Escriben para niños

A story in El Universal's website about Mario Vargas Llosa and Spanish writer Arturo Pérez-Reverte.

Pérez-Reverte y Vargas Llosa escriben para niños
Notimex - El Universal - MADRID
Jueves 29 de abril de 2010

Los autores presentaron una nueva colecci�n dedicada a los peque�os

Los escritores Arturo Pérez -Reverte y Mario Vargas Llosa presentaron hoy la nueva colección de �lbumes ilustrados con historias originales para los ni�os, escritas por grandes nombres de la literatura de adultos.

En el emblemático C�rculo de Bellas Artes, los dos escritores, espa�ol y peruano, presentaron las primeras obras de la colecci�n: 'El peque�o Hoplita', escrita por P�rez-Reverte; y 'Fonchito y la luna', por Vargas Llosa.

'Siempre me han molestado los libros infantiles escritos como si los ni�os fueran bobos. Los ni�os son los lectores m�s crueles y son mucho m�s honrados que los adultos', se�al� P�rez-Reverte.

Para Vargas Llosa, escribir una literatura infantil requiere tanto rigor como escribir poes�a.

'Un libro infantil bien construido puede marcar mucho a un ni�o, al grado de que puede ser el motivo de que siga leyendo o deje de hacerlo', asegur�.

'Requiere rigor para los escritores intentar llegar con sus historias a esas mentes frescas que no tienen las complicaciones de los lectores adultos y por lo tanto, s�lo se les puede seducir o aburrir', indic� el peruano.

Con el t�tulo de 'Mi primer', la editorial Alfaguara lanz� este jueves al mercado esta colecci�n con unos cuentos de formato grande e ilustraciones para incentivar la pasi�n de los ni�os por la literatura.

Vargas Llosa reconoci� que siempre quiso escribir un libro para ni�os, pero el g�nero le resultaba 'demasiado ajeno y enormemente dif�cil'.

'Es un g�nero dif�cil, exige rigor y esfuerzo. Hay que contar una historia desde la perspectiva, desde la sensibilidad de un ni�o', sostuvo. Confi� en que la nueva colecci�n tenga �xito y que de verdad llegue a los ni�os.

Por su parte, P�rez-Reverte, quien funge como asesor de la colecci�n, resalt� que los libros infantiles dejan un 'espacio en blanco' para que los ni�os puedan proyectar su imaginaci�n y crear un 'lector activo'.

'A pesar de todo lo que est� cambiando el mundo, la literatura sigue siendo el medio para mover la imaginaci�n de los m�s peque�os', insisti�.

Ambos coincidieron que el libro que les marc� en la infancia fue 'Los tres mosqueteros', de Alejandro Dumas, e incluso P�rez-Reverte confes� que 'yo llor� cuando muri� Portos'.

�

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Stuff

Frost, Randy O., and Gail Steketee. Stuff: compulsive hoarding and the meaning of thing.    616.8522 F


As psychopathologies go, hoarding is relatively new but unquestionably fashionable. E.L. Doctorow published a novel last year ("Homer and Langley") about the Collyer brothers, the Manhattan recluses whose five-story brownstone, in 1947, yielded 170 tons of closely packed objects, including 14 grand pianos and the brothers' corpses.

There are no authoritative statistics on hoarding in America, but the authors suggest that it is a more widespread phenomenon than is generally realized. There are therapists who deal exclusively with hoarders and specialized cleaning crews with more business than they can handle.

Judging literary prizewinners

Every so often in an attempt to expand my fiction horizon, I will pick a book from one of the literary prize lists. I am disappointed enough by these selections to wonder if I am missing something. What do the panels look for when judging whether a book is commendable?
—David Friedricks, Albany, N.Y.
 
The word "panels" is important to keep in mind when judging the judges of literature. If you have ever been on a jury or a board, you know that group decisions almost always involve negotiation and compromise. Or as David Lodge, who has been a judge for Britain's most prestigious literary prize, the Man Booker, put it, "A committee is a blunt instrument of literary criticism." Another British novelist, Julian Barnes, called the Booker "posh bingo."

The original description of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction (first awarded in 1918 to the forgotten "His Family" by Ernest Poole) was for the novel "which shall best present the wholesome atmosphere of American life, and the highest standard of American manners and manhood." That was later changed to the novel that "shall best present the whole atmosphere of American life."

