Three Beautiful Things 04/03/08: Louise, Louise, Lola

1. I love it when a writer of keen intellect and elegant prose turns out to be, herself, an elegant, gracious, and keenly intelligent person. Today Louise Steinman, author of The Souvenir, visited Lane Community College and spoke movingly about the story of unearthing her father's WWII letters after he died in 1990 and how the discovery of a Japanese flag he had brought home from the war led Steinman to travel to Japan to return the flag to the family related to the Japanese soldier whose name was on the flag. I wrote Three Beautiful Things about this book back in September, 2007, here.

2. I was invited to a luncheon with Louise Steinman and was asked to invite three of my students. Marla, Teresa, and Alex all beamed to be in Steinman's company. It's no wonder. Louise Steinman listened intently to the students' own stories about family members who'd been in combat, as well as their comments about their lives. She valued the students, respected them, and helped them see that greatness is as much a matter of spirit as it is in achievement through publishing.

3. It was a movie to challenge the senses with its frantic pace and techno throbbing soundtrack, but my World Lit class seemed enthralled and excited by our viewing of Run, Lola, Run at 8:00 this morning. It's a hypnotic study of love, chance, and the way the slightest occurrence can result in the direst of consequences, but alter that occurrence very slightly and the consequences can be considerably sweeter.

Three Beautiful Things 09/20/07: War, Grace, More War

This evening I finished Louise Steinman's memoir, The Souvenir: A Daughter Discovers Her Father's War. In going through her father's belongings, after he died, Steinman finds letters her father wrote to her mother during World War II and a Japanese flag with a soldier's name on it. Steinman decides to return the flag to the soldier's family. It's a terrific book. Here are three beautiful things about this book:

1. The human body and nervous system not wired for war. While the abstract principles and possession of land war is fought over might make war necessary and make soldiers admirable, war exhausts the body with its inherent deprivations. War shatters the body with its violence. War stretches the nervous system way beyond capacity and many soldiers never recover from the damage.

2. When Steinman returns the flag to the family of the Japanese soldier who was killed in the Phillipines, I've rarely witnessed such a moving account of the beauty of grace and forgiveness.

3. In unadorned prose, Steinman's father's letters give readers a much deeper feeling for the horrors of what soldiers experienced fighting in the Pacific Theater. I often wonder if these men, on the one hand, are grateful for the public admiration extended to them and for their efforts being called "The Great War", but, on the other hand, if they'd like to be better understood for having endured battle trials and horrors that were far from great and that left many of these men damaged, if not physically, certainly psychologically, for life. In a general sense, was the WWII soldier understood for this? Did the public generally understand that the Great War may have had a great outcome, but that the fighting itself afflicted many soldiers with long term damage and horrible memories?