Marilyn Johnson on How a New Wave of Cyber-Savvy Librarians are Fighting to Save American Literacy and Privacy Rights

In “This Book is Overdue: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All” (Harper, 288 pp. $25), writer Marilyn Johnson has created a nuanced and adoring look at modern librarians — how they are remaking America’s public libraries in the internet Age while protecting the nation’s civil liberties.

Johnson’s exquisite book taps into the radical changes that libraries are going through. She blows apart the librarian stereotypes of stiff, prim matrons. Librarians have blogs now, some have extensive tattoos and funky haircuts, but in Johnson’s eyes, they are still committed “intellectual social workers,” educating whoever comes through their doors in the face of brutal budget cuts. Johnson tells of librarians who faced down the Bush administration over the Patriot Act, and of wild librarians who perform dance routines with wooden book carts at librarian conventions. Johnson has created an uncompromisingly optimistic book celebrating the thin red line of highly educated and often grossly underpaid men and women who keep Americans literate.

Johnson, 55, was on staff at Esquire and Life Magazine and her last book was “The Dead Beat,” a history of obituaries. She lives in Westchester, N.Y., where she spoke from her home by telephone with freelance writer Dylan Foley.

Q. You’ve written this quirky book about modern librarians. Why?

A. Librarians have had my back for so long. They helped me so much when I was a magazine writer and when I was writing my book on obituaries. With the new book, I realized I was writing about a profession that was undergoing seismic changes.

Q. Could you tell us about the Connecticut Four, a small group of library administrators who, at great personal risk, battled the Bush administration on privacy abuses involving libraries under the Patriot Act?

A. Librarians had been monitoring the Patriot Act since the beginning. These librarians are committed to patron privacy on their computers, feeling that this privacy is as sacred as the voting booth. You should have the right to check out anything you want without the government looking over your shoulder. When the Patriot Act was put in place, librarians realized right away that the government could rifle through your records without you even knowing about it. The attorney general at the time said they were hysterical, that the government wasn’t going to be doing that. And of course, they were all over the libraries. These librarians faced gag orders and could not even talk to their spouses about what was happening. They risked jail time.

The court case happened in 2005, but privacy violations are still a serious issue under the Obama administration.

Q. There seems be a gap between some librarians who are technophobes and often a younger generation that embraces blogs and virtual libraries to promote their work. How is the use of new technology shaping up?

A. I found that there is not really an age demarcation. There are older librarians that are as technically savvy as anyone. There are also librarians that are not comfortable with the new technology. It takes a tremendous amount of attention and commitment to embrace the new technologies.

Q. In your book, you tapped into wide social circles of librarians. What was your experience?

A. One of the great things about these librarians is that they are out there on the web. Once you stumble on one, you find a whole group of them. Librarians make up one of the most connected professions.

Q. Darien, Conn., is one of the cities most hard hit by the recession, but it recently opened a futuristic, web-oriented library. Could you describe the place?

A. The Darien library is a symbol of hope. It is a community center, a vibrant place and cutting-edge triumph in the context of a city that has lost so much. The library is there to serve the community, but they define their community as anyone who wants to come there, not just people in their tax district. The library thinks of itself as belonging to the community.

(This interview ran n the Newark Star-Ledger on February 6, 2010)

Dennis Lehane's Unplanned Sequel in "Moonlight Mile"

(Originally published in the Newark Star-Ledger in November 2010)

In Dennis Lehane’s 1998 novel “Gone Baby Gone,” Boston private eye Patrick Kenzie found a kidnapped child named Amanda McCready, took her from a loving family and returned her to a negligent mother. This decision has hunted Kenzie and his partner Angie Gennaro for years.

In Lehane’s new novel “Moonlight Mile”(HarperCollins, $27), Kenzie and Gennaro have a second chance. Amanda McCready, now 16, has disappeared again. Kenzie and Gennaro must enter the murky world of methamphetamine tweakers and identity theft, as well as the local Russian mob’s baby smuggling racket, to find her. Amid the riveting double crosses, Lehane examines a Boston and New England battered by the new economic insecurity and the realization that for many, the good times are just a memory.

