A Saving Grace
By Lillian L. Shapiro

In these days of bewilderment and a struggle to understand what has happened to us in a world we usually took for granted we keep looking for some balance, reassurance and courage to meet the demands of our daily responsibilities. It is almost impossible to escape the endless special television reports plus the running ribbon beneath the program with staccato announcements of what is happening without absolute confirmation of those events. What has always been a necessary escape for me—from my childhood on—was to turn to some book which would take me away from what was distressful in my daily life.

In recent months I have had release in three books among which was the newest title by Jose Saramago, Portugal Nobelist. In All the Names the writer chooses as his “hero” an unimportant clerk, who takes it upon himself to check some forgotten entry on one of the thousands of cards in the Central Registry where he works. He risks not only his job in clandestine activities—falsifying a government identification in order to question possible neighbors of an unknown young woman; breaking and entering (!) a school building at night in order to learn about her through her school reports and, finally risking being caught by the head of his bureau. It is a tour de force of showing how there can be heroism in the “ordinary” human when impelled by sympathy.

Another book which took me away from the present is a new title by Joan Didion, well-known and widely acclaimed novelist. Political Fictions takes a sharp look at our democracy between 1988 and 1999. Her critical remarks are on events like Dukakis’ campaign, Gingrich’s plans for a better America and Clinton’s style of running his race for the presidency. With attention-grabbing titles for the various chapters she identifies them in a snappy way. For example, “The West Wing of Oz” is her characterization of the Reagan regime; “Clinton Agonistes” is the terrible time of what she entitles “Political Pornography.” The Starr drama with unlikely stars is “Vichy Washington” in Didion’s lexicon. She does not condone, for example, Clinton’s behavior but she also makes clear that the prosecution (persecution) of a sitting president went beyond the civility of what one hopes attends legal and civil procedures. Taking us back to that period between 1988 and 1999 is a therapeutic exercise to help us with the necessary strength to recover—but probably not yet enough for September’s horror.

James Fenton’s The Strength of Poetry is a book which should be bought and owned because of its wealth of information and the felicity of its prose. These lectures were delivered at Oxford where Fenton followed Seamus Heaney as Professor of Poetry from 1994 to 1999. An important running theme is a question of what creates the poetic spark. The chapters cover a wide period which includes Wilfrid Owens, Dryden, Whitman and much, much about Auden. I enjoyed especially the chapters on Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop and Sylvia Plath referred to here as “Lady Lazarus.” The wealth of quotations from the poetry of the authors named makes for incentive to read further by and about these writers and the style of Fenton, who has been a theater critic and a foreign correspondent, is an added delight.#

Lillian Shapiro is a retired supervisor of libraries in the NYC public school system.

Education Update, Inc., P.O. Box 20005, New York, NY 10001. Tel: (212) 481-5519. Fax: (212) 481-3919. Email: ednews1@aol.com.
All material is copyrighted and may not be printed without express consent of the publisher. © 2001.