Selma (Movie Review by Bob Racine)

                                 2 hrs & 8 min, color, 2014

It has been a half century this year since the events so boldly depicted in “Selma” occurred, the march from Selma, Alabama to the courthouse in the state capitol of Montgomery (in 1965) in which hundreds participated and which broke open the case for voting rights for racial minorities in this country.  It was the catalyst for legislation inaugurated a few weeks later by President Lyndon Johnson known as the Voting Rights Act.  But I am trying to think ahead about how the movie might be regarded after another fifty years when most of us have passed on.  For those who pull it off the shelf then and watch it – our children and children’s children – I wonder how it will settle upon their minds and hearts.  Will the Selma events be given a Centennial as stirring as the half century observance has been, or will the ardor have cooled with the passage of time?

I would not call it an intense fear that I am undergoing around this question; call it more a qualm.  The remnants of the Jim Crow doctrine, at least implicitly, have not been completely stamped out in our nation, as certain happenings in the news have recently made evident.  So many who have taken to the streets of late in a mode of violence and destruction have created, unintentionally perhaps, a bitter and maybe lingering taste in the mouth of lawmakers and rank and file citizens over the prospect of overt protest, even the non-violent variety, which Martin Luther King exercised in his conduct of that landmark march.  There were peaceful protesters at work in Baltimore this past month while rioting was taking place, but from where I sit it appears that their work was upstaged by those who hollered and threw stones and broke glass.     

It was not only brave of Director Ava DuVernay to include the harshest moments in the story but it was fitting.  The days before the final march on the capitol occurred under the watchful eye and the protection of the U.S. Government were those of tremendous fear and tension and anxiety and pain.  Those brave souls were gambling with their lives, a few of which were eventually required.  They were walking into a toxic nest of hate and militarized enforcement of a brutal law – a law of not only segregation but of humiliation and systematic dehumanization by the state and local authorities – authorities authorized to crush a peaceful rebellion at any cost and with extreme impunity. 

Inevitably the nightstick played a major part in the oppression.  I was braced for what I had heard on screen before and knew was coming – the cracking of skulls, the skulls of unarmed men and women who meant no harm.  I looked up Nightstick on-line and learned that it had its origin somewhere around the midpoint of the 19^th century.  It has been called by various names – a cosh, billy stick, billy club, truncheon, cudgel, even baton (apparently before that term was humanized by its use as the scepter carried by drum majors and majorettes in marching bands).  They are made of either plastic, rubber or (the imaginably worst of all) hard wood, or a combination of two or more of these.  You can order one on-line, and they come in various styles and at varied prices, but each and every entry I scanned referred to it as an implement used by police.  Give me teargas before having to go up against one of those diabolical rods.  Yes, “Selma” is a commemorative motion picture but one in which we are not spared the grim details.  It is bound to be an emotional experience for anyone who sees it.  The only film I have seen that would top it for being more disturbing and gut grabbing is “12 Years a Slave”, reviewed by me on this blog a year ago. 

Naturally it is upsetting for those of us who believe in equality of the races and champion those who fight for its recognition on the front lines of social justice.  It is upsetting for all of us who consider those brave marchers to be spiritual kin and forebears.  Even those who have mixed feelings about King’s methods and the choices he made in tight spots cannot help but be disturbed by the raw brutality that was practiced against his followers.  The line that divides decency from indecency was crossed, maliciously, and that should be enough to capture the sympathy of all decent folk.  But the film should also be disturbing and unsettling for even the most flagrant racists, though for the opposite reasons.  There is something in the racist mentality that recoils violently against being outwitted by any crusader for rights they would like to see denied.  Watching one of their hated enemies triumph should be enough to boil their blood.  And blood did boil on the day of the first attempt at a march.

But violent moments are not the only ones in “Selma” that disturb and penetrate.  Early in the footage we walk with a real life black woman named Annie Cooper, played with restrained dignity by Oprah Winfrey, as she proceeds by herself into the Montgomery courthouse and submits her application for voter registration.  She is not accosted physically but is emotionally browbeaten by the clerk, who asks her ridiculous questions that he would never think to ask a white person, ones she of course cannot answer, her lack of information serving as his excuse to deny her application, and he takes obvious delight in humiliating her.  It is a quiet encounter, but it seethes with high minded bigotry and malice. 