Like many people who consider themselves alert readers of fiction, I was taken by surprise by the recent announcement that "Tinkers" by Paul Harding had won this year's fiction Pulitzer. Fortunately, my library was ahead of me. I read and admired "Tinkers"—it's a small (in size), highly polished gem, a dying man's ruminations on clocks, fathers and nature. And it's unusual, a trait I suspect may be especially valued when facing down a mountain of contemporary fiction ("No! Not another disintegrating marriage! Not another kid goes bad on drugs!")

I read literary prizewinners because I like to compare my opinion to that of the judges—critics, scholars, other authors. I often applaud their choices (and sometimes am appalled). A few Pulitzer-winning novels that I also loved: "Lonesome Dove" by Larry McMurtry; "Middlesex" by Jeffrey Eugenides; "Olive Kitteridge" by Elizabeth Strout; "Empire Falls" by Richard Russo; "The Stone Diaries" by Carol Shields; "A Thousand Acres" by Jane Smiley; and "The Known World" by Edward P. Jones.

But it's worth recalling what Sinclair Lewis wrote when he refused the 1925 Pulitzer Prize for "Arrowsmith": "By accepting the prizes and approval of these vague institutions, we are admitting their authority, publicly confirming them as the final judges of literary excellence, and I inquire whether any prize is worth that subservience."

the first black Yankee

New York Yankee, that is; found the book whilst looking through and weeding sports books.

Elston and me: the story of the first black Yankee. Arlene Howard with Ralph Wimbish. Arlene Howard was his wife. Ralph Wimbish is an interesting person himself.

Inside the book there are pictures; one shows Elston Howard night at Yankee Stadium, on August 29, 1964. I was there. It was a doble-header against the Boston Red Sox. In the bottom of the first inning the first three Yanks got on base (Richardson, Kubek, and Mantle? Maris?). Maybe there was one out. But Joe Pepitone hit a grand slam homerun. The website //www.baseballlibrary.com has Pepi hitting three homeruns. Mickey Mantle tied Babe Ruth career strikeout record of 1,330.

Fortune's Ambassador

Moses Montefiore
By Abigail Green
Belknap/Harvard, 540 pages, $35

Moses Montefiore, a world-renowned figure in the 19th century, was virtually forgotten by the 20th and is remembered today, at times, simply by the resonance of his name. A hospital in the Bronx is named for him, another in Pittsburgh, and a Jewish quarter in Jerusalem just outside the Old City. The accomplishments of some of Montefiore's descendants—including a pugnacious Anglican bishop—may remind us the progenitor's renown, but his story certainly needs to be retold. It is a remarkable one.

 Not a perfect being, perhaps a philanderer, he was materially successful, married into the Rothschild family, knighted at 51, he lived to be 101.


It is a little hard for us to imagine Montefiore's public role, since there is no equivalent today. He was roving foreign minister and emissary of a people without a state. In many places they called him "sar"—a Hebrew word for minister, a person of great influence. People attributed to him almost magical powers.

But he wasn't a magician. He did, though, accomplish many things.

That Montefiore had been received for an audience by Czar Nicholas I, not known as a philo-Semite, did matter. The czar had given orders, on the occasion of Montefiore's visit to the Russian capital, that the guard in front of his palace be constituted of Jewish soldiers, whom he praised as being as brave as the ancient Maccabeans.

Nicholas I: (Russian: Николай I Павлович, Nikolaj I Pavlovič), (6 July [O.S. 25 June] 1796 – 2 March [O.S. 18 February] 1855), was the Emperor of Russia from 1825 until 1855, known as one of the most reactionary of the Russian monarchs. On the eve of his death, the Russian Empire reached its historical zenith spanning over 20 million square kilometers. In his capacity as the emperor he was also the King of Poland and the Grand Duke of Finland.

 Ms. Green writes deftly and tells Montefiore's story with a admirable thoroughness. (She is herself a professional historian.) "Moses Montefiore" is mercifully free of academic theory. It is exactly what a good biography should be—fair and illuminating without ever descending to hagiography. Still, it is clear that Montefiore was a genuinely good man. Their number in history is not substantial, and praise should be given where it is due.

A fascinating story; sounds to be a good read. The reviewer, Walter Laqueur is the author, most recently of "Best of Times, Worst of Times: Memoirs of a Political Education" (University of New England Press, 2010).

