In the Garden of Lost Paradise

As the smoke and ash were still rising from the felled twin towers, reports began to surface that certain of the 9/11 hijackers had visited a strip club in Florida while here training to be pilots.

Just how credible such reports are—or the numerous other terrorist “sightings” that began to flood in during the aftermath of that devastating September day—has oft been debated. Did men claiming to be holy warriors attacking America for, among other things, their ideas of “impurity” and “sin” drink and gamble and get lap dances and attempt to hire prostitutes?

That humans don’t live up to what we claim to stand for, that we are able to justify and rationalize—sometimes to a pathological degree—is the stuff dreams are made of. And what is fiction if not a kind of twilight between waking and sleep where elements from both worlds intertwine and form narrative?

In “The Garden of Last Days” Andre Dubus III dreams of the intersection where a Florida stripper and a 9/11 highjacker meet, exploring them and the people around them in the way only a novelist can.

From the book jacket:

“One early September night in Florida, a stripper brings her daughter to work.

April's usual babysitter, Jean, has had a panic attack that has landed her in the hospital. April doesn't really know anyone else, so she decides it's best to have her three-year-old daughter close by, watching children's videos in the office while she works.

April works at the Puma Club for Men. And tonight she has an unusual client, a foreigner both remote and too personal, and free with his money. Lots of it, all cash. His name is Bassam. Meanwhile, another man, AJ, has been thrown out of the club for holding hands with his favorite stripper, and he's drunk and angry and lonely. From these elements comes a relentless, searing, page-turning narrative—a big-hearted and painful novel about sex and parenthood and honor and masculinity.”

Why people do the things we do is endlessly fascinating, and fiction is a great place to explore motivation. Like us, characters, particularly the less thoughtful and insightful ones, are often not aware of motives, and even those of us who continually examine what we do and why we do it, never fully understand. People are complex—some far more than others. We rarely realize the degree to which our culture and family and flawed programming and perceptions determine who we are and what we do.

Though “The Garden of Last Days” doesn’t attempt to explain them, it does at least raise the questions: What makes someone rigid? Fundamentalist? Terrorist? What causes someone to become a stripper? What causes people to frequent strip clubs? What causes a man to hit a woman? Why are some people kind, others cruel? Why do some people spread love and goodness, others judgment, discord, pain?

There’s no one answer to any of these questions. Motivation is a mystery. Psychology, theology, sociology, philosophy, biology can only tell us so much.

You and I could be next to each other doing nearly the exact same activity for motivations that are nearly antithetical to each other. No two strippers have the same motivation any more than any two writers or teachers or bartenders or ministers or counselors. Sure, many people are motivated by money—too many and too motivated—but there are always other ways to farm for lettuce, and they’re often easier and more profitable. Why do we choose the ones we do?
As a mom, April is flawed, sure—who isn’t?—but she does far less damage than nearly all the people judging her.

In an interview for “The Garden of Last Days,” Dubus said that when he writes, he suspends all judgment and just seeks to understand his characters, that when he’s writing, he’s a better man than when he’s not writing. What if we all did this all the time? Realized that people are complicated and there’s a context, an explanation for why they do what they do that we can’t understand? What if we loved ourselves in spite of our faults and failures and loved others regardless of theirs? It’s not impossible—this concept of loving God, loving ourselves, and loving others as ourselves. Unconditional love is what we all need—to give and receive. Compassion is what’s called for, empathy, understanding, insight—and reading good books with an open heart and mind is a great way to start.

I have friends who are strippers and friends who are Fundamentalists—both groups to various degrees are being exploited by men, and though I personally like and enjoy the company of the former group much more than the latter, both need and are worthy of love and understanding.

What we’re all in search of is connection—is love and understanding, which is far too rare and difficult to find, and why people turn to the substitutes of Fundamentalism and sexual and social surrogacy. Fundamentalists of every religion (including atheism) are told they can belong to the group and get the acceptance from others and ultimately God if they follow the group’s rules. Sexual and social surrogates give the friend or girlfriend experience for money (among other things—see above people are complicated). But all are poor substitutes for genuine, deep connection, nonjudgmental acceptance, and unconditional love—of course, most of the things in our lives are.