There is a moment in the Selma jail cell between King (David Oyelowo), Ralph Abernathy (Colman Domingo) and others of his compatriots, after Sheriff Jim Clark arrests them, that is almost creepy.  The cell is so dark that it takes the cinematographer’s finesse for us to see any of their faces, even in profile.  They speak in the lowest of tones, contemplating their fate, knowing that the cell is bugged.  King is worried; someone in that darknes responds by reminding him that the prize they seek requires commitment to building a path, “rock by rock.”  That would surely be a difficult idea for anyone to grasp and hold onto, while a prisoner deprived of all mobility. 

An even more sobering conversation takes place quietly and privately between King and his wife Coretta (Carmen Ejogo), wherein she opens up her bag of worries.  She is supportive of his cause, but she trembles at the “cloud of death” hanging over them “like a thick fog.”  (Of course in hindsight we know just how close death really was; that fear was justified beyond all imagining.)  J. Edgar Hoover (Dylan Baker), convinced that King is “a moral degenerate” who must be destroyed, makes a significant contribution to the couple’s torment with his anonymous threatening phone calls.

Coretta confesses her own insecurity, which assaults her much more when she is alone, when he is out of town.  With superbly controlled energy the actress gives life to this woman not heard from all that much in public, and Director DuVernay and Screenplay Writer Paul Webb give her adequate time and space to do so.  I do hope we will be seeing more of Ejogo in future productions.  She has a lot of presence.  

As some “in the know” have pointed out in the past months since the film’s release, especially Andrew Young, who was witness to the interchanges between Lyndon Johnson and King, there is one small but regrettable misrepresentation that mars the film a bit.  Tom Wilkinson does a first rate job of embodying the President, but he is forced by the script to make the man more defensive, reticent and slow to action than the record will bear out.  I agree that Johnson’s career was horribly besmirched by his choice to start the Vietnam War, but let us give him credit where credit is due.  As a Southern politician he paid a big political price for his brave stance on Voter Rights and racial equality. 

The film opens when King goes to Sweden to receive the Nobel Peace Prize followed by a brief glimpse of the scene at the Alabama church in which four innocent little black girls died when a bomb was detonated on a Sunday morning two years before the Selma incidents.  These two brief happenings serve as a fitting foreword to the drama on the road that follows.  It is not long before King sheds the ascot he was compelled to wear for that foreign occasion and gets back into the trenches. 

David Oyelowo gives a shrewd and sensitive portrayal of the man.  He has a grasp upon the way King spoke, something of his verbal cadence and slow deliberate style, even when making an impassioned speech.  Yet he does this without being self-consciously imitative of the man.  My understanding is that he was not allowed access to exact copies of King’s actual words.  But he did not need them.  

And finally comes the march that really made the difference, participated in not just by local individuals but of teeming hundreds from across the country who answered King’s appeal for participation.  A day of transforming history!  It is a potent reminder that strength in numbers is not just a quaint trivial saying but a working truth.  Watching those droves of peaceful advocates pouring onto that highway, of one mind in pursuit of one clear purpose, is a movie moment of rare exaltation of spirit.  The filming of it, under the archway of the real Edmund Pettus Bridge and on to the capitol itself could not have been done with more technical competence and mixed with more fitting music on the soundtrack.  It is a splendid intertwining of dramatization and old black and white footage from the actual march in ’65.  The rhythm and the verve are wonderfully displayed.  The whole sequence feels like the bursting of anointing and healing oil onto our heads.  If future generations are not moved by viewing the picture, it surely will not be the fault of its makers.  Bless you all for making it come to past.    

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com.  To learn about me consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.

An Ocean Memory (Poetry by Bob Racine)

Ancient she roars

mutable mother colossus of islands

and coral reefs and prodigious continents.

Ancient she moans

somewhere off beneath the moon.

And all we hear by night is her

fitfulness on the shore,

outside our window. 

    

Never resting as we do, she awaits our

promenade at dawn,

feisty with her salt in our faces.

It was not always so.

Once we were young and

the roar was all we heard. 

In her breakers we scoured off our fears,

her crescendos no match for our yelp

of savage infancy. 

                  

We encamped for her power, a roll with

the waves of her delirium.

                  

She played havoc with our wits and senses,

her finger of foam roistering about our feet,

the blast of her breath upon our

sweating limbs,

a plunge into the stark naked terror

of our imaginations. 

