Weeknd films

Watched these films over the weekend:

Friday night: Pride and glory (2008). Violent, profane, an example of modern film-making; not my style. Jon Voight played a cop wearing a suit, who sons and son-in-law are cops. {retty good acting, but very violent, lots of cursing, and, in the end, not that pleasing, though good enough.

Saturday night (in Chi): Narc. (2002). Violent, profane. Not worth seeing, for me.



Sunday night: Dirty Dancing. An antidote

Swayze

Glenn told me about this video, of a tribute to Patrick Swyze in "Dancing with the Stars."

Brandeis, revered or hated, a Giant

Brandeis was not shy about discussing the role law can play in shaping society. Not for him the self-effacing metaphors of recent confirmation hearings. Brandeis would have scoffed at Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. as an umpire in robes calling legal balls and strikes, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor as a law robot mechanically applying statutes and precedents to facts.

Scoff. Ditto.

Brandeis thought the law an instrument of morality and progress. “Is not the challenge of legal justice to conform to our contemporary notions of social justice?” he asked in a speech just weeks before President Wilson nominated him to the court. It is all but impossible to imagine the nomination of a lawyer like Brandeis today, and it is a small miracle that he was confirmed even in his day. As was the custom at the time, Brandeis did not testify. But the confirmation hearings were brutal nonetheless.

No, brutality is not a modern political phenomenon, at all.

The president of Harvard University, where Brandeis had gone to law school, opposed the nomination; so did seven past presidents of the American Bar Association. William Howard Taft, the former president and future chief justice, called him “utterly unscrupulous” and “a man of infinite cunning.”

Members of the Supreme Court of the United States shows Taft as Chief Justice 1921-1930. He'd been President 1909-1913.

Brandeis was the first Jewish justice, and Taft’s comment at least flirts with anti-Semitism. But Mr. Urofsky generally plays down the role anti-Semitism played in the hearings, where the subject of Brandeis’s religion arose only once, and in Brandeis’s career generally. It was Brandeis’s perceived radical beliefs and hostility to business interests that provoked his enemies, Mr. Urofsky concludes; being Jewish was “a complicating factor.”

Brandeis was confirmed by a vote of 47 to 22.

Brandeis is often paired with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., his frequent ally in dissent on a generally conservative court. But they arrived at similar positions by very different routes. Holmes liked abstractions and gnomic epigrams; Brandeis cherished detailed information.

“No justice of the 20th century had a greater impact on American constitutional jurisprudence,” Mr. Urofsky writes. That is a large statement but probably correct, and the author certainly makes a vigorous case for it.

Take the law of privacy. In his 1928 dissent in Olmstead v. United States, Brandeis objected to warrantless wiretapping by the government and set down some lasting principles. “The greatest dangers to liberty,” he wrote, “lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”

A certain recent vice-president comes to mind.

Brandeis told Frankfurter that he construed the Constitution liberally where property rights were involved, meaning he seldom voted to strike down laws regulating them, but that laws restricting individual rights required closer scrutiny.

He explained why in a 1927 concurrence to a Court decision that would help transform First Amendment law. “Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards,” Brandeis wrote. “They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty.”

Bill Clinton After Hours

The Clinton tapes: wrestling history with the president by Taylor Branch
707 pages. Simon & Schuster. $35.



No cigar?

Public art for public schools

New book entitled Public art for public schools contains some great pictures of NYC school buildings and art within. The Education Dept. website (within NYC.gov) has a section Public Art for Public Schools.

An example is this detail from History Of Mankind In Terms Of Mental And Physical Labor, 1941. Maxwell Starr. 1901-1978
























New York Old and New, 1936. Sacha Moldovan, 1901-1982. Oil on canvas, 4@ Approx 68 1/2" X 55 1/2"

Unchained Melody

Oh, my love, my darling, I've hungered for your touch
...a long lonely time ...
... and time goes by so slowly; and time, can do so much,
are you ... still mine?
I_I_I need your love, I_I_I need your love
Godspeed your love to me.

Lonely rivers flow to the sea, to the sea
to the open arms of the sea ... (yeah)
lonely rivers sigh 'wait for me, wait for me'
I'll be coming home, wait for me.

Oh, my love, my darling ...
I've hungered, hungered, for your touch
a long ... are you still mine?

I_I need your love
I_I've got to have your love
Godspeed your love to me



Oh, my love, my darling, I've hungered for your touch
a long lonely time, and time goes by so slowly, and time can do so much
are you still mine?
I need your love, I need your love; Godspeed your love to me

Lonely rivers flow to the sea, to the sea, to the open arms of the sea
lonely rivers sigh 'wait for me, wait for me'
I'll be coming home wait for me

Oh, my love, my darling, I've hungered for your touch
a long lonely time; and time goes by so slowly
and time can do so much, are you still mine?
I need your love, I need your love
Godspeed your love to me





Found on YouTube; nice version



Yet another version ...


An interesting version by Gene Vincent ...

The outsiders

1983 film. Patrick Swayze's death prompted me to get a film he acted in (Ghost and Dirty Dancing aside). The cast is composed of many future stars in roles early in their careers. The three characters whom the story revolves around are played by C. Thomas Howell, Matt Dillon and Ralph Macchio (one year and one role before Karate Kid).

Frankly, it was not a very good film. The acting is not flowing, and the movie is kind of choppy (whether that is attributable to editing or the script, I don't know). It certainly was interesting to see Swayze in what appears to be his first film role; alas, his character was not a main one. Tom Cruise had a small role, and had bucked teeth, to boot. I did finish it, and enjoyed it. And it had a nice soundtrack.

GW was a mason

Brown, D., (2009). The Lost Symbol. New York: Doubleday Books.


The Lost Symbol. By Dan Brown
Doubleday, 509 pages, $29.95



The reviewer for the Wall Street Journal, Charlotte Allen,is contributing editor of the Manhattan Institute's Minding the Campus Web site. [The Manhattan Institute is something of a conservative organization.]
She does not seem overly impressed with the book; her review's title puts it: Still More Secrets - Together again, an exciting thriller and a tedious sermon.

She does grant: As District of Columbia resident, I must say that Mr. Brown does a first-rate job of delivering a Cook's tour with duly sinister overtones of Washington's famous sites. I specially enjoyed Langdon and Katherine's narrow escape from the CIA by riding the book conveyor belts of the Library of Congress.

And then she gives herself away: A video unearthed by Langdon depicting numerous highly placed Washingtonians including two Supreme Court justices! wearing full Masonic regalia and participating in a ritual that involves faux-human sacrifice and the drinking of wine from a human skull reminded me of the "Stonecutters" episode of "The Simpsons": "Who controls the British crown? Who keeps the metric system down? We do!"

Ah, the Simpsons as a great cultural institution.

It's when Mr. Brown interrupts his storytelling to deliver one of his many lectures on Christian intolerance with pointed digs at the American religious right that "The Lost Symbol" becomes a didactic bore.

The reviewer for the New York Times entitles her review Fasten Your Seat Belts, There’s Code to Crack. She does not seem particularly thrilled with the book, either, though she does not criticize the author's lecturing. In fact, she does praise him, some.

Separate from critics and reviewers, the book sold a million copies today, its first day in the marketplace. And, in the Nassau County OPAC, it has 823 holds on first copy returned of 388 copies, 227 holds on first copy returned of 48 copies (for Large Type), and 120 holds on first copy returned of 19 copies on the CD book.

Patrick Swayze

• Filmography | Times Topics: Patrick Swayze
• Slide Show |

September 15, 2009
Patrick Swayze, Star of ‘Dirty Dancing,’ Dies at 57
By ANITA GATES

Patrick Swayze, the balletically athletic actor who rose to stardom in the films “Dirty Dancing” and “Ghost” and whose 20-month battle with advanced pancreatic cancer drew wide attention, died Monday. He was 57.

His publicist, Annett Wolf, told The Associated Press in Los Angeles that Mr. Swayze had died with family members at his side.

Mr. Swayze’s cancer was diagnosed in January 2008. Six months later he had already outlived his prognosis and was filmed at an airport, smiling at photographers and calling himself, only half-facetiously, “a miracle dude.”

He even went through with plans to star in “The Beast,” a drama series for A&E. He filmed a complete season while undergoing treatment. Mr. Swayze insisted on continuing with the series. “How do you nurture a positive attitude when all the statistics say you’re a dead man?” he told The New York Times last October. “You go to work.”

Miraculous attitude.

The show, on which he played an undercover F.B.I. agent, had its premiere in January and earned him admiring reviews.

A week before the series began, Mr. Swayze was the subject of a one-hour “Barbara Walters Special” on ABC, in which he talked about his illness. “I keep my heart and my soul and my spirit open to miracles,” he told Ms. Walters. But he said he was not going to pursue every experimental treatment that came along. If he were to “spend so much time chasing staying alive,” he said, he wouldn’t be able to enjoy the time he had left.