Lehane, 45, is the author of the novels “Mystic River” and “The Given Day.” He spoke with freelance writer Dylan Foley by telephone from his home in Boston.

Q. Why did you return to your Kenzie and Gennaro thrillers after a 11-year absence?

A. I don’t really choose to write specific books. The characters come knocking on my door. That happened with this book--Kenzie and Gennaro came to me after 10 years of silence. The voice came back to me and I was like, “Okay.” As I was working on the book, it became clear to me that the story I should tell was the one about Amanda McCready, the story from ‘Gone Baby Gone.” I thought, “Let’s look at that one again.”

Q. Kenzie made the gut-wrenching choice of giving the young Amanda back to her drug-addicted and harmful mother. Did he have much of a choice?

A. In the real world, most everyone would make the law-abiding choice. It is only in the fictional world would a detective consider letting Amanda stay with a kind family that was involved in her kidnapping. You can’t support kidnapping.

Q. Kenzie and Gennaro are more vulnerable now that they are married and have their own 4-year-old daughter. Why?

A. These are not the Kenzie and Gennaro that we knew in 1999. As a new father myself, the vulnerability has really sunk in. A friend of mine said to me, “You are not going to have another sound night of sleep for the rest of your life.”

Q. How did you write about methamphetamine tweakers and identity theft?

A. For research, I basically read four books on the subject, then I let my imagination do the work. I found that a lot of people using methamphetamine are involved in other crimes like identity theft. Looking at situations around the country where factory jobs have left town and wages have been slashed, you find that meth use explodes.

Q. While hunting for Amanda in the small town of Becket, Mass., Kenzie is verbally assaulted by an older woman who has lost everything in the New Economy. Where does this small town rage come from?

A. I think that rage is everywhere in the United States, not just in the small towns. Right now as a country, we are absolutely rudderless. We are scared and very confused, and not sure how we got into this situation. It was shocking to me that people bad mouth the unions We have bought the corporate view of American society. Did the unions cause the financial crisis? We have reached the point where our alleged “free market” has destroyed our country.

Q. Kenzie winds up having this bizarre bond with Yefim, a Russian hitman obsessed with American slang. Where did Yefim come from?

A. Characters like Yefim sneak up on me. When they do, I just get out of the way and let them work. Yefim was only supposed to be a character who brings Kenzie to the big Russian mobster. I thought I don’t know who this guy is, but I like him. Yefim went his own way.

dylanfoley@aol.com

Mischa Glenny on "McMafia" and the Dangerous International Underworld

(Originally published in the Newark Star-Ledger in May 2008)

Mobsters of the World Unite

In his ambitious book “McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld”(Knopf, $28), historian and journalist Mischa Glenny travels the world to meet with Russian mobsters, drug cartel hitmen in Colombia and high-end marijuana growers in Canada.

In an attempt to map the brutal worlds of drug trafficking, black market cigarettes and human smuggling, Glenny writes about how organized crime syndicates of all nationalities and religious affiliations are collaborating to smuggle fake Gucci bags, surface-to-air missiles and illegal caviar. This shadow economy, including crime, corruption and tax evasion makes up 15 to 20 percent of the world’s gross domestic product. Glenny’s stories are horrifying, from Russian women forced into prostitution in Israel to Chinese migrant workers killed on the job in Britain.

Glenny, 50, was raised in England and covered the Balkan wars through the 1990s, writing “The Fall of Yugoslavia.” He was a correspondent for the BBC in central Europe. Glenny spoke with freelance writer Dylan Foley at a New York City coffee shop.

Q. Did your experience in the Balkans direct you in writing a book about organized crime and corruption?

A. Yes, totally. When I worked in the Balkans in the 1990s, organized crime became part of the scenery. Organized crime was also very closely linked to the wars and in using the wars to build up criminal empires. I found that the Balkans served as a transit zone for illicit goods, from drugs to trafficked women, to get into the European Union, which was where the market was.