Bad hair day

Aside from bad hair, bad dialogue, silly accents, wooden acting and unimaginative scripting, the movie had nothing going for it. Garbage.

La Mission

April 7, 2010, 6:00 PM ET: New Benjamin Bratt Film ‘La Mission’ Highlights Car Culture.

“La Mission,” a film starring Benjamin Bratt and directed by his brother, Peter, is set in San Francisco’s Mission District. It focuses on a father named Che Rivera, played by Bratt, who struggles with the revelation that his son is gay. 

Check out this story and other articles about cars on our sister blog Driver’s Seat.

A Time to Remember

The Publisher. Alan Brinkley. Knopf, 531 pages, $35

Luce is one of the original 20th century right-wing blowhards who used his position in the media to push not objectivity but his own agenda. He did hire Margaret Bourke-White to shoot photogrpahs he included in Fortune magazine from its very beginning; her photogrpahs were also prominently published in Life magazine for many years.

Alan Brinkley's "The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century" marshals all the material for a devastating portrait of Luce as a bombastic, autocratic press lord who was full of idolatry for "Great Men" like Chiang Kai-shek and Gen. Douglas MacArthur and who made his magazines mouthpieces for his own ideology and obsessions. Instead, Mr. Brinkley has told Luce's saga with scrupulous fairness, compelling detail and more than a tinge of affection for his vast ambitions and vexing frailties. The author chronicles how Luce built the spindly Time into the world's greatest media empire of its era, with influence unmatched by any other American magazine. Still, Luce emerges as a man of manic energies and enthusiasms who, for all his fervent yearning to do good, bent the journalism of his magazines to propagandize for dubious crusades, most famously urging the "unleashing" of Chiang in the late 1940s to recapture a China lost to communism.

That was the sort of myth that the right wing of the Republican and Democratic parties used for years to bludgeon President Truman, FDR's memory and legacy, and subsequent Democrats: that they had lost China, as if it was for the US toi keep or lose.

at a "Turkish ball" at the Waldorf-Astoria in 1934, he met Clare Boothe, the bright, beautiful daughter of a kept woman, and Luce had a coup de foudre. For all his righteous scruples, he dumped his wife of more than a decade and mother of his children, embarking on a tempestuous marriage with Clare that lasted until his death in 1967. They competed with each other, cheated on each other, tormented each other and nearly divorced a dozen times.

[coup de foudre: a thunderbolt; a sudden, intense feeling of love.]

Perhaps it is from this man who ignored his own "righteous scruples" that Rudolf Guiliani learned the trick of dumping his wife and mother of his children for another woman. And after such effrontery to the morality they so busily lectured others on, and after violating its very basic tenets, they continued to appear in public without the least show of shame.


Mr. Brinkley, who teaches American history at Columbia University, neatly captures the tone of the couple's skyscraper-in-the-clouds idyll. Luce once bragged to Clare, the author of "The Women" and onetime U.S. ambassador to Italy, that he couldn't think of anyone who was his intellectual superior. Clare replied: What about Einstein? Well, countered Harry, Einstein was "a specialist."

Modet, too.

Clare had proposed a picture magazine called Life to Condé Nast—the man, not his company—when she worked as the managing editor of his Vanity Fair in the early 1930s. Luce had the same idea, and the triumph of Life gave him an unmatched pulpit where he could preach his increasingly right-wing vision for the U.S. and the world.

What a bully pulpit, too.

It was Luce's impatience with Franklin Roosevelt's tip-toeing into the war before Pearl Harbor that spurred him to take an active role in presidential politics. He fell hard for the Republican Wendell Willkie in 1940 and made his magazines such partisans of every successive GOP candidate for the White House that many of his editors despaired. Time Inc. magazines not only liked Ike, they slobbered over him. Luce did respect John F. Kennedy (although he backed Nixon) and succumbed to Lyndon Johnson's transparent flattery. An old-school anti-communist, Luce had "a strong distaste" for Joseph McCarthy, Mr. Brinkley writes, as a "crude and coarse man" whose "excesses threatened to discredit more legitimate anti-Communist activities," and the publisher never warmed up to Barry Goldwater's frontier conservatism.

Well, nt altogether a distasteful man, at any rate.


