Reasons to Live by Amy Hempel
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"I thought the present was the safer bet. We can only die in the future, I thought; right now we are always alive."

Reasons to Live (1985) is the third collection of short stories by Amy Hempel that I have read, after At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom and Tumble Home. One of the reasons that I keep returning to her collections of short stories might be a coincidental similarity in our biographies. Not only was I born in the same year as Ms. Hempel, but also both of us relocated to California from a city where many people speak Polish (Chicago for her, Warsaw for me).

The term "short stories" is not really adequate, particularly when referring to stories from this collection. One should call the genre mastered by Ms. Hempel "very short stories." These literary miniatures, snapshots of life, are just a few pages long - their length ranges from one to 15 pages.

To me, the best thing about the majority of Ms. Hempel's miniatures is that the reader has to do a little work to interpret them, to understand their meaning, and to see the "message" they convey. More importantly, different readers may find different messages in individual stories. And that's how it should be - after all, this is literature, not just storytelling!

Sadness is the common mood evoked by most stories in this collection, and the common motifs are loss, grief, and death. The first micro-story, In a Tub, deals with fear of death and celebration of life and sets the tone for the entire collection of 15 stories. Some of my favorite miniatures are: In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried in which the narrator describes how she did not help her friend who was dying - she left her alone for the final hours. The poignant Going ends with a beautiful, bittersweet passage:

"[...] it makes me think of the night my mother died. Three states away, the smell in my room was the smell of the powder on her face when she kissed me good-night - the night she wasn't there."

In moving When It's Human Instead of When It's Dog, a cleaning woman is trying to remove a spot on the rug - that stain is all that is physically left of a once living, loving, and loved human being.

The final miniature, Today Will Be a Quiet Day, is the sweetest. It also justifies the title of the collection. With all this death, loss, grief, and sadness, are there any reasons to live? Yes! One of the most important reasons is being able to make one's children happy and feel loved:

"My kids are as right as this rain. He smiled at the exact spots he knew their heads were turned to his, and doubted he would ever feel -- not better but more than he did now.

Three-and-a-half stars.

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The Triggerman's Dance by T. Jefferson Parker
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"The only living things proximate to the event that remained truly unrippled were the eucalyptus tree and the poppies in the planter near where Rebecca, heart-shot and staggering, then heart-shot again, fell and died in the pouring rain."

A disappointment from one of my favorite crime authors: T. Jefferson Parker's thriller The Triggerman's Dance (1996) fails to deliver on the promise of its first chapters. The well-written beginning of the novel will captivate the reader. Alas, roughly after 100 pages, my interest in the plot began to weaken, to completely disappear towards the end of the book.

A brief synopsis of the setup: Costa Mesa, Orange County, California. Rebecca Harris, a young intern in the Orange County Journal, has been shot to death. It soon becomes clear that the bullets were meant for Ms. Baum, the newspaper columnist, for whom Ms. Harris worked. The initial investigation establishes that Ms. Baum's planned assassination would be considered a hate crime, because of her being a woman, Jewish, and promulgating left-wing views. Joshua Weinstein, an FBI agent, who also happened to be Ms. Harris' fiancé, is handling the investigation. The suspect is one Vann Holt, a very rich land- and business-owner, known for his right-wing views, extreme even for generally conservative Orange County. In yet another major twist in the setup, Mr. Weinstein recruits John Menden, a journalist, and Ms. Harris' lover, to help with the investigation.

I would have no problem with the contrived concept of the fiancé and the lover pooling their resources to find the killer of the woman they both adored if only it served some purpose in the novel. The unusual setup provides no literary payoff, though; the relationship dynamics between the two men are not shown with much psychological depth.

Yet the greatest disappointment for me is Mr. Parker's writing in The Triggerman's Dance. I like many of his novels for their economical, dispassionate, yet vivid prose, whereas at one point in this book the author even stoops to pretentious, capital-letter style:

"He craved Clarity and disliked the anger of the Red Zone.[...] But Clarity brought steadfastness to his vision and his limbs. Clarity allowed his eyes to see and his mind to work. You could ride Clarity, like a good machine, through thickets of confusion and rage."

Or my least favorite phrase from the novel:

"They run. They shoot. They run. They fight."

which is repeated several times, with different pronouns. This stylistic device reminds me of the adolescent male prose of Mr. Palahniuk's Fight Club.

Finally, why do we need 540 pages? Trimmed down to 300 - 350 pages, and cleaned of histrionics, it could be a great thriller, like many other novels by Mr. Parker are.

Two-and-a-half stars.


