I have two gifts for my readers today: A book and a movie.
The book: Sometimes I read a novel that screams for me to share it, and frankly, that doesn’t happen often. However, sometimes the book is so unique, so deep, so special, so literary that I must share it only with an equally unique, deep, special, literary person. That is, I must share it with someone who savors words and sentences; one who bathes in imagery as one might bathe in a tub of bubble suds; one who is patient with the author and does not require the fast turning of pages with the plot as the priority; one who expects more than action, character and setting; one who reads to gather meaning from the lives of others and who searches for words to live by. The book I just read is one of those treasures. It is a book I will quote from now and in the future: Peace Like a River (2001 by Grove Press) by Leif Enger. I never heard of the author, Leif Enger, but the jacket of the book says the book was a “National Bestseller” with a quote by Andrew Roe of the San Francisco Chronicle: “Peace Like a River serves as a reminder of why we read fiction to begin with.” Although I no longer take much stock in the accolades of commercial media that lost its luster and credibility with me, but that quote describes this novel perfectly so I have to give credit where it’s due.
Here’s a quote from this book that I will treasure and share always:
“Someday, you know, we’re going to be shown the great ledger of our recorded decisions — a dread concept you nonetheless know in your deepest soul as true.”
The movie: I haven’t had this much fun watching a movie in a long, long time! Captain Newman M.D. is now a vintage film released in 1963. Combine the delicious ingredients of inspired acting and engaging plot with priceless ironic banter, and I can say it was time well spent with Gregory Peck, Tony Curtis, Angie Dickinson, Robert Duvall, and even Bobby Darin. It is almost sinful to enjoy the humorous irony of such remarkable sanity manifesting in neuropsychiatric Ward 7 at an Army Air Corps hospital in Arizona during WWII. This film is reminiscent of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest only with more light than darkness.
When the wife of a patient cries about the meaninglessness of life and how hopeless it all is — doctors working tirelessly to cure wounded soldiers (in this clinic, their physical and psychological wounds), so they can be sent back into battle to be killed. Greg Peck replies: “[Your husband] He found some meaning. Men need to matter and have it make some difference that he lived at all.”
Don’t let me give you the impression that this is a sad, somber drama. It is dramatic yes, but also quite a comedy! I have never seen Tony Curtis give a more entertaining performance than he does as Corporal Jackson ‘Jake’ Leibowitz, a guy from my hometown, Jersey City, who speaks Italian and many other languages, playing foil to Gregory Peck as the Army doctor, who is doing his best to rehabilitate a ward full of damaged men while trying to “manage,” the creative, well-meaning and unpredictable Leibowitz. It will make you smile. It will make you laugh. It will make you cry.
YOUTUBE LINK: