Unbroken a Must for Holiday Gift List

As we put Thanksgiving in our rear view mirror and look to the holiday season ahead, a good book can be the perfect companion, especially one that reminds you that there are true heroes out there – and that the human spirit can prevail against the most dire circumstances.

Author Laura Hillenbrand, whose underdog thoroughbred tale Seabiscuit flew off of bookshelves and up to the big screen, has delivered again. With a crisp command of her narrative, an appropriate sense of awe, and a refreshing lack of nostalgia, she brings us Unbroken.

If you loved HBO’s epic miniseries  Band of Brothers (and who didn’t?), this is a must read.

Unbroken: A WWII Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption tells the story of Olympic sprinter turned B-24 bombardier gunner, Louie Zamperini. “Zamp,” the once-upon-a-time trouble making rascal from Torrance, California, who found his legs on the track, setting record after record en route to the 1936 Olympics in Germany, is one of those larger than life characters who transcends  his own accomplishments and becomes the stuff of legend.

HIs story is equal parts inspiration, fascination, and heartbreak city. His story is nothing short of miraculous.

A warning, however. The brutality that the American POWs were subjected to at the hands of their Japanese captors during WWII will not only turn your stomach, but might make you angry. Wisely, Hillenbrand sprinkles in the occasional moral equivalency anecdote, such as a Frederick Douglas’ childhood recollection of a maternally nurturing slave owner who turned “demon” at the urging of her cold-hearted husband.

But make no mistake, largely due to the Japanese military and societal code regarding surrender as the ultimate dishonor (resulting in this stunning statistic: for every U.S. soldier killed during WWII, four were taken prisoner VS. for every 120 Japanese soldiers killed, one was captured), the punishment doled out in Japanese POW camps makes water-boarding look like a game of 20 questions.

So there is your warning.

To go in to too much detail regarding the circumstances of the novel would be to shortchange your page turning experience. But consider this thoughtful passage:

“Louie found that the raft offered an unlikely intellectual refuge. He had never recognized how noisy the civilized world was. Here, drifting in almost total silence, with no scents other than the singed odor of the raft, no flavors on his tongue, nothing moving but the slow procession of shark fins, every vista empty save water and sky, his time unvaried and unbroken, his mind was freed of an encumbrance that civilization had imposed on it. In his head, he could roam anywhere, and he found that his mind was quick and clear, his imagination unfettered and supple. He could stay with a thought for hours, turning it about.”

Laura Hillenbrand is one helluva storyteller.

*TWO other worthwhile reads pertaining to U.S. fighting men in the South Pacific:  ”The Great Raid on Cabanatuan” by William B. Breuer and “Ghost Soldiers: The Forgotten Epic Story of WWII’s Most Dramatic Mission” by Hampton Sides;  both source material for the excellent John Dahl film, The Great Raid (2005).

Much to Learn from Lithgow’s An Actor’s Education

After yet another disappointing realization that a bookstore I had frequented over the years had suddenly evaporated, I broke down and purchased the Kindle. Gotta say….I love it.

My first download purchase was based entirely on instinct.

After clicking on the Kindle Store link and perusing the various lists, categories, and genres available, one title jumped out at me.

I first saw John Lithgow in 1982 on the big screen in The World According to Garp (see my Five Films that Shaped Me to gather significance). He played ‘Roberta Muldoon,’ the transsexual ex-football player in the film adaptation of John Irving’s novel. He was one of the many unforgettable components from that influential film.

Lithgow, now 66, released his autobiography earlier this year and it is a must read for actors trying to make sense of their career choice. It is aptly titled An Actor’s Education.

Actors listen up! There is much to learn from those who have not only come before, but who have done the work.

John Lithgow was born into a life of the theatre. His father, Arthur Lithgow, was a Shakespearean scholar who launched and marshaled festivals across the country, usually at the whim of University hirings and budget allowances. It was a nomadic career that moved his wife and four children frequently, instilling in young John his first actor’s persona: the new kid on the block.

An Actor’s Eduction is all about the lessons Lithgow learned throughout his childhood, his stunted adolescence, and finally his arrival into adulthood. Lessons that he could readily identify and apply to his burgeoning passion for the stage.

The personal anecdotes of how roles came his way and the wide variety of productions and mentors he experienced are solid gold for actors, young and old, to digest.

As the cliché goes, John Lithgow is an actor’s actor. His candid analysis of how certain choices made brought on unexpected treasures is illuminating. But as he learned, through a blessed career that brought him not only artistic bliss but financial wealth, as well as marital failure brought on by one too many actor-actress romances, “acting is pretty great – but it isn’t everything.”

“I’ve had parallel careers in the theatre and in the movies,” says the actor. “What I offer to movie-makers is that I can put a tremendous amount of theatrical background and technical equipment at their disposal. I can make believable the over-the-top characters.”

It is abundantly clear that Lithgow’s dedication (and passion!) for his stage work, not only made him the actor he became, but gave him the richest experiences and relationships of his artistic life.

It is a book full of surprises. Lithgow, a Harvard grad who once dreamt of becoming a world-class painter but eventually put down the brush to dive full-time into his acting, is also a very good writer and storyteller.

Ultimately, however, An Actor’s Eduction is Lithgow’s tribute to his father. So this is not merely a good read for actors, but for anyone grappling with the advancing age of their parents or their own mortality.