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Eyewitness To Power: The Essence of Leadership Nixon to Clinton by David Gergen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Of these [qualities], integrity is the most important for a president. As former senator Alan Simpson said in introducing Gerald Ford at Harvard [...]: 'If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don't have integrity, nothing else matters.'"

David Gergen has been my favorite political commentator since mid-to-late 1980s when I religiously watched his segments on the PBS' MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. I would like to note that I admired the depth and sharpness of his insights even if I vehemently disagreed with the political philosophy of some of the presidents he worked for. For instance, Mr. Gergen was the Director of Communications and Assistant to Ronald Reagan, a president whose certain positive qualities became visible to me only in the light of later presidential disasters, like the forty-third and, particularly, the forty-fifth one.

The author worked for four sitting presidents: Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Clinton, and also for Bush (the elder) before he was elected, and for Carter, after his presidency. Mr. Gergen clearly defines the main intent of his Eyewitness to Power (2000), a New York Times bestseller, in the Preface:

"Rather than inflict a personal memoir upon readers, I try here to bring together what I have learned about presidential leadership. The bulk of the book will trace out the lessons I carried away from the presidents I served in the White House."

Chapters 2 and 3, dedicated to Richard Nixon, provide fascinating reading. Mr. Gergen exposes the bright and the dark sides of Nixon's nature and offers sharp diagnoses about motivations behind the president's decisions:

"To Nixon, history was a handmaiden to leadership. He drew upon it in three ways: to gain a broader perspective on his own times; to impress upon listeners his place in the sun; and to find role models for action."

The title of one of the sections in Chapter 3, Confusing Power with Leadership is probably my favorite phrase in the entire text. The author clearly shows that not understanding the distinction was one of the main reasons for Nixon's downfall. In one passage, the author does not shy away from broad humor: he quotes Haldeman's memorandum that was conveying Nixon's instructions:

"'The president would like to have the bowling ball man come in and fit Mrs. Nixon and Tricia for balls as soon as possible.'"

Chapter 4, A Man of Character is dedicated to leadership aspects of Gerald Ford's short, transitional presidency. The following quote is quite illuminating:

"I have always thought him [Ford] the most decent man I have known in presidency. [...] Emotionally, he was the healthiest president we have had since Eisenhower and Truman."

The author explains that "Jerry Ford didn't need to be president to be happy with his life's arc." He was "well-centered" and "comfortable with himself."

Chapters 5, 6, and 7 (whose titles are so well chosen! The Natural, A Rooseveltian Style, Secrets of the Great Communicator) are dedicated to leadership Ronald Reagan-style. It is obvious that the author considers his presidency to be the most successful of the four he describes, despite admitting that Mr. Reagan had a "second-rate mind." Although I would assign Mr. Reagan's mind a larger ordinal number than "second", I have to grudgingly agree with the author as to the overall evaluation of Mr. Reagan's presidency (particularly now, having witnessed the utter ruination of the office in the recent four years). How is it possible not to agree with

"[...] I recognize that he had his flaws and that many do not share his politics. But even for those who oppose his views, there is a lot to be learned from him about public communications."

The author explains the many factors that contributed to the popular success of Reagan's style of leadership. One of the most important is clearly spelled out:

"[...] leaders must inspire people with confidence in the future. Only if he truly believes in the future himself will his followers make a leap and join him."

Chapters 8, 9, and 10 are dedicated to the study of leadership under Bill Clinton:

"Clinton will always be our paradox. [...] he left the country far better off than he found it. Economically, socially, even culturally, the nation made substantial gains during his stewardship. [...] Yet a sense of aching disappointment hangs over his presidency. How much more he could have achieved [...]"

The author attributes some of the reasons for this sense of disappointment to errors committed during the transition period between the election and January 20th, 1992:

"There is no doubt - even in his mind, I think - that his transition planted seeds that almost destroyed his presidency."

On the one hand, the author praises Clinton for his evident achievements, like passage of NAFTA, despite it being unpopular "in both the Congress and in public polls." On the other, Mr. Gergen clearly points out the deficiencies of Clinton's leadership that contributed to the failure of his health reform plan.

The book ends with Conclusion titled Seven Lessons of Leadership. This list of "seven keys to responsible and effective leadership in the White House" provides a masterful summary of the main ideas on political leadership. In my view, the "Gergen's List" should be mandatory reading for everyone interested in learning about or practicing politics.

To sum up this overlong review, Eyewitness to Power is an outstanding book, one of the best books about politics I have ever read. A great study of leadership, strong on deep analyses, and virtually devoid of gossipy fluff and self-aggrandizement. Very strongly recommended!

Four-and-a-half stars.



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