATE: Several groups of fans got to interview J.K. Rowling over the weekend, and those interviews are starting to hit the web this week. She pretty much directly addresses my complaint about character deaths:

Sorley Richardson for Publishing News - Why did you have to kill Sirius when it was the best thing that happened to Harry for years?
JK Rowling: We are back to me being a murderer, aren't we? People have asked me this a lot. I have been repeatedly told Sirius was my favourite character, why did he have to die? You can imagine how bad that makes me feel and in fact after I killed Sirius I went on the Internet and somehow stumbled across a fansite devoted entirely to Sirius and I killed him in the last 48 hours, so that wasn't good.
I think you will realise why he had to go in terms of plot when you read the seventh book. It wasn't arbitrary although part of the answer is the one I have given before. It is more satisfying I think for the reader if the hero has to go on alone and to give him too much support makes his job too easy, sorry.

Read the whole interview here.

Truman Capote, writer, artist

The New York Times has an insightful take on Truman Capote and his impact on journalism and writing. (Read the article here.) These sentences from David Carr's article really capture the heart of Capote's appeal:

Most anyone who types today owes something to Capote. A novelist who developed a passing interest in real events, he transformed the hackwork of journalism into something far more literary and substantial.
"There was no one ever in American life who was remotely like Truman Capote," said Mr. (Norman) Mailer, who once suggested that Capote was the best sentence writer alive. "Small wonder, then, if people are still fascinated by him."

The article is inspired by two new movies on Capote's life, one based on the biography Capote, by Gerald Clarke; the other based on an oral history of Capote's life by George Plimpton called Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career. I've read both books, and they're excellent. The Clarke book is a thick, comprehensive yet readable biography that will likely be the definitive work on Capote's life for years to come. The Plimpton book, on the other hand, is a breezy but fascinating compendium of first-hand anecdotes told in observers' own words. Pick your pleasure.
When I was younger, I thought Truman Capote was just the coolest ... a great writer, a party boy, a gay nonconformist. Basically, what a cosmopolitan literary type should be. Now that I'm older, I see a lot of sadness in his life, most especially in all the potential that was lost after he wrote "In Cold Blood." The book ended up eating away at him, maybe even destroying him -- the biographies agree that he never seemed to recover from writing it. His decline into drugs and alcohol is usually tacked on to biographical writing about him almost as a footnote. But I think it was much more significant than that. It was the result of the abyss he had to confront when writing "In Cold Blood." He was trying to medicate himself into feeling good again, but it didn't work. It killed him.
The book had a tremendous impact on other people as well. The Lawrence (Kan.) Journal-World published a superb special section to mark the book's 40th anniversary (read it here). It mostly looks at the impact the book had on the people of Kansas, but it also has an interesting piece on Harper Lee's role in the book. Yes, Harper Lee of "To Kill a Mockingbird." She was a childhood friend of Truman's, and she went with him to Kansas and helped him research it.
You can read an excerpt from "In Cold Blood" via Amazon here.

Harry Potter

The countdown to Harry Potter, Part 6, is in its final stretch. "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" goes on sale a week from tonight. Yes!
I adore these books for several reasons. First, J.K. Rowling is a gifted writer. Her plots are full of twists, her characters are true-to-life, her humor is warm yet sophisticated. Second, the topic of magic holds enduring interest. I think most people believe that forces beyond our physical senses are at work in the world, whether we call it God, love, imagination, or creativity. Magic is a fanciful explanation for those things that are beyond empirical explanation. Third, the books deal with some of the weightiest, most universal topics: loyalty, sacrifice, integrity. Most importantly, they grapple with death. As the series has progressed, we readers have learned that the evil wizard Voldemort's motivation is his quest for immortality. "There is nothing worse than death!" Voldemort declares as he fights with Harry's mentor Dumbledore at the end of Book 5 ("Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix"). Here is Dumbledore's response.

"You are quite wrong," said Dumbledore, still closing in upon Voldemort and speaking as lightly as though they were discussing the matter over drinks. ... "Indeed, your failure to understand there are things much worse than death has always been your greatest weakness ... ."

Children's literature often deals with these primeval issues better than adult literature, because it's not embarrassed to address them directly, again and again.
Finally, Harry Potter has an extensive and active online fan base that writes endlessly about the series and what it means. My favorite site it MuggleNet. (Muggle is the name for a non-magical person), particularly the brilliant editorials that fans write explaining the books. My favorite recent editorial is about the role of death in the books. Read it here.
Here are a few of my own predictions for the series:
I think Harry or Dumbledore will inevitably die before the end of the series. Dumbledore's death would fall into the Obi Wan Kenobe archetype of the loyal teacher who sacrifices himself, thereby passing on the mantle of wisdom to his student. Harry's death would fit into the Christ archetype, the innocent who gives his life for the greater good. There's a great deal of Christian symbolism in the Harry Potter books, because the books draw on a lot of European folklore and symbolism. (But I don't think the Harry Potter books are a Christian allegory in the way that C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia are.) If Dumbledore dies, it will be in Book 6; if Harry dies, it will be in Book 7.
My sister and I have read all the Harry Potter books and discussed them together. One of my earliest childhood memories is my sister saying, "Let's play 'WITCHES!'" We'd then make frightening concoctions that included my dad's discarded aftershave, flower petals and food coloring. Yikes!
One final addendum ... McSweeney's has published a note about what we can all learn about the book based on the previously released cover art work. Read it here. Sample insight:

Given his prominent placement on the cover, it is unlikely that the first line of the book will be "Harry was surprised and saddened by Dumbledore's sudden death, and he vowed to never think of the old wizard again."

You can see the cover art work here.

Fava Beans

It's fava bean season, and I've made them twice in the past two weeks, inspired after reading an article by the incomparable Amanda Hesser in the "The New York Times Magazine" food section. (Read it here while you can; it may eventually retreat to the paid archives.)
I became a major fan of hers after reading Cooking for Mr. Latte: A Food Lover's Courtship, with Recipes. Ms. Hesser is now editing the magazine's food page, and it's one of my favorite Sunday reads. Most newspapers publish their food sections on Wednesdays, which, I must admit, is very practical -- it gives you time to plan meals for the weekend. But most of my free time is on the weekends, and I like to read food writing then.
Now if you are of a certain pop cultural bent, you thought of a something immediately when you read the words "fava beans." You were thinking, "A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti. FFFfffftt!" That would be from the movie version of Silence of the Lambs. But if you have read the excellent novel by Thomas Harris, you know the original line is, "I ate his liver with some fava beans and a big Amarone." I didn't drink Chianti or Amarone with my fava beans, but the spouse and I got quite a kick out of saying the movie line three or four times while I prepped the beans.
***SPOILER ALERT*** Plot points to be revealed about "The Silence of the Lambs" and its sequel "Hannibal"!
I really love the novel "The Silence of the Lambs," and I read it regularly from time to time. It's a well-constructed thriller, much like "Presumed Innocent." (See my previous post on re-reading books here.) The sequel, "Hannibal," on the other hand, makes me laugh. At the conclusion of "Hannibal," the serial killer psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter gets together romantically with young FBI agent Clarice Starling. It's hard to explain just how improbable and inappropriate this plot development is. I've been trying to think of a literary equivalent ... It's as if Holden Caulfield decided to go back to Pencey Prep and really apply himself. Or if Atticus Finch decided he'd be better off focusing his law practice on personal injury cases ... It just undermines the character of the characters.
I will stipulate that reasonable people can disagree. There's an interesting, raging debate on the book on Amazon.com, in the personal reviews section. You can find that section here. Make sure you scroll down to get to some of the negative and mixed reviews.