“I want to live,” he said.

Shortly after the interview, he was hospitalized for pneumonia. At least one tabloid newspaper ran photographs of him in April with reports that the cancer had metastasized and that his weight had dropped to 105 pounds.

Mr. Swayze rose to stardom in 1987. He had received attention in several early movies and in the mini-series “North and South,” but the coming-of-age film “Dirty Dancing” established him as a romantic leading man. He starred opposite Jennifer Grey as a young working-class dance instructor at a Catskills resort who proved to have more heart, integrity and sex appeal than many of the wealthy guests with whom he was forbidden to fraternize.

O, yes, I remember the mini-series. And the film; it was a great one.

He exhibited similar emotional intensity in the supernatural romance “Ghost” (1990), an enormous box-office hit. His character, a loft-living yuppie banker, is murdered early in the film and spends the rest of it as a spirit, desperately trying to communicate with his fiancée (Demi Moore) with the help of a psychic (Whoopi Goldberg). The film, which also showcased his physical grace, solidified his stardom.

One of my all-time favorites

Mr. Swayze was proud of “Ghost,” as he told The San Francisco Chronicle in 1990. “I needed to do something that will affect the audience in a positive way, make them feel better about their lives and appreciate what they have,” he said.

Patrick Wayne Swayze was born on Aug. 18, 1952, in Houston, the son of Jesse Wayne Swayze, an engineer and rodeo cowboy, and Patsy Swayze, a dance instructor and choreographer. He began dancing as a child and was often teased about it. But he was also a student athlete, and his dancing career was hampered by a football injury.

After attending San Jacinto, a community college in Texas, Mr. Swayze moved to New York to study dance, becoming a member of Eliot Feld Ballet. He made his Broadway debut in 1975 as a dancer in “Goodtime Charley” and was cast in the original Broadway production of “Grease,” taking over the lead role. (He returned to Broadway almost three decades later, filling in as the razzle-dazzle lawyer Billy Flynn in “Chicago” in 2003.)

He made his screen debut in “Skatetown, U.S.A.” (1979), a roller-disco movie starring Scott Baio. Looking back on that film, he told the Toronto newspaper The Globe and Mail in 1984, “I saw that with not too much trouble I could become a teenybopper star, but I knew if I accepted that, it would take years to win credibility as a serious actor.”

His first notable film was “The Outsiders” (1983), a drama about teenage gangs that starred other newcomers like Tom Cruise, Rob Lowe, Matt Dillon and Emilio Estevez. The same year he was cast in a short-lived television series, “Renegades,” a sort of updated “Mod Squad” about young gang leaders turned deputies.

His public profile grew steadily, especially with his appearances in “Red Dawn” (1984), a film about small-town high school students fighting the Soviets in World War III, and in “North and South” (1985), a 12-hour mini-series in which he played a conflicted Southern soldier.

“People don’t identify with victims,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press, discussing his “North and South” character, originally written as a more passive man. “They identify with people who have the world come down on their heads and who fight to survive.”

After that came “Dirty Dancing” and then, just three years later, “Ghost,” with a few largely forgotten movies in between.

During the 1990s he was a bank-robbing surfer in “Point Break” (1991) and a drag queen with the daunting name Vida Boheme in “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar” (1995). “To Wong Foo” earned him his third Golden Globe nomination. (The others were for “Dirty Dancing” and “Ghost.”)

His portrayal of a noble doctor in Roland Joffé’s “City of Joy” (1992) was not well received. But then, critics rarely praised his acting ability. At best he was commended for his athletic presence and stalwart demeanor.

From 1995 to 2007 he made more than a dozen feature films, including “Donnie Darko” (2001), in which he played an obnoxious motivational speaker. In 2006 he surprised many by starring in London as the streetwise gambler Nathan Detroit in the musical “Guys and Dolls.” His last film was “Powder Blue,” a drama with Lisa Kudrow that was released on DVD this year. As a young unknown, Mr. Swayze met Lisa Niemi, a fellow Houstonian, in one of his mother’s dance classes. They married in 1975. She survives him, along with his mother; two brothers, Don and Sean; and a sister, Bambi. Another sister, Vicky, died in 1994.

Mr. Swayze said more than once that he was determined not to be typecast. In a 1989 interview with The Chicago Sun-Times, he said, “The only plan I have is that every time people think they have me pegged, I’m going to come out of left field and do something unexpected.”