Lonely? Take Two TV Shows and Call Me in the Morning

According to new studies, watching TV can actually make us less lonely and help us deal with feelings of rejection and isolation.

The studies conducted by the University at Buffalo and Miami University of Ohio, and reported in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology suggest that watching TV provides viewers with the illusion that their social needs are being met.

And not just TV. The studies also argue that the same can be said of movies, music, video games, and the internet.

“The research provides evidence for the ‘social surrogacy hypothesis,’ which holds that humans can use technologies, like television, to provide the experience of belonging when no real belongingness has been experienced,” Shira Gabriel, one of the study’s authors said.

The first study found that subjects felt less lonely when viewing their favorite TV shows. The second study found that subjects whose “belongingness needs were aroused” wrote longer essays about their favored TV programs. The third study found that thinking about favored TV programs buffered subjects against drops in self-esteem, increases in negative mood and feelings of rejection. And Study four found that subjects verbally expressed fewer feelings of loneliness after writing essays about their preferred TV programs.

This study reminds me of something C.S. Lewis once said—“We read to know that we’re not alone.”

As a solitary, sometimes lonely person, who reads books and watches movies and TV shows then writes about them, I find the study fascinating and true, but I think something far deeper is at work—something the study doesn’t seem to consider.

Far more than mere distraction, stories—whether they are told, written, performed, or filmed—give meaning to our lives. As humans, we need myths, stories, dreams—the hero’s journey to identify with.

The best stories don’t just entertain. They inspire. They instruct. They empathize with our existential angst, and in the process, teach us empathy for others.

Stories are mirrors we hold up to ourselves. They are lamps to our feet and lights to our paths.

When we read or watch, we know we’re not alone, but not because we’re momentarily distracted. We know we’re not alone because another human being is reaching out to us, making contact with us on our most essential human level. The act of writing, of creating stories, is the solitary, often lonely act of attempting to express humanness, to bring order to the chaos, to find meaning in the madness, to truly and profoundly connect to other, often solitary, lonely human beings.

That someone is driven to sit by himself or herself and tell stories, that publishers or craftspeople help bring them to life, that actors will lose themselves in becoming that “fictional” character, lets us know we’re not alone, lets us know that our deep need to hear stories is only exceeded by other human beings’ deeper need to tell them. It’s communal. It’s connection. Yet it’s intimate and personal.

And what of where stories come from? As a storyteller, I can tell you, they come from beyond us, from the ineffable, transcendent, mysterious—from the place where communication can only be story and poetry, myth and metaphor. And this is a big part of why stories make us feel less lonely.

Of course, all stories are not created equal. Much of what is on TV is shallow, sentimental, and, far too often, mind-numbing. The better the story, the more skilled and sophisticated the storyteller, the more beneficial for us the story is.

Myths are how we define and understand ourselves and others—the myths of our religions, philosophies, families, communities, nationalities. Everything we know or think we do comes down to us through the stories we hear and believe.

In common culture, myth is used for something that’s not true, but nothing could be further from the truth. Myths are true—perhaps not factually, actually, literally-happened-just-that-way true, but true at profoundly human and even transcendent levels. Unfortunately, in the West, since the Enlightenment, we’ve over and misapplied logic, reason, and the scientific method to story, and by making did-it-really-happen the sole test for truth, we’re losing our souls (our ability to imagine, explore, empathize, dream, create, transcend—the very best of our humanness).

Every family has myths that are empowering and ones that are imprisoning. Every religion has myths that inspire compassion and ones that ignite hate. Every nation has myths that cultivate civility and ones that cause the cancers of greed and nationalism.

The best stories don’t just help with loneliness, don’t just entertain or distract. They actually transform us in powerful and lasting ways.
But that’s the best stories.