Mr. Brinkley has told the cautionary tale of the Luce Half-Century with the rigor, honesty and generosity that Luce's own magazines too often sacrificed to the proprietor's enormous ego and will to power.

Taboo

In weeding 796 call numbers in Sports, came across this book.

An Independent Spirit

In her novels and short stories—and in her life as well—Muriel Spark's ferocity was as evident as her originality

Muriel Spark occupies a puzzling space in the pantheon of 20th-century writers. Undoubtedly great, she resists classification. Even a question as reductive as "Is she a major or a minor novelist?" dissolves into clouds of qualification. Some might argue that she is "major" in her intellectual reach or the power of her prose but "minor" in the heft of her novels—most of them are fewer than 200 pages long. But is Alberto Giacometti a minor artist because his sculptures are so thin?

Art of choosing

Reviews.

Hubris of a Man Who Thought He Was Napoleon

This review of the book Russia against Napoleon in the Times seems to take the same tack as the reviewer in the Journal (cf. post below) points out as being erroneous. This reviewer is John Steele Gordon. His history of the national debt, “Hamilton’s Blessing,” has just been released in a updated edition by Walker & Company.

In the Journal review, Jennifer Siegel states: In Mr. Lieven's eyes, this story has two great heroes, and neither is Mikhail Kutuzov, the Russian general lionized by Tolstoy and, later, Stalin. Mr. Lieven praises Kutuzov, the commander in chief of the Russian forces, for his courage, skillful soldiering and mastery of public relations, but the author does not consider him the military genius that tradition has trained us to see. Rather it is the czar, Alexander I, and the historically undervalued Mikhail Barclay de Tolly, minister of war and the commander of the Russian forces before and after Kutuzov, who inspire Mr. Lieven's admiration.

In this review, Gordon states: With greatly inferior forces, Russia could not afford to confront Napoleon head on. Instead, the Russian commander, Mikhail Kutuzov, of necessity adopted Fabian tactics, harassing the invaders but avoiding pitched battle when possible. The one really big battle, Borodino, was more or less a draw, after Napoleon gave up personal command for reasons never satisfactorily explained. On Sept. 14 Moscow fell to Napoleon, and he sent peace overtures to Alexander, thinking the czar had no option but to negotiate. The Russians stalled and hinted but never gave a firm answer, seeking to keep Napoleon in Moscow as long as possible. On Oct. 19, with the czar still dawdling, French food supplies dwindling rapidly, and the Russian winter closing in, Napoleon had no choice but to begin withdrawal.

Kutuzov is painted as decisive, Alexander as indecisive. Stein sees it differently. Nonetheless, both  priase the book.

Moscow on the Seine

How a czar and his army saved Europe from France's Grande Armée.


After two years of nearly continuous fighting against Napoleon in the longest campaign in European history — a campaign that had marched the Russian army from Vilna in the west, eastward to Moscow, then all the way to Paris — the end to the conflict seemed for the first time to be as close at hand as the city rising on the horizon.

Dominic Lieven relates the tale of this campaign with masterly skill in "Russia Against Napoleon." It is a story that students of European history and admirers of Russian literary classics think they know well: Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812 and stayed too long; was trapped by the Russian winter and stymied by the nationalistic heroism of the Russian people; destroyed his Grande Armée in an ill-timed retreat across the snow-covered, war-ravaged fields; and was slowly pushed back to Paris by the re-formed and newly invigorated coalition of Great Powers (Britain, Austria, Prussia and Russia). In 1814, as every schoolchild once knew, Napoleon was dispatched to Elba, leaving open the possibility that Russia would dominate the recently liberated Continent.

Mr. Lieven, a professor of Russian history at the London School of Economics, paints a far more textured picture of Russia's crucial role in halting Napoleon's advance and containing France within its historic borders. "Russia Against Napoleon" is informed by Russian sources and focuses not only on Russia's oft-praised people but also on the country's oft-underappreciated leadership in the early 19th century.

In Mr. Lieven's eyes, this story has two great heroes, and neither is Mikhail Kutuzov, the Russian general lionized by Tolstoy and, later, Stalin. Mr. Lieven praises Kutuzov, the commander in chief of the Russian forces, for his courage, skillful soldiering and mastery of public relations, but the author does not consider him the military genius that tradition has trained us to see. Rather it is the czar, Alexander I, and the historically undervalued Mikhail Barclay de Tolly, minister of war and the commander of the Russian forces before and after Kutuzov, who inspire Mr. Lieven's admiration.

