A photograph is an image held in the trance of time. Waiting for that image to thaw, to come alive, is like sitting in that room with you, waiting for you to emerge from your trance, waiting for you to move, to talk: it's like I've called around at your place, like I'm there with you.
Bud? Bud?...I'll do the talking for both of us if that's the way you want it. Maybe I'll learn something from watching you listen. Maybe I'll learn how to reconcile all the pain of your life with the bouncing optimism of the music, of the songs....
_____________________________
But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz is one of those book that is so gorgeously written that I want to highlight passage after passage so I can go back and savor it by reading every one of them aloud. Or, better yet, I could skip the highlighting entirely, start on page one, and read the book aloud straight through. I'm also tempted to forgo writing about this book in favor of simply quoting long paragraphs and letting you come to your own conclusions that way.
I like listening to jazz. I listen to it quite often on the radio, but own maybe four CDs, so I am by no means an afficiando. I never really intended to read a book about jazz until I ran across a reverent description of But Beautiful in Michael Ruhlman's book about chefs, The Soul of a Chef. A reference to a book about jazz in a book about chefs...hum.
I was not prepared for the incredible experience of reading this book. Geoff Dyer, who clearly is a jazz afficiando, is someone who passionately loves jazz and the muscians who have developed it throughout its short history. Based on biographical information about nine of the early jazz greats, but informed most heavily by studying photographs of these men, Dyer writes semi-fictional vignettes for each of them, "[n]ot as they were, but as they appear to me...."
These vignettes are beautifully written. They not only give readers a glimpse into what the men's lives might have been like, but they also subtly educate us about the music itself and the contributions each of these extraordinary, but sometimes forgotten, musicians brought to jazz. It's difficult to explain what kind of book this is. It's not biography, history, critique, or fiction...it's like Geoff Dyer mashed up an amalgamation of all of these genres and ended up with a prose poem. A prose poem that reads like jazz.
My only disappointment with this book is that it does not offer what it can't provide: a soundtrack and a photo album containing all of the photographs Dyer gazed at while writing this book.
___________________________
It's late, Bud, the music has come to an end, the candles have drunk themselves to nothing. It'll be light soon....
Bud? Have you even heard what I'm saying? Was any of it like that, was any of it the way I imagined it? Maybe it's all wrong but I tried. I wanted to hear your story, Bud, not tell it--failing that I wanted to tell it as you'd have wanted it told. I didn't have much to go on. I've seen people who played with you, people who played with people you played with. I even met someone who was in Harlem when five thousand people lined the streets for your funeral. Apart from that it was just the records and photos: they're all that's left now.
And this, Bud. And now this.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Monday, January 25, 2010
In Honor of Banned Books Week: Sherman Alexie
From the TFB archives, a re-post of a January 25, 2010, review of Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which has been banned or removed from schools around the United States. It's a hard-hitting book, as Alexie's books always are, but it has warmth, humor, and honesty. It is another novel that is listed as Young Adult, but it's a wonderful read, no matter what your age.
****
In a discussion of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian with friends recently, the question came up about whether this young adult novel by Sherman Alexie is a true story or a novel with autobiographical elements. After all, the title says it's "Absolutely True," but in small letters above Alexie's name on the cover it says "A Novel."
The book is the story of 14-year-old Arnold Spirit, a Spokane Indian living on the rez, who realizes that the only way he is going to survive is to leave the reservation. All around him are family and friends who have known nothing but poverty, violence, addiction, and hopelessness, and he does not want to fall victim to this unending cycle. So, with the encouragement of a jaded teacher looking for redemption and the support of his loving, but flawed, family. Arnold transfers from the reservation school to an all-white high school twenty-two miles away. As far as his tribe--and his best friend--is concerned, Arnold has become a white-loving traitor to his people.
At the white school, Arnold regarded as foreigner at best, Indian at worst, and no one is about to make his life easy for him. So, Arnold is caught between two worlds where no one--least of all himself--can understand him. Is he a member of his tribe? Is he a white-lover who will eventually turn his back on where he came from? As Arnold struggles with these questions, he must also deal with multiple tragedies that beset his family, grinding poverty, and ostracism from the one Indian friend who had always defended him.