We should be discriminating about the TV we watch (which would lead to us watch very little). We shouldn’t just read commercial fiction or trite self-help books. We shouldn’t just watch the fraction of films that make it to our local cinema house, the blockbusters made to crassly manipulate the masses. We should each read and watch the best we can find, inhabit good stories, for it’s not just our loneliness, but our very humanity that’s at hazard.

House of Pain

Like most of the best things in my life, I came to “House” because of a woman. And not just any woman, but one of the most beautiful, smart, strong, sexy, attractive actresses on the planet.

I had been hearing great things about the new medical mystery drama “House” for a while, but had never watched it for two reasons—I watch very limited TV and as a rule don’t start a series midway through. Then I heard Sela Ward would be joining the cast for a multi-episode arc, and knew I would gladly add another show to my must-sees, and start in the middle or even the end if I had to. Thankfully, because of TV on DVD, I didn’t have to.

Most people think of “Sisters” when Sela Ward’s name comes up, but it was as Lily Manning on “Once and Again” that I fell in love with her, and, for me, she will always be the sexy, recently-single mother, vulnerable Venus—smart, compassionate, resilient.

As Stacy Warner, Sela Ward, was actually a romantic equal to Hugh Laurie’s Greg House, but alas, nothing lasts. House destroys what he has—or could have had—with Stacy, Sela’s arc ends, Stacy leaves the show.

But I keep watching.

Though I originally tuned in for Sela, I kept tuning in for “House.”

One of the best written and bravest shows on network television, “House” has, for over a hundred episodes now, been consistently good and often great. Each year, as I watch the season finale, I always think, they’ll never be able to top it—and then they do. Year after year after year, they leave me truly grateful for the engaging, enriching, and highly entertaining experiences they give me.

I have a friend who says “House” is too formulaic, and she’s right that the medical mysteries always follow the pattern of a series of misdiagnoseses, failed treatments, and eventually House’s “aha” moment, but watching “House” for the medicine is like reading Shakespeare for the plot.

I watch “House,” like all the shows I watch, the novels I read, the films I watch, for the characters, the struggles and drama of their lives, their interaction with one another.

From the fist moment I watched the show, I thought, Greg House is Sherlock Holmes with a medical degree—a true anti-social, drug-addicted, music-playing, genius operating at a level that leaves mere mortals breathless and bewildered.

Like a fully functioning adult trying to get extremely important tasks completed with a team of impaired children, House lives in a state of perpetual frustration—add to it the physical pain Holmes never had and you have one unpleasant SOB.

Physician heal thyself? I’m not sure he would if he could, but he can’t. None of us can. We have our part to play in the healing process, sure (I’m not advocating passivity), but it’s in letting love in, letting fear and unforgiveness go—things House is unwilling to do.

Like Holmes, House needs constant challenges for his magnificent mind—puzzles, conundrums, mysteries. So much so, that he plays mind games with the lesser planets orbiting the enormous gravitational pull of his imploding star.

Unlike Holmes, who rarely interacted with anyone beyond Watson, House, who avoids patients as much as possible, is forced to work with a team, answer to an administrator, and interact with a friend, which is what makes the show work so well.

Like Paul Weston of “In Treatment,” House is a wounded healer, but unlike Weston, House, who’s in constant pain—and not just from the nerve damage in his leg—inflicts a lot of pain on others. Even those he heals. And unlike Weston, House takes no joy in healing, just hungers for the next mystery to apply his mind to.

Like Irene Adler was to Holmes, Sela Ward’s Stacy Warner will always be for House The Woman. Now that she’s come and gone and come and gone again, House, who never really had even the remotest chance for happiness, is a miserable, broken, mean misanthrope—the most interesting one in the history of TV.

Like House, we’re all in pain. Maybe ours is more intermittent, more manageable, but it’s there—even when we’re too distracted to notice it very much. We have the existential pain of mortality if nothing else (though usually there’s plenty else—including the pain of others our compassion makes us heir to). Even in those rare, perfect moments of our lives when all is right with the world and we are as perfectly happy as we can be, its edges are tinged with the certainty that it can’t last, that the moment will too soon be gone—and so will we. But instead of popping vicodin, we can watch House do it, share in his suffering, share some of our own. That’s the power of story. Stories heal. That’s why for viewers, the House of pain can also be a place of healing.

