What can one make of the Glenn Beck phenomenon that attracted hundreds of thousands of people to the Lincoln Memorial? I lived in Washington for years and cannot remember a larger well behaved crowd gathering for reasons that, on the surface, did not inspire fiery protests and calls for social justice.

Clearly though it was anger and disappointment that brought these people together. The way I read it, they were people who were fed up with the drift away from what they perceived as the bedrock symbols of an older America, where the old verities dominated our culture. In shorthand, they were pissed off by the way things were going in our country.

Hearing snippets of speeches by the participants of this gathering I could not help recalling what I had memorized as a Boy Scout many decades ago. It was obligatory to recite the Scout Oath and the Scout Law and it was always the opening pledge at our weekly meetings.

The oath went like this: On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and my Country and to obey the Scout Law; To help other people at all times; To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.

The law referred to went like this. A scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.

Such caveats might seem like an echo of a long expired America. Vast changes, technological, psychological, emotional and material are coming at us so fast we seem to be losing our ability to cope. Huge gaps have opened in our civil discourse. Compromise seems to allude us. We confront each other as if we were mortal enemies. In such an environment it is easy to become panicked and fearful.

On the other hand there are many who still believe strongly in these simple bedrock principals, and often in giant social eruptions we yearn to go back and visit them again to be sure they’re still there. I think that time is upon us.

To most of the so-called intellectual sophisticates in the world I now inhabit, such pieties are often cited as naïve, cornball, quaint, clichéd and old-fashioned. I can visualize their gestures of ridicule and contempt.

I have a feeling that many of those who attended Beck’s rally were brought up to revere these virtues and are confused and frightened by what seems like an abandonment of these principles in modern America. Beck, who often seems inarticulate and bumbling, does, however, call our attention to American history and the values enunciated and fought over by our Founding Fathers. It is time revisit them.

Sadly, many Americans today are ignorant of our early history and the many rhetorical and bloody battles fought to insure our constitutional guarantees and preserve the boundaries of our nationhood. Beck, however he expresses the notion, is dead right on his campaign to revitalize our interest in American history. His passionate agenda on this issue is unassailable. For that alone he is to be commended. We’ll never know where we’re going if we don’t know where we came from.

Critics of this event in the so-called mainstream media see something sinister in the motives of the people who attended this gathering, although they recognize that there is a movement out there that is gaining considerable strength and focus.

Some critics see it as dangerous, a religious cabal, a hidden agenda for what they characterize as a right wing political juggernaut and worse, anti-black, anti-civil rights, anti-gay, anti-democratic, anti-Obama, a political Trojan horse for the Republicans, anti anything that does not fit their rigid rules of political correctness and their version of American plurality. They characterize Beck as a misguided publicity hound, pushing his own personal agenda for fame and profit. In other words a snake oil salesman, an Elmer Gantry, a manipulator, a charlatan.

To some degree they might have a point. After all, in human affairs nothing is all black or all white. But I come down on the side of this rally being a good thing. I’m with this group in their feeling that we’re drifting along a river that is taking us headlong into troubled waters.

There is ample reason for people to be frightened and uncertain. The country seems to be between a rock and a hard place. Optimism about our future is waning. Our sense of a united American family seems cracking.

On many issues we are baffled and nervous that our cherished nation is living on a fault line. People want to kill us for reasons we do not understand and do not really know how to counter.

We are fighting wars that do not have the full backing and participation of all of our citizens. We do not understand the cause nor do we fully understand the zeal and the devious methods of our enemy. Our economy is faltering. People are losing their jobs and their homes. Our politicians seem clueless. Our President talks and talks ad infinitum in what seems more and more like endless platitudes. Nothing appears to be going right. Is there any wonder people are insecure and nervous?

However you characterize this rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial, the amazing attendance signals that Beck has, perhaps unwittingly, struck a chord and, for the most part, it appears that these participants are decent honorable ordinary people who are feeling helpless and growing very very angry.

It is a dangerous time for America, hence my harking back to that old Boy Scout mantra.

Clichés become clichés for a reason. In my view, the Boy Scouts have it right.

Warren Adler is a world-renowned novelist, short story writer and playwright. His books have been translated into more than 25 languages and two of his novels, The War of the Roses and Random Hearts, have been made into enormously popular movies, shown continually throughout the world.

Three short stories from his acclaimed collection The Sunset Gang have been adapted as a trilogy and shown on Public Television stations. Mr. Adler’s 29th and most recent book, Funny Boys, was released in 2008 by The Overlook Press and his fifth short story collection, New York Echoes was published in 2008 by Stonehouse Press. His play Libido is scheduled for an off-Broadway production and his stage adaptation of the novel The War of the Roses is currently being produced in Italy, Berlin, Hamburg, Prague and countries in Scandinavia.