This novel takes on many serious issues, such as alcoholism and racism, with the blunt, in-your-face-honesty that Sherman Alexie is notorious for, but the book is also permeated with Alexie's trademark sense of humor. Here is a pair of exchanges between Arnold and his two friends about Arnold's crush on a white girl. The first is between Arnold and his Indian ex-best friend via e-mail:
Even though I didn't think I'd ever hear back, I wanted to know what to do with my feelings, so I walked over to the computer lab and e-mailed Rowdy....
"Hey, Rowdy," I wrote. "I'm in love with a white girl. What should I do?"
A few minutes later, Rowdy wrote back.
"Hey, Asshole," Rowdy wrote back. "I'm sick of Indian guys who treat white women like bowling trophies. Get a life."
Arnold asks his white friend, Gordy the Intellectual:
"I'm an Indian boy," I said. "How can I get a white girl to love me?"
A few days later, he gave me a brief report.
"Hey, Arnold," he said. "I looked up 'in love with a white girl' on Google and found an article about that white girl named Cynthia who disappeared in Mexico last summer. You remember how her face was all over the papers and everybody said it was such a sad thing?
...."Well, this article said that over two hundred Mexican girls have disappeared in the last three years in that same part of the country. And nobody says much about that. And that's racist. The guy who wrote the article says people care more about beautiful white girls than they do about everybody else...."
"So, what does that mean?" I asked.
"I think it means that you're just a racist asshole like anybody else."
Wow....In his own way, Gordy the bookworm was just as tough as Rowdy.
That is Alexie's writing at its best, hard-hitting and tough with a sense of humor. It uncomfortably pricks at your conscience while making you laugh at the same time. Here is a conversation that is so true to the adolescent boy reality; it's loose and funny and simple, but belies an issue that is incredibly complicated.
Another element of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian that shows how naturally Alexie falls in with his intended young adult audience is the artwork in the book. Drawn by artist Ellen Forney, Arnold's cartoons and drawings permeate the book. Arnold makes sense of his world through pictures, and the illustrations offer readers another level on which to understand him. It is interesting to see how the artistry moves from comic images to sketches more grounded in a "realistic" view of the world. When Arnold is struggling for understanding, his art is more cartoonish, more comic. When he reaches a deeper understanding, his artwork moves from caricature to realism. The artwork in the books adds a wonderful dimension to an already well-told story.
It's a well-told story, but is it true? In fact, most of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is true. Alexie ressurected the novel from a long manuscript of a memoir he had written about his family but had never published. Arnold's experiences of leaving the rez, transferring to the all-white school, being ostracized, losing family members tragically...they are all the real life experiences of the young Sherman Alexie. When asked in an interview why he didn't just write a memoir instead of making it a novel, Alexie said, "...partly I made it a novel simply because--this is weird to say--nobody would actually believe it as a memoir."
He's probably right.
****
In a discussion of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian with friends recently, the question came up about whether this young adult novel by Sherman Alexie is a true story or a novel with autobiographical elements. After all, the title says it's "Absolutely True," but in small letters above Alexie's name on the cover it says "A Novel."
The book is the story of 14-year-old Arnold Spirit, a Spokane Indian living on the rez, who realizes that the only way he is going to survive is to leave the reservation. All around him are family and friends who have known nothing but poverty, violence, addiction, and hopelessness, and he does not want to fall victim to this unending cycle. So, with the encouragement of a jaded teacher looking for redemption and the support of his loving, but flawed, family. Arnold transfers from the reservation school to an all-white high school twenty-two miles away. As far as his tribe--and his best friend--is concerned, Arnold has become a white-loving traitor to his people.
At the white school, Arnold regarded as foreigner at best, Indian at worst, and no one is about to make his life easy for him. So, Arnold is caught between two worlds where no one--least of all himself--can understand him. Is he a member of his tribe? Is he a white-lover who will eventually turn his back on where he came from? As Arnold struggles with these questions, he must also deal with multiple tragedies that beset his family, grinding poverty, and ostracism from the one Indian friend who had always defended him.
This novel takes on many serious issues, such as alcoholism and racism, with the blunt, in-your-face-honesty that Sherman Alexie is notorious for, but the book is also permeated with Alexie's trademark sense of humor. Here is a pair of exchanges between Arnold and his two friends about Arnold's crush on a white girl. The first is between Arnold and his Indian ex-best friend via e-mail:
Even though I didn't think I'd ever hear back, I wanted to know what to do with my feelings, so I walked over to the computer lab and e-mailed Rowdy....