Russia Against Napoleon   940.2709 L

Dominic Lieven
Viking, 618 pages, $35.95

Barclay de Tolly was responsible for Russia's successful strategy of "deep retreat," which he had recommended as early as 1810. The idea was to lure the French far into Russia's heartland, stretching out their supply lines and making a potential French retreat crippling and costly. He was under constant criticism in his day for abandoning Russian ground to the French in 1812 without any real resistance, and he was under perpetual suspicion from the "Old Russian" camp at court and in the army because of his "foreign origins"—even though his family, of Scottish descent, had lived in the Russian Empire since the mid-17th century. In Mr. Lieven's hands, Barclay de Tolly comes across as tireless, dedicated, brave and strategically sound.

And Czar Alexander, often portrayed as unpredictable and ungrounded, frequently shows good leadership and diplomatic finesse in Mr. Lieven's telling. Despite ... constraints, Alexander proved an effective wartime leader, particularly after 1812, when the conflict moved out of Russia and diplomacy became paramount. He recognized that only a peace signed in Paris could guarantee the restoration of order in Europe and the security of Russia; but he also saw that Russia alone could never defeat the French forces. A victory over Napoleon was possible only because Alexander managed to form a grand alliance and keep it intact. This coalition-building, Mr. Lieven argues, was the czar's greatest achievement.


Russia's triumph is also a story of logistics, supplies and, above all, the horse. The country's leaders mobilized what Mr. Lieven calls "the sinews of Russian power": its vast population (although much smaller than the combined numbers at Napoleon's disposal); its outstanding and plentiful horse stock; its arms manufacturing; and even the sometimes unstable Russian economy. Of these, it is the horse, and Russia's ability to mobilize its light cavalry to harass Napoleon's rearguard as it retreated across the great European plain, that receives the greatest attention in "Russia Against Napoleon." Coming in a close second to the horse in significance were the victuallers who managed to feed and supply more than a half-million troops during the two-year campaign.


Mr. Lieven ends by arguing that in 1814, as in the present day, the security of Russia and the security of Europe were interdependent. True enough, but he also shows in this absorbing book that the defeat of Napoleon hinged on the resources, leadership and sacrifice of the Russian empire.

Ms. Siegel is a history professor at Ohio State University.

A liberal

Found an article in TheDailyBeast website by Eric Alterman, at the foot of which he was described as  the author, most recently, of Why We're Liberals: A Handbook for Restoring America's Important Ideals. He is also the author of this Springsteen book (1999), among his other books.

Books on Guilt

One is a series of "Five Best" columns that appear at the weenekd in the WSJ. In this one Pascal Bruckner confesses his admiration of these books about guilt.

1. The Trial. Franz Kafka.  Knopf, 1937.

One morning Joseph K. is arrested for no reason at all, brought before a court and, eventually, executed in a quarry: His ordeal has become a poignant metaphor for the experience of citizens in totalitarian regimes. In the eyes of the ruthless judicial system in Franz Kafka's "The Trial," Joseph K. is guilty of existing, no more than that; his crime is the very fact that he is alive. Nothing he can do can save him once he has fallen into the hands of the judges. The more he protests his innocence, the more he arouses suspicion. "Innocent of what?" one judge asks. "The Trial" (first published in German in 1925) is terrifying because the hero, without understanding why, begins collaborating with the machine that crushes him. One is reminded of the people convicted during the Moscow purge trials of the 1930s when they shouted, as they were about to be executed: "Long live Stalin! Long live the proletarian revolution!"

2. And Then There Were None. Agatha Christie. Dodd, Mead. 1940.

Ten people who have nothing in common find themselves on Indian Island. They have been invited there by a mysterious Mr. Owen, who has, unfortunately, not shown up. A couple of servants see to their comfort. On the living-room table the guests find 10 Indian statuettes, and in the bedrooms hangs a nursery rhyme announcing how each guest is to be murdered. The deaths follow one another implacably, hewing to the poem's predictions as though the characters' fates were foreordained. Everyone has sinned enough to deserve death; everyone bears the mark of Cain. Within this Puritan framework Agatha Christie displays her passion for playing with crime. As it turns out, one of the 10 guests is the murderer—and he knocks himself off as well, using a sophisticated technique to make it seem as if he has been killed by someone else. Christie's taste for trickery is stronger than her taste for punishment. Thus there is no tragedy in her work: Evil can always be overcome by a shrewd detective.