Mr. Adler is a pioneer in electronic publishing and has acquired his complete backlist and converted this entire library to digital publishing formats. As a novelist, Mr. Adler’s themes deal primarily with intimate human relationships—the mysterious nature of love and attraction, the fragile relationships between husbands and wives and parents and children, the corrupting power of money, the aging process and how families cling together when challenged by the outside world. Readers and reviewers have cited his books for their insight and wisdom in presenting and deciphering the complexities of contemporary life.

A product of the New York public school system, Mr. Adler graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School and New York University, where he majored in English literature. Inspired by his freshman English Professor Don Wolfe, Mr. Adler went on to study creative writing with Dr. Wolfe when he taught at the New School. He also studied under Dr. Charles Glicksburg at the New School.

“I wanted to be a novelist since I was fifteen years old,” he says. “Throughout my early career, I would write from five to ten in the morning every day before going to my office, a habit that has stayed with me since.”

Among his classmates were Mario Puzo, William Styron and many other talented writers. Two collections of short stories “American Vanguard” and “Which Grain Will Grow” were published by Doubleday and represented a showcase of many young emerging authors, who like Warren Adler, won both popular and critical acclaim.

“I wanted to be a novelist since I was fifteen years old,” he says. “Throughout my early career, I would write from five to ten in the morning every day before going to my office, a habit that has stayed with me since.”

After graduating from New York University with a degree in English literature, Mr. Adler worked for the New York Daily News before becoming Editor of the Queens Post, a prize winning weekly newspaper on Long Island. His column “Pepper on the Side” became a staple of a number of newspapers in the country.

During the Korean War, after basic training he was recruited by Armed Forces Press Service to serve in the Pentagon as the only Washington Correspondent for the service. His Washington by-line went all over the world and was published in every publication put out by the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and Coast Guard.

Prior to his success as a novelist, Mr. Adler had a distinguished business career. He has owned four radio stations and a TV station, has run his own advertising and public relations agency in Washington, D.C. and was one of the founders with his wife Sonia and son David of the Washington Dossier magazine.

When his first novel was published in 1974, he became a full time novelist.

Today, when not writing, Mr. Adler lectures on creative writing, motion picture adaptation and the future of Electronic Books. He is the founder of the Jackson Hole Writer’s Conference and has been Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Jackson Hole Public Library. He is married to the former Sonia Kline, a magazine editor. He has three sons, David, Jonathan and Michael and four grandchildren and lives in New York City.

Contacting Mr. Adler:

• By email at wadler@WarrenAdler.com.
• For publishing and business issues: Stonehouse Press
• See rights availability for Mr. Adler’s work.

As I grow older, I have become fascinated by “pop memory” and the difference between what I deem popular and what younger people see as popular. This has led me to contemplate where the dividing line is between this generational phenomenon.

For example, if I am sitting in a waiting room and pick up a copy of People magazine, devoted to the happenings of today’s popular celebrities, I quickly discover that I have absolutely no knowledge of who they are or why I should be interested. This is true of most items I am confronted with in the popular media. I used to be an avid reader of gossip columnists, a rabid movie fan, and I prided myself of an acute awareness of the popular culture with an encyclopedic knowledge of the names, lifestyles and antics of so-called celebrities.

No more. I am out of the loop.

Indeed, I sometimes enjoy tweaking my many younger friends with a barrage of questions about what I thought were the well-known names of celebrities only to discover a blank stare and a lined forehead in response. Making allowances, I do not really expect my younger friends to remember Jack Benny, Fred Allen, Fibber McGee and Molly, and Eddie Cantor would be a stretch.

But I have now discovered that even Frank Sinatra is fast becoming a “never heard of” among the “with it” denizens of the upcoming generation. I dare not even ask about Franklin Delano Roosevelt or Winston Churchill and often wonder what would have happened to the memory of George Washington if he wasn’t prominently displayed on the one-dollar bill. Indeed, I have discovered younger people who think he was a bridge, a state, or a national capital. Worse, I have encountered younger people who believe that Adolph Hitler was an actor who played in some movies about Nazis.

As a kid, in the glory days of the Brooklyn Dodgers, I knew every player on the roster and their stats. What would it mean to today’s baseball addict if I mentioned that I had seen Ducky Medwick beaned or thought one of the greatest pitchers on the diamond, although often wild, was Van Lingle Mungo? Think of the giggles I would get from those who worship A-rod or sit in the bleachers of the spanking new Yankee Stadium.

What interests me is not the gap of awareness between the generations, but where one can place the dividing line where memory switches between the now and yesterday. At what age can one expect to be talking in tongues to a younger generation? At what age did my parents begin talking in tongues to me?

My mother once mentioned to me that twenty thousand people showed up at Rudolph Valentino’s funeral. Rudolph who, I wondered then.

In my short story collection New York Echoes, published last year, there was a story called, what else, “The Dividing Line” in which an older man married to a younger woman tries to discover when exactly their memories of the popular culture reach that grey area where neither find common ground. They grapple with this strange gap between them and agree to disagree leaving them to accept the situation as the way of all flesh.

