Posted on 12/18/2014 7:04:32 PM PST by Seizethecarp
...Bill Darron drove down the alley behind Laura Hillenbrand’s house (with) a Norden bombsight.
Since 1987, Hillenbrand has been sick with chronic fatigue syndrome, which has mostly confined her indoors for the last quarter century. When she explained this to Darron, he agreed to bring the Norden from New Jersey on his next visit to Washington. Now, as he made the final calibrations, Hillenbrand returned to the room, and he offered her a brief tutorial. He showed her how to position herself above the monocular eyepiece, guide the cross hairs toward a target on the map, then lock the sight into position and wait for the twin indicators to align — until, with a satisfying click, the salvo mechanism released. Hillenbrand spent more than an hour crouched over the bombsight. Each time she came to the end of the map, Darron would reset the system to begin again.
“I spent the afternoon bombing Phoenix,” Hillenbrand told me.
She has been forced by the illness to develop convoluted workarounds for some of the most basic research tasks, yet her workarounds, in all their strange complexity, deliver many of her greatest advantages. When I asked, for example, how she reads old newspapers on microfilm without traveling to a library, I was stunned to discover that she doesn’t. “I can’t look at microfiche,” she said. “I couldn’t do that even in my good vertigo years.”
Instead, Hillenbrand buys vintage newspapers on eBay and reads them in her living room, as if browsing the morning paper.
It was in those vintage newspapers that Hillenbrand discovered her next book. “I happened to turn over a clipping about Seabiscuit,” she said. “On the other side of that page, directly the opposite side of the page, was an article on Louie Zamperini, this running phenom.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
pinging some of Homer’s folks to a great article about Unbreakable the author, Laura Hillenbrand (who has CFS as do I), who is the daughter of a survivor of fighting on the Western Front.
She is quoted as being inspired to write Unbreakable in part in the article in part because of her father as follows:
“Her father, Bernard, was a World War II veteran, deeply scarred by the long and brutal trench fighting in Hürtgen Forest.”
“She had always been fascinated by her father’s experience in World War II — dug into foxholes deep in the forest and shelled by mortars through the night, while the trees shattered overhead and his fellow soldiers descended into madness. He remembered opening a can of rations just as the world went black, then awaking in the snow with his hand shredded and blood all around. He was trying to reach a medic when another mortar lofted overhead, and he dove into a ditch for safety, feeling another man jump in after him and the unforgettable vibration of the man’s body exploding as the mortar detonated on his back. Bernard Hillenbrand returned from Europe with a rebuilt hand and scars across his shoulder, but he was never able to discuss the emotional impact of the war, or the year and a half he spent in the hospital coming to terms with his wounds.”
In my most humble opinion Laura Hillenbrand is a fantastic writer. I couldn’t put any of her books down once I began.
She’s a truly gifted writer & has a sublime quality about her on every level including her looks which are captivating.
This was our audiobook on our last roadtrip, fantastic! I hope the movie is good.
Thanks for posting. I just purchased the Audible version for my iPhone. I love to listen to audio books at night before falling asleep. But there must be an incredible narrator voice to make it the best. In this case it’s Edward Hermann who narrates “Unbreakable”.
She wrote a mighty fine book about an amazing member of our Greatest Generation. If you haven’t read the book I highly recommend it. Had the pleasure of meeting Mr.Zamperini in the later years of his life.
It takes a lot to get me to give the NY Times a click. But this was interesting. Thanks.
OMG - I wanted to meet Louie after reading this mesmerizing book. An incredibly gifted writer describing a real life that is beyond amazing. The combination of the writer and the subject is pure magic.
Laura Hillenbrand’s Seabiscuit book was also worth reading... every word....historical, hilarious, informative, magical. I knew what would happen but I was on the edge of my chair during part of it.
I can only hope Hillenbrand’s health allows her to write another book.
I read the book, and just finished the audiobook.
Amazing on so many levels.
I had a revelation about this man and his life. He was declared dead, and came back alive to everyone. This is a very rare thing in any population of people, but he had it happen to him.
The weird thing is...his arch-nemisis, The Bird, had the same thing happen to him. He was declared dead to everyone, but he came back too.
What are the odds of two people like that, intersecting they way they did, in that place and time, both being declared dead, and both reappearing to their families years later.
Just amazing.
Loved the book......Looking forward to the movie!
Article about a writer with CFS.
Edward Hermann is a terrific reader. He also did the audiobook of “The Coldest Winter,” about the Korean War.
I agree. Great narrator, and it makes all the difference in some books.
I listened to Samuel Eliot Morison’s book “Admiral of the Ocean Sea” about Christopher Columbus, and it was read by some guy with a British accent that sounded dry and sometimes sarcastic, and for some reason, it really added to the book.
By the way, did you like “The Coldest Winter”? I was going to listen to it, but someone I knew (who knew me too) told me I wouldn’t like it, and reading some of the reviews by everyday people, I decided not to get it. (The general theme was that it was less about the history of the actual campaign, and more about MacArthur and the political aspects, and not in a good way for MacArthur)
There are things about MacArthur that I respect, but he doesn’t rank the highest in my mind when it comes to military leaders, so it isn’t that I would be bothered seeing him dragged down and through the mud a little. I guess I thought it was more along the lines of Shelby Foote’s “Civil War: A Narrative”...
But if it is read by Edward Hermann, I would probably like it better. I like his style.
Yes, I liked it very much. I think the audiobook is abridged - or at least, the version in my library. As I remember it, it emphasized the fighting much more than the politics, although MacArthur certainly doesn’t come off very well.
Ah...maybe I will check it out, then. Thanks!
Seabiscuit was one of the first books I excerpted on my threads. I think it was around 1940 when Seabiscuit was making his comeback at Santa Anita. I justified my departure from prewar-related information by the way she presented such a compelling picture of the American state of mind at the time.
I heard an interview with the grandson of the subject of Unbroken on Hugh Hewitt's program yesterday. I better get the book.
I too “read” this book with my ears. Edward Herrman is a terrific reader and audible dot com is one of the best websites out there.
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