He also expressed concern about the dangers of Hollywood superficiality. “One of the reasons I bought my ranch was because I didn’t want to hear the hype,” he told The A.P. in 1985, referring to his horse ranch in the San Gabriel Mountains. He added, “Your horses don’t lie to you.”

U.S. NEWS - SEPTEMBER 15, 2009, 5:32 P.M. ET

Actor Patrick Swayze Dies of Pancreatic Cancer
Associated Press

LOS ANGELES -- Patrick Swayze, the hunky actor who danced his way into moviegoers" hearts with "Dirty Dancing" and then broke them with "Ghost," died Monday after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 57.

"Patrick Swayze passed away peacefully today with family at his side after facing the challenges of his illness for the last 20 months," said a statement released Monday evening by his publicist, Annett Wolf. Mr. Swayze died in Los Angeles, Wolf said, but declined to give further details.
One Last Dance

View Slideshow

A look at Patrick Swayze's life and career

Fans of the actor were saddened to learn in March 2008 that Mr. Swayze was suffering from a particularly deadly form of cancer. He kept working despite the diagnosis, putting together a memoir with his wife and shooting "The Beast," an A&E drama series for which he had already made the pilot.

Mr. Swayze said he opted not to use painkilling drugs while making "The Beast" because they would have taken the edge off his performance. The show drew a respectable 1.3 million viewers when the 13 episodes ran in 2009, but A&E said it had reluctantly decided not to renew it for a second season.

When he first went public with the illness, some reports gave him only weeks to live, but his doctor said his situation was "considerably more optimistic" than that. Mr. Swayze acknowledged that time might be running out given the grim nature of the disease.

"I'd say five years is pretty wishful thinking," Mr. Swayze told ABC's Barbara Walters in early 2009. "Two years seems likely if you're going to believe statistics. I want to last until they find a cure, which means I'd better get a fire under it."

C. Thomas Howell, who co-starred with Mr. Swayze in "The Outsiders," "Grandview U.S.A." and "Red Dawn", said: "I have always had a special place in my heart for Patrick. While I was fortunate enough to work with him in three films, it was our passion for horses that forged a friendship between us that I treasure to this day. Not only did we lose a fine actor today, I lost my older 'Outsiders" brother."

Other celebrities used Twitter to express condolences, and "Dirty Dancing" was the top trending topic for a while Monday night, trailed by several other Swayze films.

Ashton Kutcher -- whose wife, Demi Moore, co-starred with Mr. Swayze in "Ghost" -- wrote: "RIP P Swayze." Mr. Kutcher also linked to a YouTube clip of the actor poking fun at himself in a classic "Saturday Night Live" sketch, in which he played a wannabe Chippendales dancer alongside the corpulent -- and frighteningly shirtless -- Chris Farley.

And Larry King wrote: "Patrick Swayze was a wonderful actor & a terrific guy. He put his heart in everything. He was an extraordinary fighter in his battle w Cancer." Mr. King added that he'd do a tribute to Mr. Swayze on his CNN program Tuesday night.

A three-time Golden Globe nominee, Mr. Swayze became a star with his performance as the misunderstood bad-boy Johnny Castle in "Dirty Dancing." As the son of a choreographer who began his career in musical theater, he seemed a natural to play the role.

A coming-of-age romance starring Jennifer Grey as an idealistic young woman on vacation with her family and Swayze as the Catskills resort's sexy (and much older) dance instructor, the film made great use of both his grace on his feet and his muscular physique.

It became an international phenomenon in the summer of 1987, spawning albums, an Oscar-winning hit song in "(I've Had) the Time of My Life," stage productions and a sequel, 2004's "Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights," in which he made a cameo.

Mr. Swayze performed and co-wrote a song on the soundtrack, the ballad "She's Like the Wind," inspired by his wife, Lisa Niemi. The film also gave him the chance to utter the now-classic line, "Nobody puts Baby in a corner."

Mr. Swayze followed that up with the 1989 action flick "Road House," in which he played a bouncer at a rowdy bar. But it was his performance in 1990's "Ghost" that showed his vulnerable, sensitive side. He starred as a murdered man trying to communicate with his fiancee (Ms. Moore) -- with great frustration and longing -- through a psychic played by Whoopi Goldberg.

The film earned a best-picture nomination and a supporting-actress Oscar for Ms. Goldberg, who said she wouldn't have won if it weren't for Mr. Swayze.