Is it because we are living longer and our memories, if they are still operative, stretch over a larger expanse of time and our natural expectation is that others of whatever age have these same memories? Or is it because the cycle of awareness has accelerated beyond our brain’s vaunted storage ability and we are relying instead on the whirling dervish of technology to keep our memories somewhere in a computer file?

Perhaps this is why I am discovering a dividing line between people in my own age group between those who are reasonably or even marginally computer literate and those who have eschewed the computer as either too complicated or an instrument of the devil. It is often frustrating to discover that a close friend my age does not have e-mail and still relies on the pen and the telephone for their communications. That gap will disappear in time.

I am well aware that these observations are somewhat of a cliché and, I suppose, a normal part of the aging process specific to my generation which got caught in the middle of the computer revolution. I suppose, too, that if one made the effort as a kind of sociological and pedagogical experiment, one could keep up with the emerging pop culture.

On a sentimental note, one might opine that one person’s historical memory is nothing more than normal nostalgia and a yearning for one’s lost youth. This might explain my addiction to the black and white movies cranked out in the golden age of Hollywood. Not only can I name every actor in the flicks and know most of the stories cold, my interest is primarily in the sets, clothes, habits and language of the dialogue.

The atmosphere of those movies was bathed in cigarette smoke, men wore fedoras, and women’s clothes appeared far more elegant than today. People were dressed
up at even the most casual events and the value of money was astonishingly deflated when compared to today’s numbers. Brother can you spare a dime for a cup of coffee would be laughable in today’s Starbucks saturated world. A bad guy was a “mug.” A lady was a “dame” and often called “toots.” People said things like “scram” or “twenty three skidoo” and hundreds of other now dead slang expressions.

Most younger people I know instantly tune out black and white movies. Clark Gable, once known as the king of Hollywood, is identified occasionally by my younger friends as some kind of roofing material and Myrna Loy, at first guess, is usually considered a member of the Chinese Politburo.

Whoever is considered more ignorant or out of touch in the great lottery of life, there is one sure thing. Those who are completely in sync with the comings and goings of the contemporary celebrity culture will one day be completely out of touch with it in a few short years. Indeed, the Beatles will one day go back to being insects, Elvis will be the name of some hip surgery prosthetic, and Marilyn Monroe and Michael Jackson will one day be confused with American Presidents.

Andy Warhol was wrong when he said that everyone will enjoy their fifteen minutes of fame.

The time frame he referred to might one day be measured in seconds.

The e-book is winning. Its ultimate victory was never in doubt.

This does not mean that the printed book will disappear. It will fade out slowly as a viable mass economic enterprise as this new reading technology takes hold. The basic issues were, and still are, about marketing and its twin sister packaging. The product has always been the same, content delivered by words, sometimes embellished by speech and illustrations.

Trade book publishers, using the familiar technology of print on paper and packaging their product for shelving, utilized every practical inducement device to make their product attractive to the potential consumer. They came up with eye-appealing colorful cover art to make their product stand out in stores, created advertising and publicity campaigns, best seller lists, advanced review copies, and endorsements from prominent authors to hawk their product. It worked for years. It still works, but it is morphing into other forms, some yet to be invented.

The education book market with its vast captured audience used other marketing techniques to get their product before students, utilizing the usual ploys of influence, lobbying and marketing, and following traditional methods to keep their product up to date and viable, using different, but effective marketing techniques. That too, worked for decades and that too, is subject to intense innovation as the new technology catches on.

Public libraries will continue to be impacted with the methods of book lending and the use of their facilities as gathering places for the literate and informed. They will live on, but in ways that will evolve their mission to continue their invaluable service.

But what these books contain within their printed covers, the content, will survive forever. Content is king, no matter how it is delivered. It is the economics of the delivery that is the main issue currently in play.

If you can dispense with expensive and complicated distribution expenses and deliver your product at a fraction of the cost of print publishing and without in any way denigrating your product, then the rules of profit and loss apply. Without costly production costs based on older technologies, pared down distribution systems, and no need for warehousing, the result is obvious. You don’t need an advanced degree in economics to see where the publishing industry is headed.

Because the commercial emergence of so-called “electronic paper” and the devices to support its use are accelerating exponentially, the technology will become more and more user friendly. Kindle and SONY Reader, the pioneers of this new marketing miracle will soon have more and more competition from many sources. Devices will be re-engineered and improved. Prices for these devices will be lowered and in the not too distant future electronic publishing will be the norm, the standard for the delivery of content.

This rather dry and self-apparent explanation seems to dismiss the fact that books are not only content deliverers, they are also sources of inspiration, insight, entertainment, and knowledge, and objects of esthetic devotion. They have been our beloved friends for centuries. The large collection of books in my library are like family and the electronic book poses a soul wrenching challenge, not only to the publishing business as it now exists, but to the psyche of all those who cherish books. Those that come after us will barely notice, if at all, the revolutionary character of the changeover of content distribution.

