Scott Stein announces “A Frank Conversation with Frank Wilson.” That’s Frank Wilson of Books, Inq.

on April 11, 2008, 2:00 PM, at Paul Peck Center, 3142 Market Street, Drexel University, Philadelphia. I will not be there, because I don’t have a pass to leave my room this year. Maybe the warden will get me a live feed, but he’s been in a bad mood lately, so I doubt it. More information on Scott’s blog.

You know that Kimbooktu has a focus on bookshelves and home libraries. Here she links to some cool designs in shelving, some more practical than others. I love this Ellipse Bookcase. It has a hobbit feel. This Ceiling Book Storage is impressive too.

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The question should be, “How many country names can you spell correctly under pressure?” I burned seconds trying to spell “Mozambique” and “Colombia” and many I would not have tried.

I’ve been thinking of my sister lately. I think she’s a fan of NPR’s “What, What . . . Don’t Tell Me!” It’s hilarious. I have it on now, one of the repeats they have during the weekend. Have you heard it?

Morning Coffee & Afternoon Tea makes this comment on something my sister told me she is enjoying too: “Don’t get me started on having Michael York . . . ruining The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe from the Chronicles of Narnia boxed set I got — although I have to say the bad experience was nicely balanced by the heaven of listening to Jeremy Northam reading The Silver Chair – oh yummy yummy, I could just eat him up!”

Tonight, for no useful purpose whatever, I’m going to tell you about a movie I saw almost half a century ago—once. It’s lingered in my mind ever since, and I have no idea what it was called or who acted in it. Maybe you can help.

I must have seen it before 1960, when I was ten years old, because I’m sure I saw it at my grandparents’ old (big) house, rather than their later (smaller) house. I had the idea at the time that it was quite an old film, perhaps an early “talky,” but I could be mistaken. It was a long time ago, and I’m keenly aware how faulty my memories can be. The summary of the plot I’m about to give you is probably wrong in several places. But this is how I remember it.

The movie opens a few years before the Civil War, somewhere in the American Midwest. Very likely Illinois, for reasons that come up later. The hero of the story is first seen as a boy, living on a farm with his loving mother and his legalistic, sadistic preacher father (a character Hollywood would find it convenient to clone and recycle countless times in the years to come). The boy dreams of becoming a doctor, and gets his hands on a collection of medical journals. He keeps them hidden from his father, though, because his father considers them things of the devil. (I’m not sure why. I don’t know of any Christian church that considered medicine evil in those days. Perhaps the old man just disapproved of all printed matter that wasn’t the Bible.)

The father discovers the journals (in the barn, I think), and gives the boy a vicious whipping (in the barn, I’m certain). The violence of the whipping so panics the family’s horse (a white one to which the boy is deeply attached) that it injures itself in its stall. Because of this it gets a noticeable scar on its flank.

Eventually the boy runs away from home (with or without the horse, I’m not sure, though boy and horse part company at some point) and goes to medical school. When the Civil War begins, he becomes a surgeon in the Union Army.

After a particular battle, a general is brought in to the hospital with a horribly injured arm. Informed that the arm will have to be amputated, he begs them to try to save it. He promises a great reward to any doctor who can save his arm.

Our hero notices the general’s white horse, and sees the old familiar scar. It’s his old family horse. So he goes to the general and asks if he can have the horse if he saves the arm. The general agrees, so he goes to work with all his skill, and somehow works a miracle. The arm is saved and he gets the horse.

Later he (along with the horse, I have no doubt) performs an act of conspicuous gallantry, and he wins the Congressional Medal of Honor. He’s sent to Washington, DC to be decorated by President Lincoln, and the president makes time (because the young man is from Illinois, if I remember correctly) to talk with him a while. When Lincoln learns that the young man has not been home since he ran away, he chastises him for neglecting his mother. In his capacity as Commander in Chief, he gives the young man leave and orders him to go home.

After that I can’t remember anything.

Anybody know this movie?

Update: OK, a little more Yahooing turned the film up. It’s called “Of Human Hearts,” and was made in 1938. It starred Walter Huston as the preacher father, and James Stewart as the son, once he’d grown up. Beulah Bondi played Stewart’s mother, the first of several times she did that.

From the synopsis, the film appears to have been a little more sympathetic to the father’s situation than my memory recalls, but all in all my reminiscences don’t seem to be too far off track.

You can stop hunting now.

Update to Update: Thanks to reader Paul Stieg, who e-mailed me with the correct answer at about precisely the time I found it myself. He says that, alas, it’s not yet available on DVD.

Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes has been assigned to highschoolers in Deerfield, Illinois. I hear the play and movie based on the book have won big awards, is the book itself unsuitable for teenagers? Lynn Vincent gives a brief description of the book and asks, “Gay activists are constantly arguing that the gay lifestyle isn’t just about sex. Why then assign Angels in America and reinforce the opposite opinion?”

I worry about national morning talk show host Laura Ingraham.

I listen to her show every day, and I have a lot of fondness for her. I think I was half in love with her a couple years back, when her show was more fun. Also she recently hired Bryan Preston, the founder of Junk Yard Blog, who was probably the highest profile advocate for my writing career, back when I had a writing career.

But Laura’s gotten shrill, it seems to me, since her major health crisis a couple years back.

This morning, she was taking calls from Republicans in Texas who’d crossed party lines to vote for Hillary, just as spoilers for Obama. She was cheering them on, reveling in their stories.

I don’t like this. It seems to me that if you love this country you’ve got to hold the electoral process in a kind of reverence. The fact that there are cynical people out there who game the system doesn’t justify us, the people who say we believe in moral absolutes, in pretending to belong to a different party so we can sabotage its nomination process. If they did it to us, I’d be angry about it.

Maybe I’m just judgmental.



Think Daylight Saving Time conserves energy? Maybe not.

The Paris International Book Fair this month plans to honor some Israeli writing, and an Islamic group doesn’t like it. Reporter Angelia Doland writes,

Each year the international fair puts the spotlight on one country. This year it is inviting 39 writers from Israel, including David Grossman, Amos Oz, A. B. Yehoshua and Aharon Appelfeld. A similar controversy is brewing about the May book fair in Turin, Italy, which is also highlighting Israeli works.

My first thought is to tell the group to shut up, but in this report, a sympathetic scholar does make a good point. He says, “Common sense should be our guide: The international community’s silence over the plight of the Palestinians is shameful enough without adding insult to injury.” That’s true. Palestinians have been abused by their own leadership and militants from Syria and elsewhere for decades. The international community should not be silent about that horrible situation and the idiotic bias of the international news agencies reporting it. End the violence. Free Palestine from the chess players of the world.

I don’t watch any TV shows online, though I did catch a Food Network special a few months ago. That was fun and a little difficult; the stream stopped every minutes or so. Usually, I just watch trailers for movies.

Apparently, the research argues, “Women ages 18 to 34 are almost twice as likely to tune into online TV shows as men, and men are more than twice as likely to watch consumer-generated online videos on sites like YouTube.” I wonder what most men are watching on YouTube. I doubt it’s thoughtful independent spots like Tree in the Forest, but perhaps I shouldn’t assume.