3. Heart of Darkness. Joseph Conrad. 1902.

In Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," an officer in the British merchant marine named Marlow sails up a serpentine African river to look for Kurtz, an ivory-trader from whom no word has been had for months. As Marlow ventures into the interior, oppressed by the dense jungle, he hears a strange report: In a mad quest for ivory, Kurtz has begun slaughtering the natives. Conrad took his inspiration from the atrocities committed by the Belgian King Leopold II, who was then master of the Congo and who tortured and massacred his recalcitrant subjects. Kurtz, of whom we get only glimpses, is fascinating because he speaks the language of the tormentor, not that of civilization: He feels no remorse; he is a man who never feels guilty. A pamphlet he has written on civilizing the natives ends with the terrible words: "Exterminate all the brutes!" He weaves a bond between the logic of profit and the logic of annihilation. Conrad's genius consists not solely in denouncing colonialism but also in anticipating the disasters that followed decolonization. We can read this short novel as a still-relevant depiction of the abominations that have stained the recent history of Africa.

4. The Fall. Albert Camus. Vintage. 1956.

At the height of the Cold War and communist domination over the French intelligentsia, Albert Camus published "The Fall," the brief confession of a "judge-penitent" named Clamens, who let a young woman commit suicide before his eyes by throwing herself into the Seine and did nothing to help her. Clamens has taken refuge in Amsterdam, preferring the canals' still water to the Seine's impetuous flow, and he likes to confide in strangers. He tells them that he does not regret what he has done—and then forces the strangers to confess, in turn, a crime of their own. I am a bastard, he seems to say, but so are you. Clamens practices public confession as kind of contamination, a way of implicating all humanity in his crime. The novel was an indirect attack on Jean-Paul Sartre, who was always ready to flagellate himself for being a bourgeois and to accuse France and Europe of causing all the world's ills. In the tradition of the 17th-century French moralists, Camus, concealed under this penitent's habit, denounces the moral hypocrisy of a certain kind of leftist.

5. The Human Stain. Philip Roth. Houghton Mifflin. 2000.

Coleman Silk has been forced to retire from his professorship amid murky accusations of racism, an episode in which he lost everything—his job, his family, his reputation. Embittered, he visits his new neighbor, the writer Nathan Zuckerman, to suggest that Zuckerman avenge him by writing his story. We discover that Silk's main crime is having tried to escape the racial prison in which America incarcerates its citizens: Born black, Silk has passed himself off as a Jew to escape the stereotypes he might have had to endure. Refusing to accept being identified by the color of his skin is, of course, an offense that Silk's "tolerant" colleagues find intolerable.

—Mr. Bruckner is the author of "The Tears of the White Man" (1986) and "The Tyranny of Guilt," recently published by Princeton University Press. Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page W8

Bucket list

Forgettable mediocrity. After a good start, it descends into cliches, fake-looking sets, and glides to an end ingloriously.

Ace in the Hole

Kirk Douglas is the disgraced urban newspaper reporter who shows up in Albuquerque looking for a newspaper job that will let him get back into the game, even if from the bottom, simply to have a chance at a 'big story' to propel him back to the limelight and New York. He whiles away a year, and on his way to cover a rattlesnake competition, happens upon the story he has been waiting for: a man has fallen into a cave while searching for Indian artifacts, and, if managed correctly, will the "human interest" story that will grab everyone's attention.

Dated, a little naive, reliant on stereotypes, but still, after sixty years, works, because it relies on good acting. Douglas plays the cynical, amoral Chuck Tatum with aplomb. Jan Sterling plays the wife of the fallen-into-the cave hunter, and Ray Teal plays the sheriff who works with Tatum to maximize the benefits derived from the circus that develops. Both actors are recognizable. Good movie.

Pitching Deep and Inside

* SPORTS
* APRIL 7, 2010

By ALLEN BARRA

Some baseball players change the game with a bat, a ball or a glove. James Alan Bouton changed it with a pen and a few hundred scraps of notebook paper that he kept in his back pocket while pitching for the one and only season of the Seattle Pilots in 1969.