Under her spell we gaped at the sun and the clouds,

took our feeble measure of the stars

that sprawled over her at night

like icons of a heaven too far from our reach,

and dared to ask whereof we came to be and

why our dreams always begin and end

on some far flung shore of the mind.

  

Only in her presence

did we dare think of immortality.

Now, she pounds with a distant drumbeat. 

At her chaos we now blink, though stirred

even yet, day and night,

by her passive resistance

to eternal sleep.

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com.  To learn about me consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.

The Rigorous but Healing Habit of Forgiveness (Essay by Bob Racine)

All six of my grandchildren are doing well.  They are all healthy, clean cut, intelligent, fun-loving kids, and talented to boot.  My son and my daughter have done a marvelous job of parenting, setting boundaries but not so stringently that self-discovery is hampered.  (I find myself sometimes wondering what I ever did to deserve them.)  The oldest is 15, the youngest 8.  My prayers for and concerning them are of course ones of thanksgiving, but those prayers are also mindful of whatever future crises they will face.  Right now they are all thriving and blossoming.  But I know that pain will eventually enter those lives in some form, and I also know a truth that at this moment they do not have the maturity to grasp – that that pain will be essential to their learning. 

The pain of which I speak hopefully will not be that of an unseasonable or premature malady of body.  I rather have in mind the pain that others will inflict, the pain that cuts to the heart.  My prayer is that they will be as ready for it as anyone can be, though this kind of wounding is not always one that you have the chance to prepare for.  It can be unforeseen.   In response to my review of “The Imitation Game,” someone made this observation: “The movie does such a good job of reminding us that we are all wounded, even a genius like Alan Turning. We need only scratch the surface of almost anyone to find life scars just beneath the surface.”  Someday my beloved grandchildren will wear scars, either visible or invisible, after being the recipient of cruelty or betrayal or dishonesty or just blatant unkindness, delivered by person or persons at this point unknown.  I trust that they will be armed for the encounter, but even the most armored soldier in battle is subject to the likelihood of wounding, and wounds stick around.  They may scab over, but they stick around!  As one of the long time walking wounded I know this all too well.

All this I have said is by way of introduction to the forever crucial subject of forgiveness.  

A lady who is a member of my church once suffered the loss of a teen child, not by disease or accident, but by the hand of a murderer.  A daughter she loved dearly was killed, wantonly and treacherously, by someone before whom the daughter was vulnerable, defenseless.  It happened about forty years ago, and more than once over those many years she has shared her continuing grief and depicted in words the continuing struggle she has had with forgiving the assailant.  Her faith demands forgiveness of her; she knows all too well how personally self-destructive it is to harbor hate and to nurse the compulsion to strike back, for vindication and retribution.  So every morning upon awaking she bows in prayer and meditation seeking another day’s grace and help in forgiving the killer she hardly knew.  She takes some satisfaction from knowing that the guy was caught, convicted and imprisoned for life.  But how do you live with a pain like that, knowing that it will always be inside of you?  What does forgiveness even mean in a situation like that?   

One does not once and for all forgive a person or persons.  This grieving mother knows that it has to be forever renewed, if not publicly then inside the mind and heart.  On October 2, 2006, a local milk delivery man in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania walked into the West Nickel Mines Amish School, a one room schoolhouse, chased out all the adults and all the boys in the room, tied up the ten girls who remained and shot every one of them before taking his own life.  Five of the girls died, the others survived after extensive hospital care.  Within a matter of hours the incident was known across the country and the world, and a most remarkable thing happened:  the entire Amish community went on record as jointly forgiving the killer and coming to the aid and comfort of the milkman’s family.  All non-Amish peoples were astounded at this group decision and outpouring of humble forbearance.  (A one-character play pertaining to this tragic event entitled “The Amish Project” is now making the rounds, recently staged here in Columbia.) 

But despite this public ritual chorus of compassion and dispensation, we can only begin to imagine what the private struggle must have been, especially for the parents and family members of the slain girls and the girls who somehow survived, now nine years older, who lost their innocence much too early.   Each individual in that community had to confront the happening on her/his own.  Inner feelings accruing from the traumatic event must continue to demand considerable soul searching and much daily renewal of the forgiving spirit, not unlike what the woman in our church says she must put herself through each morning in prayer.  Yes, there was a group consent publicly announced, but the inner turmoil cannot be estimated by anyone outside that Amish village settlement.