"Hey, Rowdy," I wrote. "I'm in love with a white girl. What should I do?"
A few minutes later, Rowdy wrote back.
"Hey, Asshole," Rowdy wrote back. "I'm sick of Indian guys who treat white women like bowling trophies. Get a life."
Arnold asks his white friend, Gordy the Intellectual:
"I'm an Indian boy," I said. "How can I get a white girl to love me?"
A few days later, he gave me a brief report.
"Hey, Arnold," he said. "I looked up 'in love with a white girl' on Google and found an article about that white girl named Cynthia who disappeared in Mexico last summer. You remember how her face was all over the papers and everybody said it was such a sad thing?
...."Well, this article said that over two hundred Mexican girls have disappeared in the last three years in that same part of the country. And nobody says much about that. And that's racist. The guy who wrote the article says people care more about beautiful white girls than they do about everybody else...."
"So, what does that mean?" I asked.
"I think it means that you're just a racist asshole like anybody else."
Wow....In his own way, Gordy the bookworm was just as tough as Rowdy.
That is Alexie's writing at its best, hard-hitting and tough with a sense of humor. It uncomfortably pricks at your conscience while making you laugh at the same time. Here is a conversation that is so true to the adolescent boy reality; it's loose and funny and simple, but belies an issue that is incredibly complicated.
Another element of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian that shows how naturally Alexie falls in with his intended young adult audience is the artwork in the book. Drawn by artist Ellen Forney, Arnold's cartoons and drawings permeate the book. Arnold makes sense of his world through pictures, and the illustrations offer readers another level on which to understand him. It is interesting to see how the artistry moves from comic images to sketches more grounded in a "realistic" view of the world. When Arnold is struggling for understanding, his art is more cartoonish, more comic. When he reaches a deeper understanding, his artwork moves from caricature to realism. The artwork in the books adds a wonderful dimension to an already well-told story.
It's a well-told story, but is it true? In fact, most of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is true. Alexie ressurected the novel from a long manuscript of a memoir he had written about his family but had never published. Arnold's experiences of leaving the rez, transferring to the all-white school, being ostracized, losing family members tragically...they are all the real life experiences of the young Sherman Alexie. When asked in an interview why he didn't just write a memoir instead of making it a novel, Alexie said, "...partly I made it a novel simply because--this is weird to say--nobody would actually believe it as a memoir."
He's probably right.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Experiment with Facebook
As an experiment, I've created a Facebook page for Too Fond of Books. You'll see a Facebook button on the blog, right under the archives, if you're interested in checking out the presently bare bones TFB Facebook page.
Since over the last two or so months there have been some time delays between posts, it occurred to me that having a Facebook option would allow me to keep posting about books even when I'm between reviews. It will also provide a forum for posts about other subjects related to books and literature that go beyond straight-off reviews.
We'll see what happens!
Since over the last two or so months there have been some time delays between posts, it occurred to me that having a Facebook option would allow me to keep posting about books even when I'm between reviews. It will also provide a forum for posts about other subjects related to books and literature that go beyond straight-off reviews.
We'll see what happens!
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Catching Up: Benioff & Lahiri
If it's been a while since I've read a book, then it's difficult to do a quality review of it. With that in mind, I'm going to do very condensed reviews of two books in this post. The first, The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, I read last summer and just never got around to writing about even though the book has been on my "Upcoming Posts" list for months. The second, City of Thieves by David Benioff, I read before the holidays--which seems like a long time ago already.
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
This novel is the story of the Gogol Ganguli, the son of Indian immigrants, and how he came to be named Gogol, after the famed Russian writer Nikolai Gogol. It is also a story of the complications of family, of identity, and of the blending of cultures. Maybe a better phrase would be the attempted blending of cultures because Gogol's life is complicated by several aspects of culture: his parents' struggle to maintain their Indian heritage in their new country; Gogol's and his sister's challenge to be both American and Indian; and the natural and inevitable "coming of age" need for Gogol to figure out who he is as an individual.
All of these threads of the Ganguli's story are beautifully woven together by Lahiri, whose writing is lyrical while at the same time being straightforward. She is a writer who fully understands and empathizes with her characters' struggles and weaknesses. Gogol is in so many ways a typical teenager rebelling against the strictures of his upbringing by well meaning but, he thinks, clueless parents. This novel, however, is anything but typical in how it delivers its message that family is messy, complex, and oftentimes frustrating, but almost always grounded in deep and abiding love.