One cannot argue with reality. In my lifetime I have seen an endless line of products disappear from stores. Remember the ice box, the silk stocking, the girdle, the corset, the washboard, the mechanical lawn mower, horse drawn transportation, steam locomotives, the manual gearshift, the rotary dial telephone, the black and white movie, and on and on. But why belabor the obvious.

The paper book, bless it, will now go through the grueling process of pre-emption.
The good news is that content will never die. It is the circulatory system of the human intellect, the very heart of the one-on-one system of human communication through words. Innovation will provide another way to dispense content and create profit- making opportunities.

When I digitized all my then published novels more than a dozen years ago, I was defending my authorial name and assuring that my books will never go out of print, every author’s nightmare. There was a brief window of opportunity since publishers, during the early days of my novel writing career, had not yet demanded that their authors give up their e-book rights. That window has closed. Publishers now covet electronic rights and Google is now digitizing all out of print books.

The challenge for publishers and authors now is how to find traction on the infinite highway of limitless content. It will not be easy to separate the author from the pack, although clever innovation might one day find a profitable path. So far this magic bullet is illusive.

Marketing and distribution skills will be revamped to tackle the new reality. Authors and their heirs whose out of print books will be able to see the light of day via the Google operation will at the very least have their books available, although it is unlikely they will see much, if any, income. Even if the books are still under copyright, only the tiniest fraction of authors will ever see a dime. The book listings will be infinite.

We are entering a new world of book publishing through electronic books. At this point in history they are still a small part of the total book publishing economic pie. But the avalanche is coming as more and more books are digitized and more and more devices hit the market. The competitive issue now will be tweaking the devices to make them more efficient and user friendly as well as pricing their content.

Publishers are awakening from a long slumber as they are challenged to meet the electronic onslaught. Some will not go willingly into the fray, just as horse drawn coach manufacturers resisted the automobile. Others will figure out ways to compete and innovate, embellish and monetize their skill as the gatekeepers of content.

One thing is certain. Content will not disappear. In fact, it will multiply as more and more content providers enter the vast cloud of the wired world. The challenge will be how to find the model that will allow the publishing business to continue to be viable in this new environment, and how authors will attract and aggregate their readership and be supported by their art.

It will not be an easy task.

Funny Boys, the latest novel by War of the Roses author Warren Adler about the Borscht Belt and Murder Inc.(circa1937) has been optioned for a film. It is the 12th novel of Mr. Adler’s bought or optioned by Hollywood.

Mr. Adler, whose The War of the Roses novel was adapted as a movie with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner and Random Hearts with Harrison Ford and Kristin Scott Thomas, has published 30 novels which have been translated into 25 foreign languages.

Funny Boys is the story of a comedian, or in the Yiddish idiom of the time, a “tumler,” in a Catskill mountain resort hotel in 1937 who gets entangled with the mobsters of Murder Inc.

The story authentically reenacts the speech and customs of the era. In the thirties, forties and fifties the area was known as the Borscht Belt and nourished the careers of some of the most famous comedians of the time such as Milton Berle, Red Button, Jerry Lewis, Sam Levinson, Myron Cohen, Sid Caesar and scores of others.

Murder Inc. was one of the most feared and ruthless gangs in New York, a combination of Jewish and Italian mobsters who wreaked havoc in New York before World War II. The novel recreates the atmosphere and environment of one of the most colorful eras in the twentieth century.

“Every time I option or sell a book to the movies I have high hopes for the picture to be made and be a smash hit. I feel certain that the material in Funny Boys, if handled correctly, has all the ingredients to make that happen.”

Another novel by Mr. Adler and James Hume, Target Churchill, which deals with an assassination attempt on the life of Winston Churchill has also been optioned by another production company. Mr. Adler wrote the screenplay.

Three of Mr. Adler’s short stories in the acclaimed collection entitled The Sunset Gang were adapted into a three-hour trilogy and shown on the PBS network. A musical of the stories written by Mr. Adler with composer L. Russell Brown was performed in Manhattan.

Cited as one of the 100 Best Authors on Twitter, Mr. Adler is also a pioneer in electronic publishing having digitized his books starting more than a decade ago. All of his novels are available on Kindle, the SONY Reader and all digital devices and through bookstores worldwide.