The forgiveness we must practice can be likened to medicine taken to stave off the ravages of old wounds.  The scar cannot be erased, only controlled, regulated.  That medicine, if its prescription is suitable to the symptoms, has to be taken for the rest of one’s life.  I am sure we have all heard of foolish people who when they have not for some time suffered from the aches and pains assume that the medication has done its job, no longer needed on a continuing basis, and stop taking it, or start fooling around with the dosage, only to find out in short order that they were exceedingly mistaken, when a new onset of the symptoms occurs.  They forget that the prolonged absence of symptoms was due to the medication.  

Can we actually compare forgiveness to a pain medication?  If the wound is deep enough, most certainly yes! 

Leaving the subject of personal injury and healing for a moment, I would like to say a few words about the forgiveness of people we have never personally confronted.  How does a member of one race or the citizens of one country or the devotees of one religion forgive the atrocities committed against it by another race or country or cult of piety?  

One great testament to the power of intercultural and interfaith and interracial healing that grew out of the events of 9/11 is a confederation of women who call themselves the Daughters of Abraham.  It began in Boston that same tragic year of 2001, when a group of them met for worship and the cultivation of understanding between Judaic, Muslim and Christian beliefs and traditions.  The movement caught on and has spread until at present a total of about 25 Daughters of Abraham groups are active throughout the U.S. and Canada.  It actually got underway as a book club bringing the participants together to share and compare writings by authors from each of these traditions, one from each of the three on a monthly basis.  There are national guidelines for the conducting of these studies.  A Christian woman friend of mine who belongs to one of the cells reports that she has found a caring heart and mind inside all three of these faiths, expressed in a shared concern and love for the poor and the marginalized everywhere.   It is my hope and that of others I know that this dialogue will catch on at every level of our pluralistic society and that men of each tradition as well will eventually embrace the notion and practice.  We cannot have too much of this kind of thing in a world where people are murdered for their beliefs and practices, where barriers are erected that are lethal and dehumanizing.    

All the way through World War II, during which I progressed from the age of 8 to the age of 12, I was drenched in propaganda about the enemy.  Caricatures of “the Japs” and the Germans were displayed everywhere – in movies, on posters and on radio (no TV in those days).  I was brainwashed into the corporate hate, even though I never suffered any personal loss or trauma at the hands of those nations.  In England of course it was a different story.  Unlike the inhabitants of the British Isles, I never had bombs dropped on my city or countryside.  No member of my family was ever killed in combat or interred, tortured or executed.  And yet I felt injured, in soul and spirit, as I learned of so many who had and saw newsreels about the devastation overseas.  It took me some years to come around to seeing the Japanese people as human beings, as vulnerable to sorrow and loss as myself.  I learned to distinguish the rank and file of Japanese citizens from the politico-military regime under which they had been subjugated and by which they were brainwashed. 

Perhaps my grandchildren’s scars will come chiefly from that kind of internalizing of an international crisis, if not from personal injuries.  The world they will have to enter, the one we will be leaving them, I fear will test their metal and their character unlike anything those of my generation have known.  To be sure they will have more than a passing chance to learn what forgiveness is and how it must be trusted to heal. 

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com.  To learn about me consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.

Being Mortal by Atul Gawande & Still Foolin' 'Em' by Billy Crystal (Book Reviews by Bob Racine)

The two literary gems I am about to plug, both recent publications, explore the subject of mortality, but in a vastly different vocabulary – one in the very learned but warm and ingratiating language of a healer, the other in the light satirical banter and reflection of a comic master. 

Gawande, an accomplished, experienced surgeon, sets a terrific example for health practitioners the world over.  He is self-effacing and honest about the medical profession’s failures at the task of preparing terminal patients for their ultimate departure from the flesh.  It is a fact we have all heard underscored many times among the most educated of modern minds.  But it is so rewarding to me as a lay person to have a member of the profession itself fully own this failing and devote a sizeable book to examining the whys and wherefores of it and, more importantly, pointing the way toward a more sensitive and humane approach to preparation for aging and death. 

He admits that his medical school training did not prepare him to deal with it.  “The way we saw it, and the way our professors saw it, the purpose of medical schooling was to teach how to save lives, not how to tend to their demise.”  The most startling assertion in the entire book on the part of a fellow surgeon, one the author highlights, is the admission that in his way of thinking “death is the enemy,” and all the doctor does must be devoted to defeating it.  If in doubt about the advisability of a certain regimen of treatment for someone struggling to stay alive, ignore the doubts and go with it, even if it results in adding to the needless suffering of the body and soul in travail and robs the patient of dignity and relative peace.        