The coda alone is enough to bring a tear to your eye, but do yourself an enormous favor and take the whole cover-to-cover journey with the two-time Oscar nominated, Tony Award winning John Lithgow. Not only educational, but motivational and even inspirational. And we all need that. Right?

Steve Martin the Author? He’s no Jerk

When I was young, oh so many years ago, comedy albums were pretty happening. Bill Cosby was known for his. Richard Pryor and George Carlin had hits. Big hits. But the one that got worn out on our family room phonograph (a device that played record albums, also known as LPs, or “Long-playing”) was Steve Martin’s A Wild and Crazy Guy, which won the comedian a Grammy in 1979 for Best Comedy Album. An album that featured the silly hit single, “King Tut.”

Steve Martin entertained America on several levels. A modern-day renaissance man of sorts. He sang with his banjo (eventually winning him another Grammy), he juggled (“cat juggling” a personal favorite of my brother’s and mine), he worked a bit of magic, and of course, cracked jokes. Very funny stuff. Not too blue. But wild and crazy for sure.

Because this is my first stab at book commentary, a few words about my reading habits. Relatively speaking, I’m a slow reader. Slow in that I like to sit with a book for a while, weeks for sure, possibly even a month or two. Especially if it is a book I am really enjoying. Sure, occasionally I’ll get caught up in a page turner and rifle through it (Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin comes to mind), but usually the fear of finishing a good novel hangs over me at a certain page point; because, while I will most certainly watch a film I admire several times, I have never read a novel a second time. My wife can. She claims to have read The Lord of the Rings four times. Ok. Not me. The surprise element of turning each page, anxious to learn how the story unfolds is unique to the novel – and once the experience has blossomed, I have found it anti-climactic to attempt a re-read.

I am also not sold on Kindle yet. My books become companions. Especially a good, solid, well-bound first edition hardcover. Carrying the book around town, on business trips and vacations, knowing it’s sitting bedside when I awaken, lounging poolside with it on a sunny day, even dropping it in to the jacuzzi – all good in my world.

My father reviewed books for the Minneapolis Star & Tribune years ago and is still an avid reader. Much more so than I. He has great taste in fiction in particular, so I look no further than his counsel when I’m ready to pick up a new companion. On his last visit to La La Land I asked him if he’d read anything good. Imagine my surprise when he enthusiastically recommended a new novel titled An Object Of Beauty by Steve Martin. Yes, that Steve Martin. The guy with the bunny ears.

I saw the film adaptation of Martin’s first novella, Shopgirl (2005), so I was aware that he was now writing fiction as well as stage plays and screenplays. Shopgirl’s not a bad film, but not all that memorable either.

My father was right – as usual. An Object Of Beauty is a good read, very engaging and light on its feet.

Told in the first person by a young art reviewer (easy to insert Martin’s persona here), An Object Of Beauty follows the career rise of ’Lacey Yeager,’ an ambitious young art enthusiast who selfishly uses her considerable feminine sexuality, charm, and smarts to navigate her way through the Manhattan art world.

‘Lacey’ flirts and flaunts, breaks hearts and brokers deals, all amidst a changing art landscape that suddenly embraces Pop art (Andy Warhol leading the charge) and celebrates the new, forcing art snobs to not only put aside their infatuations with the masters (Picasso, Renoir, etc), but redefine their definitions and understanding of what makes great art.

Martin never condescends here. It is clear that he is not only a big time art lover and collector himself, but that he is also knowledgeable and insightful in terms of what drives and shapes the global art market. Is it merely subjective, great art? Or is great art undebatable?

‘Patrice Claire,’ the Euro millionaire art collector who falls head over heels for our heroine, lays it out like this to ‘Lacey:’ “You want to know how I think art should be taught to children? Take them to a museum and say ’This is art, and you can’t do it.’”

It’s a funny read, as you can imagine any book written by Steve Martin would be. But it also dabbles in romance (albeit only somewhat successfully):

“‘Drinks afterwards’ made me think that Tanya was putting her toe in the water with me, and it turned out she was. She was Lacey’s opposite. She didn’t leap in ablaze. She was a tortoise to Lacey’s hare, perhaps not as effective, but her goals were less grand than Lacey’s, and a modest presence can eventually catch the eye in a powerful way.”

Martin’s strength, however, is the seamless way he relentlessly informs the reader about the subtleties of art appreciation and the market value attached. Because he knows the art world so well, he has enough credibility to poke fun at it:

“‘In dialogue’ was a new phrase that art writers could no longer live without. It meant that hanging two works next to or opposite each other produced a third thing, a dialogue, and that we were now all the better for it.” And then “It also hilariously implied that when the room was empty of viewers, the two works were still chatting.”

He is also bold enough to let the all too real life 9-11 catastrophe crash into the narrative.

I have lamented the transformation of Steve Martin, now 65, over the past decade. Gone is the goofball actor who cut loose with reckless abandon in films like The Jerk (1979), Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982), The Man With Two Brains (1983), All of Me (1984), and The Three Amigos (1986). With Parenthood (1989), L.A. Story (1991), and The Spanish Prisoner (1997), he took on a more polished persona. Now, it seems, his work on screen bares no resemblance to anything remotely wild or crazy.

But I never would have guessed that Steve Martin the author would capture my imagination as much as was the case with An Object Of Beauty. A good read for sure.