“I am always baffled when a book of mine is either optioned or bought outright by the movie people,” Mr. Adler said. “I don’t write with the movies in mind. One of my books Private Lies was purchased outright for 1.2 million and, after more millions were invested to develop it, it was never made. This was also the fate of Trans-Siberian Express, Madeline’s Miracles, novels from my Fiona FitzGerald mystery series, and others, some of which were optioned and bought numerous times.
“It is a flawed system, but somehow it manages to survive. Unfortunately, original material gets short shrift in the face of Hollywood’s penchant to base its future productions on past marketplace experience. ”

Mr. Adler is often outspoken about the adaptations of his novels. He considers The War of the Roses one of the most successful adaptations of a book to a movie and cites the fact that it has become a classic depiction of divorce. The term a “War of the Roses divorce” is now part of the world-wide nomenclature to describe the existential battles between separating spouses. Mr. Adler has never been divorced.

He was not as complimentary about the way Random Hearts was adapted and wrote a critique of the film in The New York Times.

Mr. Adler is also a playwright and short story writer. His latest collection of stories is New York Echoes and his plays are currently being produced in Europe. He is in the fifth year of his short story contest which has fostered talent among many writers through the contest’s popularity on the Internet.

The option to Lime Orchard Production, helmed by Jami Gertz and Stacey Lubliner was arranged through Hughes Entertainment.

As the fifth year of the Warren Adler Short Story Competition draws to a close I thought it would interesting to share some of my observations about what I have learned about these so-called “contests” and the nature and motivation of those who submit and those who judge.

Before such competition proliferated on the internet I was involved in two short story competitions as both motivator and judge sponsored by the State of Wyoming Arts Council, a state in which I happily resided for nearly two decades.

First, my own motivation in helping to initiate and sponsor such a contest. I have always loved the short story as a literary device. In my opinion it is a literary art form of great purity, requiring discipline, a sense of craft, the skillful use of condensation and the challenge of narrative drive to swiftly engage the reader’s interest. Slightly exaggerating the imagery, I look upon the form as creating a vast world on the head of a pin.

While the short story no longer has the earning potential or popularity of years past when one could actually earn a living as a short story writer, the method and the idea of short fiction will, as a consequence of the growing brevity of attention spans, return once again to its rightful place on the mantle of literary acceptance. The thirst for storytelling is locked into our DNA, both as teller and “listener.”

My motivation for involving myself in such a competition is quite simply the preservation, encouragement and dissemination of the short story form. There is no shortage of people who want to write short stories and there is no shortage of people who want to read them. Both recognition and a cash prize are, of course, lures for submissions, but I have found that the former, being cited for talent and skill, has a lot more meaning for the writer than the cash.

In fact, I have discovered that the passion to become a full time writer both in fiction and non-fiction is growing exponentially in intensity and the competition for publication and recognition is as fierce and combative as anything I have seen in my lifetime. As paying markets shrink and words proliferate unfettered on the internet, a serious writer is faced with the frustrating, daunting and, often impossible task, of gaining traction in the marketplace for a full time career.

Because of this, the so-called short story contest has proliferated. There are so many being promoted and advertised that I sometimes think it a miracle that our contest has been able to sustain itself for half a decade. In the last two contests we have been forced to charge a modest fee of fifteen dollars to cover the expense of administration. It hardly pays for the cash prizes, which are largely my own contribution, offered happily and satisfying my own compulsion to advance the cause of the short story.

Of course, the key to the competition lies in the integrity of the judges, their point of view, their dedication to the process and the assurance that each submission will be read and evaluated in a fair and equitable manner. That is the standard that motivates our contest. Nothing matters than the story itself.

By its nature, the process is subjective and each judge brings to it a point of view that, like judges everywhere, requires a fierce inner debate and a sense of emotional connection with the author’s artistry. An experience in judging a Wyoming short story contest in which I was one of three judges taught me a severe and painful lesson in integrity and the necessity of maintaining standards.

One year, I nor the other two judges, both creative writing academics, could find in the submissions any short story that was worthy of being chosen for a grand prize. We were torn between fulfilling our mandate or simply not awarding a prize for that year. We chose not to award a prize. The decision was unanimous. The Wyoming Arts Council was furious. We had challenged the bureaucracy, sin of sins. The following year I was asked to leave the turf. So much for standards. Were we right or wrong?

As an aside, I must confess that I am wary of most awards for literature, from the Pulitzer, the Booker and on and on. Perhaps even the Nobel. Do the judges actually read all those books submitted or are they subject to panels of “screeners” who get to screen only the most hyped books by publishers and critics then toss them over to the high powered names to make the final selections. I guess I must be cynical to the core if I dare question whether even those prestigious judges actually read every book of those authors who are chosen. This is not to say I disagree with the choices. But I do get depressed when I discover that many of those authors chosen have not stood the test of time and are mostly forgotten.

Our present competition has three judges, Thane Rosenberg, a serious writer of novels and non-fiction, Kirsten Neuhaus, an agent who understands the marketplace, and yours truly. We make our choices and will undoubtedly fiercely debate the so-called winners, an agonizing decision, since so many of the submissions display the skill and talent of dedicated writers.