Nursing homes come in for a huge drubbing.  He recounts the history, and it is not pleasant reading to hear how the aged and infirm in former days were treated.  In 1912 an Illinois state official described a home for the aged he had examined, called back then a poorhouse, as “unfit to decently house animals.”  One went to such a place to die, not to live.  If there is a topical sentence in the book, it is this, in his chapter on Dependence:  “How did we wind up in a world where the very choices for the very old seem to be either going down with the volcano or yielding all control of our lives?” 

Perhaps I knew, but had forgotten, that the concept of assisted living is quite a recent invention, even though I have worked closely with two of them in Columbia leading drama clubs.  They are devoted to the creation of a living and active environment for people who are on the downgrade but have a long way down to go.  All that is possible is done to preserve their sense of autonomy.  These places do work, even though, as Gawande points out, the concept has been exploited and corrupted a bit in some areas of the country.

    

Gawande does not deal in generalities or paint in broad strokes.  He gives a lot of detail, citing the progressions of many individual patients with which he has been involved.  He opens up his files and his memory to take us down numerous paths trod by terminally ill individuals and the part that he and other physicians played in leading them through possible treatments.  And he is always putting things in what I call a humanistic context, perhaps even a spiritual one.  He frequently backs away from minute recounting and inspection to remind us of what life’s essentials are, not just for survival but for joy and contentment.  This man is an observer of the human heart and a reader of people, though he confesses that that could not always have been said about him.  He was a slow learner.

There are essentially two kinds of doctors who serve the elderly, according to the book.  There are those it calls the Informational type.  The medic gives the patient all the facts and details about their condition and plans treatment for them based solely upon that doctor’s professional opinion.  This is what you must do or else!  If you choose not to, let it be on your head (my words, not those of the author).  There it is, take it or leave it, no room for discussion, though presented in very courteous terms usually, not a bossy one. 

But Gawande tells of how he came to adopt what he calls the Inspirational approach.  It begins by asking the patient what his or her goals are.  He gets them talking about themselves and what they value most for what life they have left.  From there on the discussion works its way into examining options and chosen priorities and “matching treatments to them.”  The patient has the sense of planning with the doctor, and Gawande admits that it is a challenge, much harder than the direct, aggressive approach practiced by the Informational physician.   He tells us that a worldwide revolution in the treatment of the mortally ill is going on, though we are yet in transition.  So much more educating and training will be required to establish what he calls “a new norm.” 

At times it felt, as I read, as if I was reading a novel or at least a series of short stories.  The detail is so sharp and well honed that it seems very close to fiction.  There are many characters to whom we as readers are introduced, of varying ages and varying degrees of helplessness and infirmity.  When I was finished, it felt as though I had actually lived through many of those crises and struggles with them on a first name basis.  Nothing is abbreviated, there is no sketchiness whatsoever.  At moments it was saddening, at other moments heartening, at still other moments a gripping narrative of push and pull, of individual human destinies being shaped and completed.  He even includes his own father in the accounting.  It is a brilliant balance between the sharing of intricate data and the portraying of human drama, informative and deeply touching.  I get the feeling that I have read one of the most important books that I ever have or ever will read.  I cannot recommend it too highly, all of us being, whatever our age or in whatever state of health, among the mortal.

The publisher of “Being Mortal,” copyrighted 2014, is Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, New York

When I read autobiographies, I approach them with a certain caution.  Most I have read tell stories out of school that I never really wanted to hear, even if they did go on to share the details of vital interest that I was seeking and expecting.  A kind of confessional one moment, an awkward attempt at self-justification the next!  But all caution was swept out the window, when I was no more than a few paragraphs into Billy Crystal’s “Still Foolin’ ’Em.”  It is his sixty-fifth birthday and he begins as I would expect him to open a gag presentation on stage. 

“I looked in the [bathroom] mirror. . .My scream brought Janice, my wife of forty-two years, running in.  I kept yelling, ‘Holy S---!  What the f--- happened to me?’  Somehow, overnight it seemed, I had turned from a hip, cool baby boomer into a Diane Arbus photograph.  I looked at Janice for an encouraging word, for a hug, for an ‘It’s okay, Billy, you look great.  It’s an old mirror.’  All she did was glance down at my robe, which had opened up, and ask: ‘When did your pubic hair turn gray?’ ” At once I was, so to speak, in the floor laughing to beat the band. That is how he launches this wacky ship, and he is forthwith off and running and making us run with him without ever getting winded. 