Q. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the communist Eastern Bloc, there were all these unemployed spies, paramilitary police and ex-government soldiers with guns. What was the situation?

A. The ex-government spies had access to the levers of the state. In the 1990s, Russia was under the control of the oligarchs and organized crime. Products like cocaine, heroin and women, and also things like caviar, were things the crime syndicates wanted to spread around the world. At one point, the Russian organized crime cartels met with members of the Colombian drug cartels in Aruba. The aim was the expand and diversify cocaine sales in Western Europe and to open up Eastern Europe. Heroin was being produced in Afghanistan. At the time, the Russian military was bankrupt, and hired themselves out as transporters on Afghan heroin into Moscow. Throughout Eastern Europe, you had the opening of borders and the collapse of state authority, combined with increased trade and capital migration.

Q. Ruling parties in powerful, stable countries like India and Israel have found themselves corrupted by organized crime money. How did this happen?

A. In the example of Israel, in the 1990s, the Russian mob money subverted the political process. The U.S. Department of Justice has done a lot of work in this area. They know where the bodies are buried.

My eyes were opened to the motives of politicians in the Balkans. Growing up in England, I was a left social democrat, committed to democratic social reform in Eastern Europe. I really thought the majority of politicians were motivated by a fundamental desire to improve the world. I now think that is a minority of politicians. I saw it in the Balkans, where politicians exploited nationalism for their own personal benefit and the benefit of their circle.

Q. Could you tell us the horrible story of Ludmila in the former Soviet area of Moldovan Transnistria?

A. The cooperation between different ethnic groups was what shocked me about it. Ludmila was shipped from Moldovan Transnistria by Russians, brought to Egypt and smuggled into Israel by Bedouins. She worked against her will in brothels in Tel Aviv run by Israeli mobsters. She was basically raped 20 times a day until she escaped. The first time she escaped, she went to a local police station, where the sergeant on duty returned her to her brothel because he was a client. This is just sick, that national identities and confessional identities are meaningless in this game, absolutely meaningless. Russian Orthodox, Muslims and Jews exploited Ludmila together. When I walked around the brothels of Tel Aviv, you had the same mix of men. In one brothel, I found two teenagers from the Upper West Side of Manhattan buying sex. These men are both perpetrators and consumers. They compartmentalize their lives. They are upstanding members of the community, but that changes when the sun goes down. Ludmila is back home, but she is now HIV positive.

Xianhui Yang's Stories Chronicling Maoist Atrocities in the 1950s

In his story collection “Woman from Shanghai: Tales of Survival from a Chinese Labor Camp”(Pantheon, $25), the Chinese writer Xianhui Yang recounts the devastating anti-rightist campaign under Chairman Mao in the 1950s through the story of 3,000 intellectuals who were sent to the Jiabiangou concentration camp in the Gobi Desert in 1957. Forced to grow their own food, the inmates suffered mass starvation and abuse from the guards. When the prisoners were released in 1960, only 500 were still alive.

Yang’s stories stem from interviews with more 100 camp survivors. The fact-based stories follow the daily battle for survival, from foraging and stealing food to the small number who escaped. In “Woman from Shanghai,” a group of dying prisoners try to protect a visiting wife from finding out that her dead husband’s body had been cannibalized. In another story, a camp doctor discovers that a high-level communist official’s father-in-law is starving in the camp. Yang’s stark stories reveal the buried atrocities of Jiabiangou and show that even in hell, many prisoners’ humanity couldn’t be broken.

Yang, 63, spoke with freelance writer Dylan Foley by telephone from the port city of Tianjin, China, near Beijing. The conversation was translated by the book’s award-winning translator Wen Huang.

Q. You found about the atrocities at Jiabiangou in 1965. Why did it take 30 years to start writing about the camp?

A. First, when you have an idea, it takes a while for it to ferment in your mind. Second, there needed to be the right social and political climate for these stories to be published. The government archives were sealed, so I obtained information from the individual survivors.