We are all presently deep in the process of reading submissions and will announce the winners in a few weeks and then we will post the winners on our website www.warrenadler.com. Our previous winners are posted on the site as well. We are proud of our choices and we hope that their skill and talent will engage their readers as they engaged us.

The Hurt Locker, a film about a bomb squad in Iraq is a most amazing film, and one of the few films of recent vintage which actually tells the truth about what it means to be a professional soldier. Indeed, it is so different from the usual politically charged tripe about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that one wonders how the director Kathryn Bigelow ever got it made.

Indeed, ever since Vietnam, American servicemen, especially those in enlisted status have been characterized by the mediaocrity as using the services as a kind of last resort, a collection of losers at the bottom of the social barrel who join the Army to suck up benefits they could not get as civilians. Hollywood, which gets its cue from the same source, has often failed to understand the motivation of the professional soldier.
At the screening I attended, Kathryn Bigelow was on hand to answer questions posed by the audience. It was a theater in the west side of Manhattan, a place that is normally characterized as ground zero of the liberal intellectual elite, where ferment, contention and argument are in the oxygen.

By itself the movie is mesmerizing and the puzzle of the bomb defuser’s motivation is posed by a quote at the beginning that indicates that war was as addictive as drugs. The soldier defuser, despite the danger and risk, clearly loves his work. Played by a superb actor, he brings to his role absolute fidelity and while those who asked questions admired the movie, they seemed unable to understand the man’s motivation, which was far from what passed for the prevailing opinion in this area.

I wished I had gotten up and asked a question largely because I wanted instead to make an assertion based on my own experience as a soldier. I was more of an observer, a reluctant conscript, but I did observe the professional soldier in action. Like any true professional, a dancer, a writer, a mechanic, an athlete and on and on, the consummate professional is indeed addicted to his work. In the case of the hero of this movie, yes he is addicted to his job, not war, but the job itself.

This man is proud of his expertise. Despite the horrendous risk and danger, he loves the defusing process, the challenge of the wiring, the instinctive discovery of how the bomb was constructed and placed for maximum impact. He must get into the mind and motivation of the bomber to fulfill the objective of his job.
The bottom line of his effort is to prevent the bomb from killing people. Thus, the movie at its heart is about saving lives. By the tenor of the questions asked of Ms. Bigelow, the audience seemed reluctant to admit that it was possible for a soldier to love his work and to be proud of his expertise.

Indeed, the movie makes clear that the soldier feels never more alive than when he is doing his job on the battlefield. In recent years, however one feels about the origins and conduct of the various wars in which America has been engaged, somehow the military man has suffered the brunt of the negative criticism. This movie turns that concept on its head.

Looking back on my years in the Army, I have come to deeply respect the professional soldier. I saw many of them in action, doing their job with professional pride, just as in any occupation and calling. These are not people at the bottom, not, as some have portrayed them, life’s losers. No way. We are lucky to have them.
Kathryn Bigelow and her team are to be congratulated for their courage and persistence in getting this independent film made.

If I were a college kid in Iran, I’d really be pissed off.

If I were a guy I would see my future foreclosed by a bunch of religious fanatics trying to convince me that they were getting their messages directly from God. My future is a lot longer than those guys who run the show and won’t let me be young, have my own opinions, dream my dreams, have a chance at a future that tastes the good life, the fulfilled life. I’d be sick to death of tired old men telling me how to live my life. Screw them.

I’d consider what I had to face after graduation. Limited employment opportunities, high inflation, broken dreams, a drumbeat of unfulfilled promises, my future in the hands of idiots who insist that my thoughts be in lock-step with their antiquated views. I’d not be happy about my President going around the world acting like some bigoted clown and making my country look like we’re a bunch of hateful yahoos who support crackpots who go around blowing themselves up in the name of what? I love life. I’d want to have joy and fun and speak freely without some guy with a baton batting me on the head or threatening me with prison.

Hell, I don’t think America is the Great Satan. I’d like America and I’d like Americans. The kids in college in America have a much better shot at the good life than I could have here. Darn right I’d go to protest. This other guy I’d be supporting is not so hot either, but at the very least I wouldn’t want to hear any more bullshit about democracy. There’s no real democracy here. I’d want my vote to count. I’d want a better shot at the future.

Come on America. Go Europe. Can’t you see we’re locked up in a prison cell? Help us.

If I were a gal in college, I’d be doubly pissed off.

Look at what I’d have to face when I graduate. The men who run our country want to keep us down, encourage us to be a bunch of mindless breeders and wear that black outfit that completely demolishes my individuality.

Don’t I have a right to dress pretty, to exercise my right to celebrate my femininity? Why do they foreclose on my future? I’d feel trapped, chained to old rules created by old men who haven’t a clue what goes on in the mind and heart of a young woman. I wouldn’t want to be a second-class citizen. Stop stepping on my future. I’d want freedom and opportunity. Who wants bombs? Not me. Why are these morons wasting our money? Who are we going to bomb? Jews? I’d wonder what the Jews have ever done to us? Besides, I’d never met one. They left here long ago.