A beautifully written and absorbing novel.
City of Thieves by David Benioff
This novel could probably be considered historical fiction, if we were concerned about genres, but Benioff tells such a suspenseful adventures story in City of Thieves that it's easy to forget it offers a condensed history lesson in an often forgotten tragedy of World War II--one large and tragic story among so many others of that war.
City of Thieves is set during one week of the siege of Leningrad by the Nazis, a siege that lasted for a year and a half. The novel is not particularly long, but in telling the story of how two unlikely friends meet and set out to fulfill a death-defying mission during this one week, Benioff offers readers an absorbing and often disturbing look at the horrific toll this siege took on the people of Leningrad.
Lev, the son of a "disappeared" Jewish poet and Kolya, a young soldier accused of desertion from the Red Army, meet in a prison cell. They have little doubt that they will be executed the following morning for their minor wartime transgressions. To their surprise, they are given an option that may save their lives. If they can procure twelve fresh eggs--in this city of desperate, starving people--for the wedding cake of a Red Army Colonel's daughter, then their lives will be spared. They have five days.
Benioff's vivid descriptions of the desperation and, sometimes savagery, of the citizens of Leningrad as the two friends begin their quest keeps the pace of the novel fast and perpetually suspenseful. There is no doubt that in Leningrad at this time, a single egg was worth far more than one person's life, let alone the lives of two bumbling teenagers out to find twelve of them.
But this novel is not all doom and gloom. In the midst of the devastated city, the two boys find humor and hope and courage. This novel is one of those stories of misery shot through with the tenacity of the human spirit, and Benioff successfully pulls it off without becoming sentimental or maudlin. It's an entertaining novel that is very hard to put down.
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
This novel is the story of the Gogol Ganguli, the son of Indian immigrants, and how he came to be named Gogol, after the famed Russian writer Nikolai Gogol. It is also a story of the complications of family, of identity, and of the blending of cultures. Maybe a better phrase would be the attempted blending of cultures because Gogol's life is complicated by several aspects of culture: his parents' struggle to maintain their Indian heritage in their new country; Gogol's and his sister's challenge to be both American and Indian; and the natural and inevitable "coming of age" need for Gogol to figure out who he is as an individual.
All of these threads of the Ganguli's story are beautifully woven together by Lahiri, whose writing is lyrical while at the same time being straightforward. She is a writer who fully understands and empathizes with her characters' struggles and weaknesses. Gogol is in so many ways a typical teenager rebelling against the strictures of his upbringing by well meaning but, he thinks, clueless parents. This novel, however, is anything but typical in how it delivers its message that family is messy, complex, and oftentimes frustrating, but almost always grounded in deep and abiding love.
A beautifully written and absorbing novel.
City of Thieves by David Benioff
This novel could probably be considered historical fiction, if we were concerned about genres, but Benioff tells such a suspenseful adventures story in City of Thieves that it's easy to forget it offers a condensed history lesson in an often forgotten tragedy of World War II--one large and tragic story among so many others of that war.
City of Thieves is set during one week of the siege of Leningrad by the Nazis, a siege that lasted for a year and a half. The novel is not particularly long, but in telling the story of how two unlikely friends meet and set out to fulfill a death-defying mission during this one week, Benioff offers readers an absorbing and often disturbing look at the horrific toll this siege took on the people of Leningrad.
Lev, the son of a "disappeared" Jewish poet and Kolya, a young soldier accused of desertion from the Red Army, meet in a prison cell. They have little doubt that they will be executed the following morning for their minor wartime transgressions. To their surprise, they are given an option that may save their lives. If they can procure twelve fresh eggs--in this city of desperate, starving people--for the wedding cake of a Red Army Colonel's daughter, then their lives will be spared. They have five days.
Benioff's vivid descriptions of the desperation and, sometimes savagery, of the citizens of Leningrad as the two friends begin their quest keeps the pace of the novel fast and perpetually suspenseful. There is no doubt that in Leningrad at this time, a single egg was worth far more than one person's life, let alone the lives of two bumbling teenagers out to find twelve of them.