Q. What kind of people were labeled as rightists and imprisoned??

A. The majority of the people locked up in Jiabiangou were professionals and intellectuals, who were considered potential threats to the proletariat. They had to be purged and the anti-rightist movement provided the right excuse.

Q. Your stories have a journalistic style. Why did you write them as fiction?

A. I wrote the stories in a more detached manner, for I feel that the writing will have greater value if the writer controls his emotions. Then the reader can interpret the writing. China is different than America. If I wrote long, nonfiction work, it would not be published in the magazines. It is also highly probable that I would have run into trouble with the authorities if I published the stories as nonfiction. It is less of a hassle to say, “These stories were my own imagination.”

Q. In the stories, sisters turn in brothers and mothers refuse to help their sons escape the camp. How was the family structure attacked?

A. The government controlled all the media and propaganda. Lies became truth. Some truly believed in the revolution, which destroyed 5000 years of Chinese culture and society, including family values. People felt no guilt in betraying a family member. It became normal in such a society.

Q. There are still fragments of goodness and grace in the camp, where prisoners try to save each other. Could you explain how these acts of decency survived?

A. The prisoners’ humanity is one of the key points I wanted to make in the stories. China has endured one disaster after another, but the Chinese people have survived with such resilience. We survived because traditional values could not be destroyed by tanks or the police. As humans, the instinct is to live and to help your fellow humans.

Q. One of the best stories is ‘The Thief,” where a wily man eats everything he can steal, from corn to goat skin. What was he like in real life?

A. He was so resourceful. When I talked to the thief, he came out as someone who faced his life with great humor. I had to write the story to reflect his wit.

Q. In the last story “Jia Nong,” a group of women prisoners conspire to save a newborn baby. What does this story show?

A. I wanted to explore an act of compassion among these women, who came from very different walks of life. Their love for this baby boy united them and made it possible for them to overcome adversity.

Q. Do you think there will ever be an historical accounting of the atrocities at Jianbiangou?

A. The chance of the government addressing the issue is very remote. You’d need to change the soul of the country, and that means full democracy and freedom of the press.

(This interview originally ran in the Newark Star-Ledger in August 2009)

George Packer's "Interesting Times"

In 2005, the New Yorker writer George Packer published “The Assassins’ Gate,” his searing indictment of the Bush administration’s grotesque mishandling of the Iraq War, where he accused our government of betraying the American troops and the Iraqis alike. In his book, “Interesting Times: Writings from a Turbulent Decade”(FSG, $28) Packer explores the eight years of America’s “war on terror,” trouble spots in the world and the moral sea change after the election of Barack Obama as president.

Packer has worked as a war correspondent in Iraq and in Africa. In the nuanced essays in the new book, Packer looks the lessons of counterinsurgency work in Iraq, the callous and disastrous failure of the American military and State Department to protect Iraqis working as translators and analysts in Baghdad, and trouble spots in the world from the sadistic civil war in Sierra Leone to the exploding megacity of Lagos, Nigeria. His essays leading up to and after the 2008 presidential election map out the radical changes in the American political system. Packer’s collected works from this decade show an adept balance between in-depth reporting and astute political analysis.

Packer, 49, has been on the staff of the New Yorker since 2003. He met with freelance writer Dylan Foley at a cafe near his home in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Q. In your new book, you define the period between the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the election of Barack Obama in November 2008 as a distinct era in American history. Why?

A. History may prove me wrong, but it seemed to me that the first nine months of the Bush years were a continuation of the post-Cold War America. America was still living the illusion that history doesn’t mean “us.” September 11th was a jolt out of that daydream. I thought this tragedy was a great opportunity, but we were cursed in our leadership. The next eight years was a relentless squandering of that opportunity.

My friend the New York Times journalist Dexter Filkins once said to me in Iraq, “It’s possible that we (America) are just not that good anymore.” The Iraq War was like a stress test. It was a measure of the health of the organism that is America. We’ve failed on every count. That’s not because Bush was president, though it is partially that. The war showed the slow decline that’s been going on for sometime. With Obama, there is a possibility [FRAN--PLEASE ITALICIZE ‘POSSIBILITY’] of a national renewal.