Sure I’d be going out to the streets to protest. What would I have to lose? I’d see on television how other women live in other countries. Why can’t I live like them? What do I threaten? I am a young woman with dreams like young women everywhere. Tear down those stupid barriers, you dirty old men. And I’d wonder where was the support of my sisters in other countries who won their rights by raising their voices? How about if they raise their voice for me? Where are they? Come on American women, I’d shout. Speak up. Your sisters are prisoners here in Iran.

My President?, I’d say. You’ve got to be kidding. You don’t represent me. I don’t want to be told how to dress, how to live, how to love. And I wouldn’t want my money spent to help spread chaos in other lands. For what? So that other women in these other lands can live like me. No way.

See me march in the streets, I’d shout. For crying out loud Americans, say something, support us. Believe me, this is no place to be young. It’s bad enough for young men and, believe me, I’d say, it’s worse for young women. We are drowning here. Help us.

I have spent years as a political groupie and an observer of the personalities who played major and minor roles on the political scene. Living in Washington for decades, I knew many of the political figures who appeared on and off the stage, including Presidents, Senators and Congressmen.

Before my literary career gained traction, I ran a number of political campaigns for both Democrats and Republicans and can say, with modesty, that I understand how the system operates. I have seen political stars rise and fall for reasons both deserved and undeserved.

I do admit to a centrist position as my personal political doctrine. Admittedly, I am, like many novelists, more of an observer than activist and I do feast on argument and contention as a learning experience.

Having reached the age of entitlement, I say what I think, however outside the mainstream of prevailing opinion and I do believe in the polite laws of debate. I love hearing contrary views, listen carefully, applaud and encourage them in others and passionately refute them without restraint or personal animosity.

All that said, I vociferously disagree with obtuse entertainers like David Letterman and the vast Army of media mavens and talking heads who have been bashing Sarah Palin. It disgusts me.

Governor Palin, to my mind, is the ideal of a certain type of feminine achiever, a role model to a vast majority of women who have aspirations to have it all, meaning marriage, motherhood and achievement in a profession that requires hands on leadership skills. Others might not consider this path the paragon of female aspirations nor does it disparage them to offer her as an example.

Imagine, this full time devoted mother and wife, a woman of tireless energy, who brought down the old boy network in her home state and worked her way into the Governorship and is considered one of the most popular Governors in the United States to be the object of the vilest personal attacks in modern political life.

One might argue as Harry Truman did, that if you can’t take the heat stay out of the kitchen. Indeed, our political life has been filled with vicious accusations of sinister motives hurled by journalists, talking heads and political enemies against people with whom they disagree. Every politician knows he or she is fair game.

While I don’t agree with Governor Palin on every issue, I admire her achievement, her pluck and her remarkable restraint in the face of the worst underserved drubbing of a political figure in modern memory. I’m not an Alaskan or a Midwesterner but I do know of her remarkable achievement in pushing a gas pipeline that will carry Alaskan gas through Canada to warm the homes of many Midwesterners. Even her enemies will acknowledge this as a major accomplishment after years of fruitless negotiations by others.

As Americans we all have a right to excoriate our politicians, to vocally blast them when we think they are wrong, but I do think that remarks like those of an insensitive TV host insulting a 14 year old child is beyond the pale, in fact nauseating. What devoted and loving mother or father wouldn’t kick back when their child is insulted? Remember Harry Truman writing that letter to the music critic who wrote an insulting review about his daughter’s singing. Every politician who knows the sting of such criticism should have come to her defense and the idiot host should have apologized. Are you listening Carters and Clintons?

Sarah Palin, whatever you may think of her, has proven that she can take care of herself. She may not be some Ivy League hotshot, many of who have screwed up the country in the last couple of decades. She may not speak with great rhetorical flourishes or offer an image of gravitas so beloved of talking television heads. Indeed, she may even be too attractive to be taken seriously by those who expect their female politicians to be more matronly, prefer pants suits to dresses and not be burdened with the messy mommy problems of child rearing.

I need not wonder how Michelle Obama would have reacted if some TV host had disparaged her two beautiful girls. Mr. Letterman would not have been able to sit down for days.

Those like myself, who celebrate the rise of women in our society after years of restriction should be defending Sarah Palin, especially in this instance, not demeaning her.

When I arrived at the University Heights campus at NYU at the age of seventeen in January 1945, I was astonished at its beauty, the wonderful landscaping and the architectural wonders that fully realized my fantasies of what a college campus should look like.

World War II was in its European death throes and the ASTP boys in uniform were, if memory serves, still active on the campus. The trip from Brooklyn from the Kingston Avenue IRT station to Burnside Avenue was more than an hour and the walk to the campus another fifteen minutes. I didn’t mind. I was teethed on the subway. My family never owned a car.

