"Flight of the Conchords" is on in the other room. The dog is curled up in her cat bed. The furnace is running. I have three new books from Amazon on the table: Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, Ursula LeGuin's The Dispossessed, and In the Absence of the Sacred by Jerry Mander. Which shall I open first?

I'm also rereading Fahrenheit 451 since the seventh and eighth graders will start tackling it this week. I hope it isn't too much for them. It is considered high school level material by many. I guess I'll find out. What I predict is that the majority of eighth graders will be into it, and a handful of seventh graders will be flummoxed by it. As it often goes.

I just watched The Reader tonight with Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes (and Lena Olin and David Kross). What a difficult movie that is! It seems that we are asked to consider feeling sorry for a concentration camp guard, and yet it's not that simple. It seems that we are asked to look at the love affairs of fifteen-year-olds with some kind of deep legitimacy (which is always hard for me with Fiennes--I just don't buy his deal--even though I thought David Kross was very compelling in a sweetly Germanic way--his blue eyes and clearly European aspect set my DNA ringing). It also asks us to look at the value and beauty of reading literature through the eyes of someone we wouldn't normally sympathize with. But Bruno Ganz was great. What an amazing face and manner he has...

I'm feeling generally downhearted about everything having to do with the Holocaust (which sounds pretty obvious I suppose). Maybe it's movie overload. It just doesn't seem like anything good can come out of it. Like Lena Olin's character says when Ralph's character tries to give her money from Kate Winslet. She says nothing can come out of the camps, nothing. It's kind of strange to hear her say that at the end of this particular movie, but I have to agree. I mean what do we keep learning? That men and women can do such incredibly hateful, brutal, inhuman things to each other? I get it.

My mother-in-law used to say she didn't care for movies or books about the Holocaust, and I have another dear friend who refuses to go to Holocaust-related movies. I have thought these to be a little insensitive and certainly politically incorrect stances (at least with the people I tend to hang around), but my attitude is starting to change. It's not that I am only interested in feel-good, upbeat movies with happy endings. The most interesting dramatic pieces are the complicated, tragic things people do and think. I think it's more that I see the Holocaust as this weird trove of plot points and character arcs that have mostly all been explored (and exploited) by storytellers. I almost want it all to have a respectful farewell, and let it rest in peace. But then I risk sounding unfeeling to those who actually lost people and suffered tremendous misery. More ambivalence.

Part of my problem comes from having to teach middle school students about the Holocaust literature, too, which is exceptionally difficult in some big ways. The kids just do not get the gravity of the history, and I feel like I am pounding my own consciousness into this heavy, hand-wringing posture when I try to impress upon the kids how truly sad and horrific it all was.

I feel a sore throat coming on. I may need a health day soon. Mental or otherwise.