But this novel is not all doom and gloom. In the midst of the devastated city, the two boys find humor and hope and courage. This novel is one of those stories of misery shot through with the tenacity of the human spirit, and Benioff successfully pulls it off without becoming sentimental or maudlin. It's an entertaining novel that is very hard to put down.
TFB getting back into the swing of the New Year
Post will be coming soon. It's been very, very busy here at TFB, but not in a bookish way. Check back later this week for the first of a new set of regularly posted reviews.
Monday, January 4, 2010
The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music by Steve Lopez
The Soloist is the story of two friends: a world-weary newspaper columnist, Steve Lopez, and a homeless man, Nathaniel Ayers, who also happens to be a musical genius. When they meet, Lopez senses A Story: "I write a column for the Los Angeles Times. The job is a little like fishing. You go out and drop a line, cast a net. I'm figuring this vagrant violinist is a column. Has to be.... It's got potential. Who knows where it will go?"
Where it goes is certainly a place Lopez would never have expected. One column leads to another, and Lopez's readers, and Lopez himself, become fascinated by the story of Nathaniel Ayers and how a musical prodigy goes from Julliard to the streets of Los Angeles. How does he survive? Why did he end up like this? Where is his family? How does he manage to maintain his passion for playing music despite the hazards of being on the street?
It doesn't take long for Lopez, who "generally stops short of personal involvement in the life of a subject" to become drawn into Nathaniel's world. The more interactions he has with Nathaniel, the more Nathaniel becomes a person to him rather than a story. His complicated mental illness seems to both stoke his passion for music and inhibit his ability to make a successful life from it. Before too many weeks of knowing Nathaniel have passed, Lopez begins actively wanting to help Nathaniel, chiefly by getting him off the streets.
Lopez is baffled by Nathaniel's refusal to "come inside". What Lopez learns--and teaches us as we follow his attempts to change Nathaniel's situation--is that helping a homeless person who lives with schizophrenia is extremely complicated. There is no magic pill or quick and easy theraputic solution to helping people like Nathaniel.
Though homelessness should not be equated with mental illness, the fact is that many mentally ill people are on the streets and are there by choice because they fear what will happen to them if they enter the mental health system. And, Lopez learns, many of the mentally ill homeless have good reason to fear interventions by well-meaning people. They have experienced the deadening of antipsychotic medications; they have been held against their will in prison-like mental health institutions; they have been subjected, sometimes, to experimental treatments. Nathaniel shares many of these same fears, but he also has another reason for wanting to stay on the streets, as Lopez explains:
How can I ever reel him back to the world of rules and regulations, of protocols and privies? He is tied to nothing but his passion and the world it delivers him into, a world in which the city is his orchestra and the conductor is a statue. He sees a swaying palm and hears violins. A bus roars by and gives him a bass line. He hears footsteps and imagines Beethoven and Brahms out for a stroll.
"I can't survive," he once told me of his refusal to come indoors, "if I can't hear the orchestra the way I like to hear it."
Although the title of the book is The Soloist, it is more the story of how Steve Lopez's life changes as a result of knowing Nathaniel Ayers than the other way around. Lopez has entered a realm that he had always, literally, seen at the periphery of his vision, the realm of the homeless and the mentally ill. He can't shake the fact that his friendship with this one man has opened his eyes to a vast and apparently endless social problem. And Lopez's friendship with Nathaniel has also changed his perspective on himself:
....I deal too often with people who are programmed, or have an agenda, or guard their feelings. Nathaniel is a man unmasked, his life a public display. We connect in part because there is nothing false about him, and I come away from every encounter more attuned to my own feelings than I would be after, say, an interview with the mayor or the governor. Nathaniel turns my gaze inward. He has me examining what I do for a living and how I relate to the world as a journalist and as a citizen. Despite the many frustrations he presents, I'll never have a richer reward than knowing him well enough to tell his story.
Steve Lopez has brought the story of Nathaniel Ayers to the public in three ways: his original columns for the Los Angeles Times, this book, and in the 2009 film with Robert Downey, Jr. and Jamie Foxx. I reluctantly watched the film, thinking it would be another "very special," "must see" movie, but I was surprised by how truly good it was. I picked up the book, thinking of using the story in a class I was to teach, but got way more absorbed than I anticipated (considering I had just seen the story on film).