When edited by sportswriter Leonard Shecter, they came together as "Ball Four," one of the best-selling and most influential sports books ever written. Amazingly, 40 years after its publication it remains one of the most controversial.

"I still have every scrap of paper I wrote on," says Mr. Bouton, age 71. Considering their impact, they should be in a glass case in Cooperstown. "I'm not holding my breath waiting for that phone call," Mr. Bouton says with a laugh. "Bowie Kuhn, who was the commissioner of baseball at the time, summoned me to his office to sign a letter stating that most of 'Ball Four' was fiction. I made it very clear to him that it was most certainly not fiction and I had no intention of saying that it was. The funny thing is that Bowie was living in such a dream world that I think he thought most of it was fiction." Denied a statement from the author, Kuhn issued an official statement that "Ball Four" was "detrimental to baseball."

No one, let alone a ballplayer, had ever before written about the joys, sorrows and sometimes boredom of big-league baseball. Certainly no one before Mr. Bouton had revealed the inner workings of the game and exposed the everyday behavior of some of its players—the frustrations, depressions, infidelities, alcoholism and drug use (particularly "greenies," or pep pills)—with such honesty and humor.

Mr. Bouton had broken into the big leagues in 1962 as a high-kicking power pitcher with the New York Yankees, winning 39 games in the 1963 and '64 seasons and two more in the 1964 World Series. The following year he hurt his arm and lost his fastball; after struggling through four more seasons in New York, he made a comeback as a knuckle-ball pitcher with the expansion Pilots, today's Milwaukee Brewers.

"Ball Four" was filled with revelations about his Seattle teammates, most of them marginal players, and also about the Yankee stars of the pennant-winning years, particularly America's idol, Mickey Mantle. "I wrote some about Mickey's drinking and carousing," says Mr. Bouton, "things that everyone in baseball knew about but that were never discussed in public. The funny thing is that most of what I said about Mickey was mild compared to what he and Whitey Ford and other players later admitted in their own books. If I had a hand in opening up discussion of what a professional athlete's life is really like, I'm proud of that.

"Really, what I felt I did was capture lightning in a bottle. Most of those guys, like my old Seattle manager Joe Schultz, were great talkers, great storytellers. I thought I made them more accessible, more human to fans."

Most of what Mr. Bouton wrote about Mantle was reverential—"He was one of my idols"—but for years it was rumored that Mantle was angry at Mr. Bouton, though Mickey himself denied it. In 1994, a year before Mantle died, Mickey's son Billy died of cancer. Mr. Bouton sent the family a note of condolence, to which Mickey responded with a lengthy phone message. "I was never really hurt by your book," he said. "I think that's been exaggerated a lot....Anyway, thanks for the letter, and everything's fine with me. Thanks a lot, bud." Did Mr. Bouton save the tape? "I sure did. I'm saving it for my grandchildren."

A Sports Illustrated poll in 2002 placed "Ball Four" third among "The Top 100 Sports Books of All Time," finishing behind only A.J. Liebling's "The Sweet Science" and Roger Kahn's "The Boys of Summer." In 1995, the book's 25th anniversary, "Ball Four" was the only sports book to be selected by the New York Public Library for its "Books of the Century" exhibit.

"Ball Four" changed the way succeeding generations looked at baseball. It also changed Mr. Bouton. For many ballplayers, life after the game can be limbo, but for Mr. Bouton it was a renaissance. He wrote or edited four other books, including a novel, "Strike Zone" (1994), co-written with Eliot Asinof of "Eight Men Out" fame, and "Foul Ball" (2003), a heartfelt account of his battle to save Wahconah Park, a historic minor league field in Pittsfield, Mass., from destruction. (He succeeded.)

Meanwhile, he started a company that makes shredded chewing gum as an alternative to chewing tobacco, and another that makes personalized baseball cards. He was (and still is) in demand on the lecture circuit for college and Fortune 500 companies.

In the early 1970s, Mr. Bouton was a sportscaster for CBS. In 1972, while at his office in Manhattan, a receptionist came to tell him that a young actor wanted to talk to him. "Into my office walks a very young, thin, good-looking guy in a short-sleeved plaid shirt. He asked me how he should go about learning how to play a ballplayer from the South. I told him to contact the president of the Southern League and spend a couple of weeks down there, riding a bus and learning to spit tobacco juice. That young man grew up to be Robert De Niro, and the movie was 'Bang the Drum Slowly.'"