Mr. Swayze himself earned three Golden Globe nominations, for "Dirty Dancing," "Ghost" and 1995's "To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar," which further allowed him to toy with his masculine image. The role called for him to play a drag queen on a cross-country road trip alongside Wesley Snipes and John Leguizamo.

Among his earlier films, Swayze was part of the star-studded lineup of up-and-comers in Francis Ford Coppola's 1983 adaptation of S.E. Hinton's novel "The Outsiders," alongside Rob Lowe, Tom Cruise, Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, Emilio Estevez and Diane Lane.

Other "80s films included "Red Dawn," "Grandview U.S.A." (for which he also provided choreography) and "Youngblood," once more with Lowe, as Canadian hockey teammates.

In the "90s, he made such eclectic films as "Point Break" (1991), in which he played the leader of a band of bank-robbing surfers, and the family Western "Tall Tale" (1995), in which he starred as Pecos Bill. He appeared on the cover of People magazine as its "Sexiest Man Alive" in 1991, but his career tapered off toward the end of the 1990s, when he also had stay in rehab for alcohol abuse. In 2001, he appeared in the cult favorite "Donnie Darko," and in 2003 he returned to the New York stage with "Chicago"; 2006 found him in the musical "Guys and Dolls" in London.

Mr. Swayze was born in 1952 in Houston, the son of Jesse Swayze and choreographer Patsy Swayze, whose films include "Urban Cowboy."

He played football but also was drawn to dance and theater, performing with the Feld, Joffrey and Harkness Ballets and appearing on Broadway as Danny Zuko in "Grease." But he turned to acting in 1978 after a series of injuries.

Within a couple years of moving to Los Angeles, he made his debut in the roller-disco movie "Skatetown, U.S.A." The eclectic cast included Scott Baio, Flip Wilson, Maureen McCormack and Billy Barty.

Off-screen, he was an avid conservationist who was moved by his time in Africa to shine a light on "man's greed and absolute unwillingness to operate according to Mother Nature's laws," he told the AP in 2004.

Mr. Swayze was married since 1975 to Ms. Niemi, a fellow dancer who took lessons with his mother; they met when he was 19 and she was 15. A licensed pilot, Ms. Niemi would fly her husband from Los Angeles to Northern California for treatment at Stanford University Medical Center.

The Stranger

A pretty good thriller with Orson Welles playing a professor in a small-town college who is about to wed the daughter of a Supreme Court justice (who, explicably, has a sort of British-inflected, gentry accent). Loretta Young plays the Justice's daughter, and seems far too melodramatic, though perhaps it is to be expected in a 1946 film. Edward G. Robinson plays a Mr. Wilson (he does not have a first name) an investigator from the War Crimes Commission who releases a second-tier Nazi in the expectation that he will lead Wilson to the real prey: Franz Kindler.

HWPL has an interesting book on Robinson's career, The cinema of Edward G. Robinson.

On the waterfront

Last Wednesday a book review appeared in the Journal about a book entitled On the Irish Waterfront; the 1954 film was discussed. That prompted me to get the film. Watched it Friday night. Quite good: the acting is really good, and not just Brando (who is excellent): Steiger does a very nice job playing the older Malloy brother, a lawyer who works for, and is controlled by, the longshoremen's union; and Lee Cobb does an excellent turn as the bastard corrupt union leader. Eva Marie Saint also does a nice job (her first big screen role; the film credits have it "and introducing").

Because they believe

Pier Pressure

Fisher, James T. (2009). On the Irish Waterfront: The Crusader, the Movie, and the Soul of the Port of New York. Cornell Univ Press



It was into this milieu that a 35-year-old Jesuit priest arrived in 1946, setting out to liberate the waterfront's oppressed longshoremen. Moved by the social-justice teachings of the Catholic Church, the Rev. John Corridan tried to ­inspire the men on the docks to take on the Irish kingpins who held them in grinding poverty. But the codes of the waterfront proved too tough to crack, even for a priest who swore and drank like a longshoremen. The men maintained their silence and rejected Father ­Corridan as an outsider and a meddler.

Undeterred, Father Corridan shifted his focus, ­aiming to expose the criminal waterfront to public scrutiny. He cultivated journalists and fed them vital inside information, starting with Malcolm Johnson, a New York Sun reporter who in 1948 wrote a sensational multi-part exposé, "Crime on the Waterfront." By the early 1950s the publicizing efforts of "the ­waterfront priest" led to the creation of the New York State Crime Commission, an investigative body that gathered 30,000 pages of testimony and evidence that eventually brought down King Joe and his empire.