The life of this one mentally ill, homeless man is so captivating in part because Nathaniel Ayers is a truly gifted individual, but also because Steve Lopez is a talented story teller. By bringing the story of one person to our attention, Lopez casts a glaring light on an issue that we all too often ignore, even when it is, quite literally, staring us in the face. After reading this book or watching the film, you can't pass by a homeless person on the street without thinking of Nathaniel Ayers and the Story and the potential that Lopez saw in him. And you have to wonder, what is this person's past? What is his or her future? What is his or her Story?
Where it goes is certainly a place Lopez would never have expected. One column leads to another, and Lopez's readers, and Lopez himself, become fascinated by the story of Nathaniel Ayers and how a musical prodigy goes from Julliard to the streets of Los Angeles. How does he survive? Why did he end up like this? Where is his family? How does he manage to maintain his passion for playing music despite the hazards of being on the street?
It doesn't take long for Lopez, who "generally stops short of personal involvement in the life of a subject" to become drawn into Nathaniel's world. The more interactions he has with Nathaniel, the more Nathaniel becomes a person to him rather than a story. His complicated mental illness seems to both stoke his passion for music and inhibit his ability to make a successful life from it. Before too many weeks of knowing Nathaniel have passed, Lopez begins actively wanting to help Nathaniel, chiefly by getting him off the streets.
Lopez is baffled by Nathaniel's refusal to "come inside". What Lopez learns--and teaches us as we follow his attempts to change Nathaniel's situation--is that helping a homeless person who lives with schizophrenia is extremely complicated. There is no magic pill or quick and easy theraputic solution to helping people like Nathaniel.
Though homelessness should not be equated with mental illness, the fact is that many mentally ill people are on the streets and are there by choice because they fear what will happen to them if they enter the mental health system. And, Lopez learns, many of the mentally ill homeless have good reason to fear interventions by well-meaning people. They have experienced the deadening of antipsychotic medications; they have been held against their will in prison-like mental health institutions; they have been subjected, sometimes, to experimental treatments. Nathaniel shares many of these same fears, but he also has another reason for wanting to stay on the streets, as Lopez explains:
How can I ever reel him back to the world of rules and regulations, of protocols and privies? He is tied to nothing but his passion and the world it delivers him into, a world in which the city is his orchestra and the conductor is a statue. He sees a swaying palm and hears violins. A bus roars by and gives him a bass line. He hears footsteps and imagines Beethoven and Brahms out for a stroll.
"I can't survive," he once told me of his refusal to come indoors, "if I can't hear the orchestra the way I like to hear it."
Although the title of the book is The Soloist, it is more the story of how Steve Lopez's life changes as a result of knowing Nathaniel Ayers than the other way around. Lopez has entered a realm that he had always, literally, seen at the periphery of his vision, the realm of the homeless and the mentally ill. He can't shake the fact that his friendship with this one man has opened his eyes to a vast and apparently endless social problem. And Lopez's friendship with Nathaniel has also changed his perspective on himself:
....I deal too often with people who are programmed, or have an agenda, or guard their feelings. Nathaniel is a man unmasked, his life a public display. We connect in part because there is nothing false about him, and I come away from every encounter more attuned to my own feelings than I would be after, say, an interview with the mayor or the governor. Nathaniel turns my gaze inward. He has me examining what I do for a living and how I relate to the world as a journalist and as a citizen. Despite the many frustrations he presents, I'll never have a richer reward than knowing him well enough to tell his story.
Steve Lopez has brought the story of Nathaniel Ayers to the public in three ways: his original columns for the Los Angeles Times, this book, and in the 2009 film with Robert Downey, Jr. and Jamie Foxx. I reluctantly watched the film, thinking it would be another "very special," "must see" movie, but I was surprised by how truly good it was. I picked up the book, thinking of using the story in a class I was to teach, but got way more absorbed than I anticipated (considering I had just seen the story on film).
The life of this one mentally ill, homeless man is so captivating in part because Nathaniel Ayers is a truly gifted individual, but also because Steve Lopez is a talented story teller. By bringing the story of one person to our attention, Lopez casts a glaring light on an issue that we all too often ignore, even when it is, quite literally, staring us in the face. After reading this book or watching the film, you can't pass by a homeless person on the street without thinking of Nathaniel Ayers and the Story and the potential that Lopez saw in him. And you have to wonder, what is this person's past? What is his or her future? What is his or her Story?
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