In 1973 he played some pick-up basketball with actor Elliott Gould, who was working with director Robert Altman on a screen version of Raymond Chandler's detective classic "The Long Goodbye." Stacy Keach had been cast as private eye Philip Marlowe's sleazy pal, Terry Lennox, but became ill. Mr. Gould thought Mr. Bouton, who had taken some acting classes from Lee Strasberg, could play the part, and after a quick audition, Mr. Altman agreed. The film was not a commercial success, but it earned Mr. Bouton a nice nod from The New Yorker's Pauline Kael and quickly morphed into a cult classic. Some of the best-remembered lines in the film, Mr. Bouton told an audience at a screening of the movie last year, didn't come from Chandler's novel or even screenwriter Leigh Brackett. "I'd heard about how much Altman liked his actors to improvise, but I didn't believe it till I experienced it in person. He'd start the day by saying, 'Did you read the script?' Then, 'Good. Now forget it.'"

Outside of all that, Mr. Bouton's life hasn't been that interesting.

He is currently putting the finishing touches on "Ball Four: The Musical." He doesn't plan on playing himself in the stage version, though. "I'm too old to be a pariah again."

Mr. Barra writes about sports for the Journal.

Curious George

Courtesy of de Grummond Children's Literature Collection/ Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company - Final illustration for 'This is George. He lived in Africa.'

A Monkey Born of Trials and Tribulations: interesting article about  the husband-and-wife team of Margret and H.A. Rey, who created Curious George, the little monkey hero of our most famous books," Margret once said, referring to those sacred texts of childhood "Curious George" (since its publication in 1941, it has sold 27 million copies in more than a dozen languages), "Curious George Rides a Bike," "Curious George Flies a Kite" and "Curious George Takes a Job," among others.


A look at some of the drawings by H.A. Rey.

Show will be at The Jewish Museum through Aug. 1

From here to eternity

The famous scene in the black and white film classic that holds up very well. Burt Lancaster in good form, a lover in an illicit affair, the conniving sargeant that keep the company moving smoothly in the absence of the captain conducting his own illicit love affairs, and the leader who commands action when the base comes under attack on Sunday 7 December 1941. Frank Sinatra does a very good job as the doomed Maggio, and Deborah Kerr does an equally good job as the captain's cheated-on and cheating wife who falls for Lancaster's . But Montgomery Clift and Donna Reed are the commanding presences in this film. Monty nails his character, Robert E. Lee Prewitt, morose, determined, stubborn, defiant, proud, and never flags. Donna Reed, in utter contrast to her future role as wholesome suburban mom, plays a prostitute (one needs to read between the lines, as it were, for the word is never uttered in this 1953 film) who falls for Prew. Film making at its best.

Gone, baby, gone

Amanda McCready is a 4-year-old who has disappeared from her Boston home. The police make little headway in solving the case, so the girl's aunt hires Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro, private detectives. They freely admit that they have little experience with this type of case, but the family wants them for two reasons: they're not cops and they know the tough neighborhood in which they all live. As the case progresses, Patrick and Angie must face area drug dealers, gangs and pedophiles. When they finally solve the case, they are faced with a moral dilemma that tears them apart.

That's the blurb from the studio. And as far as it goes, it's accurate. But it misses much: profanity-laced, the film is based on a book by Dennis Lehane, and it misses being a good movie, for me, because it concentrates on violence and cursing.

Morgan Freeman makes a cameo appearance as a police captain riven by a guilty conscience, and airmails it. Perhaps this is one of those roles he takes simply because it is offered and will add to his resume; there is a rumor that he is trying to become the actor with the greatest number of entries in his filmography. If that is so, this is an entry hardly worth the effort, and one made with hardly an effort.

Ed Harris does a credible job as a detective, but his character isn't up to the challenge. The New York Times reviewer liked the movie, but I didn't like quite as much.

Azuca'

An exchange between Sugar and Osvaldo about who their favorite player are follows a prior exchange between them in which Sugar tells Osvaldo that his favorite player is Clemente; Osvaldo tells Sugar his favorite is Vic Power: when Power was signed and sent to the US South in 1951, 1952. he went into a diner, and sat down; the waitress said to him, "sorry, but we don't served colored people" to which Power said "that's okay; I don't eat colored people/"