My parents could never afford to pay for campus dormitory housing and having traveled to High School by subway, I did not find it a hardship at all. By every measure I was attending a real college on a beautiful campus in a jewel of a setting high above a sparkling river. Sadly, it is no longer part of NYU, a historical mistake in judgment.

I registered for an accelerated course which would mean that I would earn my degree in two years eight months. Life was uncertain for a seventeen year old in that time. In less than a year, I would register for the draft and the prospects for ending the war with Japan were not promising. The Japanese although pushed back to the mainland were apparently determined to fight to the end.

At that stage in my life I had no idea what I wanted to do. I had just graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School, an elite school that filled its ranks from students who had passed a rather difficult test and allegedly had a high enough IQ to pass the demanding courses. It took me one term to determine that I was not very interested in technical matters. Besides, it was an all boys school, a feature not very attractive to a young student whose testerone level was rising precipitously. I went through classes like an automaton, graduating somewhere in the lower half of a class of more than 700 graduates.

I was captivated by the Heights campus, made friends easily and, by some miracle of oratory and what must have been a deftly written speech I was elected President of the freshman class. This election produced a clipping in the campus newspaper that my father carried in his wallet until the day he died. I loved my days on campus and proudly wore the uniform of the ROTC. Unable to afford much else, I worked after classes in all sorts of odd jobs. I did not think this a hardship or unusual since I had worked after school ever since I was eligible for working papers when I was fourteen.

All freshman courses were required curriculum. But it was my course in English, taught by Professor Don M. Wolfe that, in retrospect changed my life forever. Many college students can cite similar experiences, the mentor, the inspiration, the great teacher who took the student under his or her wing and made the crucial difference, who pointed the way to a fulfilling and prosperous career.

Although I read compulsively and diligently, mostly the great adventure stories for boys that I found on the shelves of the Stone Avenue children’s library in Brooklyn I had never seriously imagined myself as a writer of the imagination. Nevertheless, in retrospect, I believe the spark must have been there. Perhaps it was my mother’s example. She was an inveterate customer of the lending libraries that were all over Brooklyn in those years, where for pennies a day you could rent all the novels that you could consume. It was part of her regular routine after the housework was over to concentrate on novels. Returning from school, I found her always with her nose in a book. If that was the spark, Dr. Wolfe was the one who provided the kindling.

He was not robust, nor did he have the propensity to charm his students with professorial humor or was he a master of the sardonic rebuke. He was pleasant and businesslike, hardly warm and fuzzy. He was clearly a dedicated teacher, but he was not given to socializing with students. He was not mesmerizing, but it was obvious that he loved teaching. I had no knowledge of his past or his background. He had arrived in my life full grown as himself, sent my way as a kind of miracle.

He assigned compositions and encouraged us to stretch the use of the language to create imaginative imagery and use muscular words to tell our stories and create our plots and descriptions. He was extremely diligent in his reading of our material. When I would receive one of my compositions back, he wrote his criticisms in red ink scrawls and you felt dead certain that he had read every word. It was through those red scrawls that I interpreted his message. You can write, son. Keep at it.

He did not single me out as anyone special in the class. Indeed, I can’t remember that he ever singled anyone out at all, but receiving those critiques, mostly words of praise and encouragement, clipped and copious, was all I needed to make my lifetime decision. I don’t know if he ever knew the impact that these tiny critiques made on my life, but he kindled something deep in my psyche, an ambition that still burns inside of me to this day. Is that not the ultimate reward for a dedicated teacher? For that reason alone, I will always love my alma mater.

I got an A in freshman English and, in fact, in all my English courses, two of which stick in my mind as essential building blocks in career, the European novel taught by Professor Ranney and the Bible as History taught by Professor Baer who was the Dean of the College of Arts and Science in those years. I extend to them my belated gratitude.

Believe me I am not exaggerating the impact of Professor Wolfe and the enhancement of the other professors. I was not as successful in my other courses, especially the sciences. Summers as part of my accelerated program I went to Washington Square, but none of the Professors there made as much of an impact on me as Doctor Wolfe.

A year after graduation I followed Dr. Wolfe to the New School to take a creative writing course. By then I was committed to spend my life writing novels, short stories and plays. Taking his course was like the icing on the cake. In my class was Mario Puzo and a number of other writers of great talent who I feel certain were equally inspired by Dr. Wolfe. At the New School, Dr. Wolfe arrange for the publication of a number of short story collections. Included in those anthologies was the work of remarkable talents among them Puzo and William Styron.

Was he aware of the fact that he was the greatest influence in my life? Perhaps in the lives of others as well? I doubt it. Sixty two years after my encounter with Dr. Wolfe, I credit him with continuing to be the greatest influence on my life and work.

Even today in my still very active career, he is still my teacher and guide. I cannot write a single sentence without wondering what Dr. Wolfe would say about it in his red ink scrawls.