Mr. Fisher details the dockside story with admirable care, but the story he is most eager to tell is the one about the making of the movie "On the Waterfront." In 1949, a production company bought the rights to Johnson's exposé and hired Budd Schulberg to transform it into a screenplay. Schulberg soon befriended Father Corridan, who showed him the real waterfront. ­According to Mr. Fisher, this dynamic if unlikely partnership—between a secular Jew and a liberal Catholic priest—is the film's essential back-story. Mr. Fisher ­argues that Schulberg was converted by Father ­Corridan, not to Catholicism but to a spiritually based understanding of social justice. As a result, Schulberg acceded to Father Corridan's plea that he write a "Going My Way" with substance—that is, a serious drama that ­addressed themes of morality, betrayal and redemption.


Despite the controversy, "On the Waterfront" has proved to be of enduring value. The same cannot be said of the New York waterfront. For while the Irish kingpins were trying to fend off prosecutors, they were working to stymie efforts to modernize the waterfront's decrepit piers. With the advent of modern container ships in 1956—just two years after "On the Waterfront" opened—New York's port lost all commercial logic and the Irish waterfront began a swift journey to extinction.

A reputation made

Once popular, an author has a built-in audience. Witness Dan Brown, whose Da Vinci Code made his name: his new book, The Lost Symbol, has 231 holds in the large print version, and 688 on the regular-type version.

Equally, Pat Conroy's new book, South of Broad, has 569 holds on first copy returned of 203 copies. Nicholas Sparks is also an established favorite; his latest, The Last Song, has 390 holds on first copy returned of 57 copies.

Publishing thrives, perhaps even survives, on this phenomenon: guaranteed readers.

Under the volcano

Quite strange, though less so than the book. A dissolute Englishman who has just resigned his diplomatic position drinks endlessly, and dies. The story is fine enough, the acting quite good: Albert Finney shines as the drunkard, Jacqueline Bisset is fine enough as a pretty woman, and Anthony Andrews is quite English as Hugh Firmin.

The story is simple enough; the acting and the Mexican settings are what make it work.

Surviving in the City, Against All Odds

Kidder, Tracy. (2009). Strength in what remains : a journey of remembrance and forgetting. New York : Random House.



Mr. Kidder’s subject, Deogratias, whom he calls Deo, arrives at Kennedy Airport with $200 in his pocket. He speaks no English and knows no one. Lost, homeless and haunted by nightmares, he squats in abandoned Harlem tenements and later sleeps in Central Park. He becomes suicidal.

“Better, he thought, to be in Burundi, if Burundi were at peace, than to live on the wrong, impoverished planet in New York,” Mr. Kidder writes. “This place made you feel like you were simply not a human being.”

Mr. Kidder’s book is a story about survival, about perseverance and sometimes uncanny luck in the face of hell on earth. Deo is a Tutsi who managed to escape the vicious civil war between his people and the Hutus in Burundi and neighboring Rwanda in 1993 and 1994. Being a Tutsi was a distinct liability; the Hutus were at this point killing Tutsis indiscriminately.

It is just as notably about profound human kindness. It is about the selfless strangers who helped Deo in America, who gave him places to live, helped him find jobs and ultimately helped him attend Columbia University and Dartmouth Medical School.

Tracy Kidder


If “Strength in What Remains” is slightly less immediate than those earlier books, it may be because, paradoxically, Mr. Kidder is too fine a writer. Like John McPhee, whom he has acknowledged as an influence, Mr. Kidder makes a fetish of the nonfiction writer’s craft, generally for the better but occasionally not. His clear, perfectly buffed, shyly self-satisfied sentences can be curiously distancing.

I'm going to look at his books.

Mr. Kidder doesn’t push too far, doesn’t linger on horror and insanity. You feel safe in his hands; he’s not going to push your face into the mire or insert atonal notes into his score. Thus you occasionally long for a pricklier, less predictable writer, a Paul Theroux or a William T. Vollmann. A writer acquainted with his own dark impulses, that is, who can let out, when needed, a sickening howl.

Excerpt: ‘Strength in What Remains’ (August 30, 2009)
The Sunday Book Review on ‘Strength in What Remains’ (August 30, 2009)
Paper Cuts Blog: Questions for Tracy Kidder (August 28, 2009)


A clinic in Burundi opened by Deo, the subject of Tracy Kidder’s “Strength in What Remains.”