Find a Chair and Get In Treatment

It’s not TV.

It’s not.

Well, technically it is, but it’s so far and away better than most of the drivel that’s broadcast other places, it’s like it’s not even the same thing. In that way, it’s like religion. You don’t have to look very far to find two people who practice the same religion, yet one is consumed with hate, judgement, self-righteousness, fear, phobia, and is absolutely closed and defensive, while the other is consumed with compassion, filled with peace, fighting for an end to injustice and oppression, and is open and humble. They both may call themselves Christian or Jew or Muslim of Sikh, but they are not the same.

I said all that to say this: When they say, It’s not TV. It’s HBO. Though technically wrong, they are nonetheless accurate.

I’ve been a fan and faithful viewer of HBO’s original series for quite a while now, going all the way back to my favorite New York girls, Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha. I also enjoyed spending time with the Fisher family, visiting Seth Bullock and his foulmouthed frenemies, and even to a lesser extent enjoy Sookie Stackhouse in spite of the actress’ truly atrocious accent.

Now that “Sex and the City,” “Six Feet Under,” and “Deadwood” have gone the way of all flesh and other great shows like “Buffy” and “Gilmore Girls,” I find that my favorite show next to “House” these days is “In Treatment.”

Flawed and fragile, Paul Weston is a wise, insightful, patient counselor, and a session with him is as therapeutic as any on TV. In the best tradition of wounded healers, he’s a broken man in crisis, ministering out of his need—“Look at my hands and feet. It is I. Touch me and see.”

That Paul is also in treatment, that the counselor becomes the counseled, gives the show a whole other dimension, showing us, therapy voyeurs, another side of him—a vulnerable and neurotic side his patients never see. After all, the man behind the curtain, the one we’re supposed to pay no attention to, is always more interesting than anything else.

Shakespeare did it first, then much later, Hemingway reminded us. In the right hands, unalloyed dialog can be downright devastating—dramatic, suspenseful, intense, and interesting.

Conversation. Two people in a room talking. And it’s as riveting as anything on TV.

In its second season right now, “In Treatment” is worth paying the extra ten bucks to get HBO (maybe it’s more than that. Seems like that’s what I pay, but whatever it is, it’s the best value on my outrageous cable bill). The first season is available on DVD.

Paul’s patients—both from season one and two—are so sad and beautiful in their fractured humanity, in their longing (ultimately for love, though they may not know it), in their need for help to pick up the pieces and put them somehow back together again. Do you recognize them? They are lonely singles. They are miserable marrieds. They are sick and hurting. They are in crises. They are reevaluating. They are me. They are you.

I believe in counseling, have done a good bit of it over the years—both inside prison and out—and have so many intimates who are counselors, that I feel like I’ve been in treatment my entire adult life. Few things are better for us, more therapeutic, than a safe, nonjudgmental place where we can say absolutely anything we need to, where we can bring forth the monsters in our minds and, in the light of love and understanding, see how very small they really are. Is there anything we humans need more than to be heard and understood? That’s why the art of counseling, like the art of friendship, is mostly about listening. Sure, an occasional question or insight is helpful, but nothing compares to being heard and accepted, and knowing what we say will be taken to the grave.

Some of the best counseling I’ve received over the years has come from books by or about counselors—particularly the gentle, tender, Thomas Moore, who truly does the work of caring for the soul. It was he who taught me that our word “therapy” has “chair” in its etymology, and how very appropriate that is, how very Zen (When sitting, just sit). In this, to sit with someone, to share their burden is to care for their soul, is to give them counsel and treatment. It’s something we can all do for each other—and something Paul Weston is doing for me each week in our sessions on Sunday and Monday nights. Feel free to join us.