Yes, he covers the many highlights of his career and how he came to be one of the most sought after comedians this nation of ours has ever known.  But woven all through those highlights are his many reflections on the aging process.  Of course, as you can probably tell from this opening of the book, he is not averse to putting us on, but who cares.  He exudes a quality of loving embrace that gets extended to a host of individuals he has worked with and associated with, and when I say a host, I mean a super abundance, an armada; this guy has made more friends than most of us have ever had the opportunity even to meet, with heads of state, fellow show people and sports celebrities into the bargain.  They swarm through his life, coming from every direction. 

Consider some of his chapter titles.  “I Worry.”  He comes forth with a long  list of worries, mostly having to do with his alleged inability to sleep.  “I don’t worry about dying in my sleep, because I never sleep.  When the angel of death comes to my bedside and puts his hand out for me, I’m going to look him right in the eye and say, ‘Get the f--- out of here.’  Then Janice will tell him, ‘Don’t listen to Billy – he’s overtired and a bit cranky.’ ”   Unless you are especially prudish, you will roar when you read through his chapter on “Sex.”  And in “Count to Ten” he shares his mind on how religion comes to bear upon life beyond 65: “People say it is a given that. . .you turn to religion.  Personally, the aging friends I know turn to the Holy Trinity: Advil, bourbon, and Prosac.”  (He earlier in the book takes on the subject of his Bar Mitzvah and even satirizes that.  But do not misinterpret him, being Jewish gives him a pride that is pleasantly disguised beneath many of his asides about it.)  He has a very short chapter called “Take Care of Your Teeth,” in which he remonstrates about going to have his teeth cleaned after turning 65 as a birthday celebration and being passed among no less than six dental specialists and bemoaning the fact that so many people have been in his mouth. 

He has one entitled “Conservative,” which is misleading.  In it he talks about his gripes, and some of them are quite serious and point-well-taken, but he gets through hardly a one without making us at least snicker.  He has an ironic twist on the most common of them that any of us might share.  One I especially found delightful was about being patted down at the airport.  Once at LAX a woman screener who recognized him said, “Billy, you are the best.  I love you.  Can I see your picture ID.”  And that is just the start of what goes on for a full page and a half.  Outrageously funny!

Billy seems to have no hesitation or embarrassment about being human in every sense of the term.  Eroticism seeps through much of his writing, whatever the subject matter at hand.  In his chapter “Kiss Me Twice” he confesses to having had a blazing affair with Sophia Loren.  “It started when I was 13” and lasted for many years.  One super moment for him is when on a certain public occasion he finally gets to meet this Italian woman who has fueled his fantasies as a kid.  

I feel compelled to quote a passage from his chapter “Grandpa.” 

It blesses me no end, an aging man talking.  “There are more and more people telling me I’m not as important as I once was.  The inevitable becomes clearer every day.  Sometimes, like a sudden rainstorm, I get that scared, sad feeling that time is getting shorter. . .I can’t stop conjuring the saddest images my mind can muster, and I’m lost – and then I hear the footsteps running toward me and I hear the giggles, and they yell ‘Grandpa!’ and suddenly they’re in my arms and I squeeze them and hold on to them for dear life. . .I am important [after all]; I am their star; I am their grandpa.” 

His last two chapters – “Can’t Take It With You” and “Buying the Plot” are luminous in their detail about late life choices and plans for dying and settling accounts with the present world.  They are, to use the much heard lingo of the theater, worth the price of admission, and many times more.  No Shakespearian sonnet could be more inspired and profound than what he shares about the place of his family (including the wife) in his thinking and late life living; he walks us right into his heart of hearts.  But all he so quirkily says is overlaid with a quietly joyful embracing of the process.  He shares in great detail his experience of losing loved ones – fellow performers, celebrities, and members of his own extended family. 

This is one comedian who exudes no contempt for the human race.  He speaks to us like a brother who shares all our dilemmas.  He does not spin any fantastic webs or tell any tall tales.  He faces into one hard knuckle issue after another and deals out salvos.  But he does it all with a gusto and a lust for living that is infectious.  Anyone above 50 should give reading it high priority.

“Still Foolin’ ’Em,” copyrighted 2013, is also published by Henry Holt and Co., New York

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com.  To learn about me consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.