Q. Your most devastating essay is “Betrayed,” how the U.S. government and military hierarchy has virtually abandoned Iraqi translators and employees to almost certain assassination by Iraqi insurgents. How did this happen?

A. Think about it...our war strategy was based on the message of the day, not how the war was going. The message that Iraqis who worked with us were in grave danger was not a good message, therefore it was squashed as if it would go away. That made it worse. The indifference to the consequences of our actions and the bureaucratization of our foreign policy created the situation. There are a million rules preventing these guys from being helped.

Q. In a quartet of essays from 2008, you trace the fall of the conservative movement and its immolation by George W. Bush, the historic choice by Americans to cross color lines to elect an African American president, and the rise of the new liberalism, where you raise parallels between Obama and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. How do you view these essays now?

A. The excitement of the election certainly colored my piece on Obama, but I don’t back off from the basic argument of the four pieces. There was a clear understanding by Americans that something had gone wrong and that government needed to be part of the solution. We’ve learned a year later that though the conservative movement may be dead, there are some violent reflexes to the corpse, as seen from last summer’s healthcare town halls and the Republican Party’s implacable resistance to Obama’s domestic policies. I think Obama also came into office with a naive view of his bipartisan vision. It took him a while to realize that the Republicans did not want to be involved with him. Obama is a more cautious president. He doesn’t like to get his hands dirty or to be involved in losing causes. Lyndon Johnson was willing to risk everything over and over again. Then he lost everything, but he did some great things.

(Originally published in the Newark Star-Ledger in November 2009)

Jules Feiffer on His Groundbreaking Cartoons and His Eclectic Career

In 1956, a young cartoonist named Jules Feiffer started publishing a nine-panel cartoon in the Village Voice, a new alternative weekly in Manhattan. The strip was like a bomb thrown into the world of dating angst and the perpetual conflict between men and women, and quickly took off, being published nationally in 100 newspapers, including the Star-Ledger. In his original cartoons, Feiffer attacked the U.S. government on nuclear testing and was a vocal critic of the Vietnam War when most Americans didn’t know where Vietnam was.

In his witty and quick-moving memoir “Backing into Forward”(Doubleday, $30), Feiffer covers his unhappy childhood in the Bronx with an overbearing mother and a weak father, his four-year apprenticeship with cartoon legend Will Eisner and his two horrible years in the Army. Arriving in New York’s bohemian Greenwich Village in the early 1950s, Feiffer hit the pulse of neurotic dating and with the Voice wrote searing cartoons about racism and the civil right movement, Lyndon Johnson, Nixon and the buffoonish ticks of Ronald Reagan. Along the way, Feiffer became a storied playwright, screenwriter and children's book author.

Feiffer, 81, won a Pulitzer Prize for his cartoon work, wrote the screenplay for “Carnal Knowledge” and illustrated such classics as “The Phantom Tollbooth.” Feiffer met with freelance writer Dylan Foley at his home in Manhattan.

Q. After six decades of acclaim as a cartoonist, why did you decide to write your memoir?

A. My friend Howard Kaminsky and I would get together every few months. He kept saying to me, “That’s a good story. You should write a memoir.” He and my wife finally ganged up on me. It was a formidable task, taking four or five years. I usually don’t like to talk about myself unless it is 2 a.m. and I’ve had too much to drink. I thought I could use my own failures as a hook. Will Eisner told me I had no drawing talent, but then he let me write the stories, which I could do. There is so much advice being given to children all the time. Three-quarters of it is well-intentioned bull. I used myself as an example, how you can work through conflicting advice and make a life for yourself.

Q. Why do you think your cartoons on sex, nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War had such an explosive effect on American society?

A. When I looked at “The Explainers,” my collection of the first 10 years of cartoons, I couldn’t figure out what the fuss was about. What made this such a breakthrough? It was undeniable that there so much excitement about the boy-girl cartoons about sex and the later material about politics. People would stop me on the street and say, “How do you get away with this?” On the other hand, I look at my civil rights cartoons from the 1960s, and they seem to be as dangerous as they ever were. We still haven’t solved the problem of race in America. Race is still the hot-button issue.