Poetry, Play, and the State of the State

First some Font:
“Wound in the Sun”

My dear friend and fellow local writer, Lynn Wallace, has a new book of poetry out, and since I can’t describe the collection any better, here’s a bit about it from the back of the book: “Containing poems written over the last 30 years, “Wound in the Sun,” explores some odd corners, places visited while afflicted with the benign disease of thinking, feeling, and living in the modern age. Each poem is a sun-streaked room somewhere, or an overlooked moon of a bruised and bustling planet, or a comet apt to break apart soon but before doing so will leave a bright vaporous tail that is barely more than nothing.”

That’s a fittingly poetic way to describe this thoughtful, subtle, brilliant work of poetry.

Lynn’s felicity with language sparkles like sunshine dancing on the still surface of a secluded lake, every page shimmering to life, dancing toward illumination.

But that’s not all. So does his intelligence and his insightful observations. Out of a lifetime of honest introspection, Lynn says, “Look at this. Listen to this. See the world through my eyes for a moment.” And what a world it is!

The title of the collection—and the collection itself—calls to mind one of my favorite Latin phrases: Omnes vulnerant, ultima necat: All wound, the last kills.

Legend has it, there’s a how-to manual for the best way to read “Wound in the Sun” that isn’t in print, so I’ll share with you the heart of its instructions here. In brief, it urges that you go outside and lie on your back, doing your best not to move. Know that blood is racing through your veins, the surface of the earth on which you lie is zinging along at several miles per minute, the planet is zipping around the sun at many miles per second, the sun is whirling on this galactic carrousel. Read poems. Lie as still as you are able. Never stare directly at the sun.

There is indeed a wound in the world, in the sun, and one of the best ways to deal with it is by reading. I recommend, “Wound in the Sun.”

When he’s not writing thought-provoking poetry, Lynn serves as an English professor and Director of Developmental Studies at Gulf Coast Community College, where he teaches creative writing, literature & film, and composition while supervising various programs. He had the distinction of being awarded Professor of the Year in 2006.

Lynn will reading from and signing “Wound in the Sun” this Friday, April 24th at Joey’s Coffee in downtown from 5:00 p.m. until 7:00 p.m. Please join us.


Now some Film:
“State of Play”

“State of Play” is a well-made thriller with at least two thought-provoking topics, which I’ll get to in a moment. The movie is based on a BBC miniseries I saw a few years back and liked a lot. The series is available on DVD, and watching both it and the American movie it inspired is interesting and instructive. Each has its strengths—the miniseries more time to take a novelistic approach; the movie, slick Hollywood production value and big movie stars. I like the miniseries better, but, to my surprise, the movie was an extremely faithful adaptation. And though the movie has Russell Crowe and Helen Mirren, the miniseries has Kelly Macdonald (one of my very faves) and Billy Nighy.

The story is this: A rising congressman and an investigative journalist get embroiled in a case of seemingly unrelated, brutal murders. The two are old friends and more recent frenemies (yes, there’s a woman involved). The reporter, Cal McCaffery is assigned to sniff out the story and steps into conspiracies and cover-ups that threaten to shake the nation’s power structures. Revelation upon revelation pile up, ultimately bringing to light the corrupt dealings of major corporations and the federal government, and no one is safe when billions of dollars are at stake

The fast-paced “State of Play” works well as a thriller, but where it really excels (and could have done more with) is when it looks at the dangers of Black Water-like private mercenaries for money program and the demise of newspapers, and ultimately, far more tragically, real reporting. These two things—functioning illiteracy and the corruption the love of money brings—perhaps more than anything else, are destroying our culture and way of life.

Not all, but many of the powerful puppet masters pulling the strings behind the anti-government, anti-tax, and separatist movements have profit motives. Their desire to privatize various functions of government is for profit—for them and their close friends. They claim to serve the same Fundamentalist god many of their foot soldier do, but it’s mammon and only mammon they kneel before. And of all the things that can be corrupted by being driven by the bottom line, the most dangerous by far is war. (I realize most wars are fought over money, but here I’m talking about those who fight them.) Soldiers for hire, accountable only to shareholders, is Orwellian in implication, and it’s already here—and the film claims they’re now being used domestically.

I left the theater feeling heavy and saddened by the death of journalism—obviously something I’ve been thinking about long before I saw the movie (which barely touches on it). Every week brings news of another daily shutting its doors, of the end of an era, as advertisers pull their advertising dollars from printed news, where journalism in America is dying a not-so-slow death. It’s a true tragedy, one that threatens our democracy as much as anything else. And it’s not just that professional journalism is in ICU, but more so that people are getting their news from crackpot partisan blowhards meant to bolster what they already believe and comedians who go for a laugh above all else, including the truth, but that We The People have stopped reading.

Thomas Jefferson once remarked, “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

We are not informed, we are not enlightened because we are not reading. As Mark Twain said, “The man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the one you can’t read them.”

Little Miss Sunshines

As I watched the remarkable and resonate “Sunshine Cleaning,” the phrase that kept coming to my mind was “woman’s work.” In our sexist world, where fearful, power-clutching little men do everything from undervalue to actually oppress women (and worse), we have continually been told that certain things are woman’s work. Cleaning, for instance.

“Sunshine Cleaning” is all about woman’s work—and not just in the all-too-obvious way in which it is truly never done, but in that this moving movie about motherlessness and the open, bleeding wounds it causes, was written by a woman, directed by a woman, and features pitch-perfect performances by two talented young women. The work that all these women do is as good as any being done by their male counterparts—and far better in ways only work done by women can be.

Perhaps, moving forward from our shameful sexist past and present, we should, instead of dispensing with the phrase “woman’s work,” use it in the future not as a designation of certain limited and limiting tasks, but to describe the extraordinary quality femininity brings to all forms of labor and creation.

“Sunshine Cleaning,” which might help us take a step toward that end, is the story of Rose Lorkowski (Amy Adams), who finds herself a single mother attempting to support her son Oscar (Jason Spevack) and her unreliable sister Norah (Emily Blunt) while working a mundane job as a maid. Once the head cheerleader in school with plenty of prospects, Rose now has little to show for her years, and while she still sees the former lead football player (Steve Zahn), it is little more than a despondent affair. When Oscar is expelled from public school, Rose takes a job as a bio-hazard crime-scene cleaner to help pay for a private education and brings Norah on to help in her steadily growing business. As the sisters work to clean up the messes left behind by the chaotic lives of others, they must learn to reconcile their own differences and overcome a troubled past if they hope to prosper in their newfound venture.

Though the film is so textured, and has many, many themes, I keep coming back to motherlessness, and see it as not just the emptiness so profoundly felt at the core of the film, but of our time, as well.

I happen to be reading Thomas Dumm’s “Loneliness as a Way of Life” right now, which heightened my experience of “Sunshine Cleaning,” for in using Cordelia and King Lear to explain the current culture of loneliness, he says, “We live in the matrix of the missing mother, in the paradoxical context of no context, in the open world of storms into which we moderns have been cast.”

Perhaps the mother we’re missing most is the one we most need. The loss of the feminine face of God, of the mother hen who wants to gather us like her little chicks, of the compassionate womb who can nurture us in the way only the one who gave birth to us can, causes us far more despair and loneliness and anxiety than we can even fathom.

The film uses an extremely simple, but effective device with a CB radio in which a couple of characters use it to speak into the void—into emptiness, motherlessness, into Job’s whirlwind of isolation and loneliness.

Rose does the woman’s work of cleaning up after others. She cleans up the messes other people make not merely as a maid in rich people’s houses or as a forensic cleaner at crime scenes, but as a woman in life, because it’s generally women who have the strength and grace and will to do so—something deserving of honor not derision. Mostly, Rose is cleaning up the mess her own mother made—mothering herself, her little sister, her young son, and even, to some extent, her own father (a well-intentioned, but often unreliable, mostly lost man played by the extraordinary Alan Arkin).

“Sunshine Cleaning” is a chick flick, not in the normal Hollywood sense when women are attempting to find something ultimately only men can give them, but in the very best sense—one in which a film written and directed by women features women in the strength and vulnerability and beauty and complexity of womanhood. It’s a film only women could make, but one which both men and women should see as soon as they possibly can.