Q. Your 1971 movie “Carnal Knowledge,” directed by Mike Nichols and starring Candace Bergen and Jack Nicholson, was a devastating look at American relationships and male misogyny. How did it evolve?

A. I was working at Playboy and saw the behavior of men there who were jerks around women. I heard and observed things. I formed this theory that many heterosexual men don’t like women. Women want companionship with men and exchanges with them, while men only want sex and bragging rights.

Q. In your memoir, you say you were assaulting “the state” one strip at a time. What did mean by this?

A. I saw myself as a radical, and I saw my responsibility in expressing a radical point of view, but not from any organizational point of view. There was no organization that I identified myself with for more than 15 minutes.
(Originally published in the Newark Star-Ledger in March 2010)

Anand Giridharadas' Upbeat Take on Modern India

In the 1970s, the journalist Anand Giridharadas’ parents moved from India to America for better professional opportunities, leaving behind India’s stagnant economy and rigid caste system. Three decades later, their America-born son moved back to an India with a free market going full tilt and intense social mobility changing the face of the nation.

In his debut nonfiction book “India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation’s Remaking”(Times Books, 274 pp., $25), Giridharadas weaves his family history in with the stories of contemporary Indian strivers like Ravindra, an entrepreneur who pulled himself out of grinding poverty through the can-do maxims of Dale Carnagie, and Mukesh Ambani, a billionaire whose aggressive economic dealings are reshaping the country and the Indian identity at the same time. Readers will meet Indian women who reject arranged marriages and a Maoist rebel still fighting after five decades. Giridharadas’ portrait of a modern India is vivd and optimistic, cataloging the the country’s growing economic power and turbulent changes.

Giridharadas, 29, was raised in Ohio and Maryland. He is a columnist for the International Herald Tribune and spoke with freelance writer Dylan Foley by telephone from his home in Cambridge, Mass.

Q. Why did you incorporate much of your family history of emigrating from India to America in this book?

A. It was something that emerged quite late in the process. The big story I am telling was what India was to itself and the world, and what India is now. In the larger story of change, I thought it would be interesting to tell my family’s story of change. It was a way of making a big story smaller.

Q. In one of your essays, you write about Ravindra, a man from an oppressed Indian social class in a small town in the center of India who started several businesses. How did he reinvent himself?

A. The essence of what Ravindra did was from a series of revelations. Revelation number one was waking up in his serf-like childhood and realizing he did not have to be a serf. Nobody in his family had ever had that insight. Number two was deciding to self-educate rather than depend on the system. Don’t trust that anyone will help you. The third revelation was that he was not alone, that there were millions like him who wanted to change their lives. Ravindra offered others the services of self-invention., like running his skating school, and profited from them. He understood how profoundly ordinary his own dream were.

Q. Americans living in India often find themselves uncomfortable with the Indian upper-classes’ treatment of their servants. What was your experience?

A. When you first arrive in India, you think, “God, these Indians treat their servants so badly! How awful!” It’s something in the air and something about the way people are, that very few people hold out. I wasn’t able to. Everybody goes local. You stop saying “thank you” and things like that. I was disappointed with myself that I crossed the line where you accept the concept that employers and servants come from different worlds.

Q. In one story you tell, two brothers split the family home, becoming Upstairs Uncle and Downstairs Uncle to their niece, showing the rifts in modern India in one building. What did you learn?

A. The Upstairs Uncle broke away from his brother and family because he was more ambitious. He literally built another home on top of the family house. What happened across the Upstairs/Downstairs gradient was that the fault lines of modern India were bared. There were different conceptions of family love and romantic love, as well as a different understanding of self, money and ambition between the two families. About all, there was a different understanding of family obligation. You got to see this in one house how all these things manifested themselves.

(This interview ran in the Newark Star-Ledger in March 2011)