Reading in the Time of Technology

As I write this, I’m seated in my library surrounded by some of my most intimate and long-term companions—thousands of them.

Books are some of the best friends and truest counselors I’ve ever had. They ease my existential anxieties, providing comfort and care. As C. S. Lewis said, “We read to know we’re not alone.” It’s within books that I’m able to get inside the hearts and minds of others, to share life’s journey with them, to be encouraged by the similarities of our struggles, failures, and triumphs.

I have journeyed across the world, vicariously lived a thousand interesting lives—all without ever doing more than turning the page. As Mary Schmich said, “Reading is a discount ticket to everywhere.” But it’s not just that books transport me across the wide world, but that they take me deep into the hidden heart of another human being. “Reading is a means of thinking with another person’s mind; it forces you to stretch your own,” is how Charles Scribner, Jr., says the same thing.

Reading teaches compassion. There is no better way to feel what another feels than to read yourself inside his or her heart and mind. Through reading I have come to appreciate and respect the journey of others no matter how different from my own.

Reading is the truest education—and that of head and heart. I have learned far more outside the classroom than in. The best thing school, especially college, does for us is to teach us how to learn—how to think and how to read. A good education is one that makes us students for life. As Thomas Carlyle said, “What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us.”

Reading has changed my life more thoroughly, more profoundly, than anything else save love. And it’s not just me. Books have changed the world.

Now, the world is changing books and reading.

The reasons we read, the reasons we write words and string them together to be read will never change, but the ways in which we read and what is called a book is undergoing a sea change.

What is a book? What is reading?

Many of the books I “read” are actually read to me by professionals. Rarely am I without my ipod and the thousands of unabridged audio books it and Audible.com give me access to.

I realize most people view the ipod as a portable music and movie device, but it’s as a book that it really excels. Thanks to Apple and Audible I’m able to read hundreds more books each year than I would otherwise—listening to them while I drive, work, workout, lie in bed sleeplessly.

The ipod revolutionized the way I read books.

Then, along came Kindle.

Amazon.com’s upgraded ebook reader is amazing.

The versatile devise offers a highly readable display in the size of a paperback, the ability to store and search hundreds of manuscripts, and look up words in an onboard dictionary, on the web, or through Wikipedia. Its free wireless connection to the Amazon Kindle store gives readers access to some 250,000 books (as well as magazines and newspapers)—each able to be downloaded directly to the unit in about sixty seconds.

The Kindle 2—the only Kindle I have experience with—has 2 gigabytes of memory, enough to store more than 1500 books, and has a very powerful built-in battery. The new Kindle lasts four to five days with the wi-fi feature on and up to two weeks with it off. There’s also a very cool new feature that allows you to synch your reading among other Kindles and other mobile devices—meaning you could read 50 pages of my new novel, “Double Exposure” this September, shut off the device, and when you open the Kindle application on your phone later, it will start you on page 50. (Of course, I’m hoping you won’t be able to stop on any page save the last!)

The new Kindle’s “text-to-speech” feature has generated some controversy as authors and publishers fear it will hurt audio book sales, but, trust me, the robotic voice of the computer-generated “reader” coming out of the tiny speakers on the back of the device will not, cannot replace the perfection that is Will Patton reading James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux novels.

My favorite book to read is a handsomely produced hardback, but it’d be foolish to limit my reading experiences to just that.

I live in the rural South, in a small town with no bookstore. Audible.com gives me nearly instant access to thousands of audio books and the Kindle gives me nearly instant access to hundreds of thousands of ebooks. But even if I lived next door to a bookstore, I’d still want these new form books on my ipod and Kindle to be part of my library.

If reading isn’t just entertaining or informational, but transformational, why wouldn’t I read any and every way I can—hardbacks, paperbacks, audio books, ebooks?

The printed book is perfection—the printing press the greatest technological invention of all time—and nothing will ever replace it, but other types of books have their place, which with all the technological advances, of the web, of audio and ebooks, means we’re living in the midst of a reading revolution.