Confession

Over Thanksgiving, my very smart and almost-professor brother-in-law (the only 27-year-old I know who smokes a pipe) and I talked a bit about books. Partially because he drew my name and gave me about 17 books, and partially because we both love them so.

And so we both agreed that there are moments when you are reading something, and you think that you almost can't believe the phrases before you exist because the words are so perfectly arranged. Moments that you almost jump out of your skin because you honestly can't fathom how someone wrote something so right. So exact. So perfect. And at the same time you can't believe that it hasn't been done before. Because it seems so obviously effortless.

That's what happened to me about four times as I was reading Atonement in 2001. Almost seven years ago, and I continue to remember the moments' specifics. I was in Dallas. In the lobby of an old house turned salon. Waiting. It was raining outside. I just had spilled coffee all over myself. And I read the most fantastic arrangement of letters that I had come across in years. Beautiful.

Right about that time, I got so excited about the writing, I started laughing out loud and could no longer concentrate on the story. I lost the meaning in the words. And it was fantastic.

Over the years, I never read the story again but recommended the book a hundred times. Because it held up as a standard of smart writing. So when the movie came out, I was a bit reticent to expose myself to someone else's visual interpretation of the words. Because, of course, that's tricky. And risky.

But last night we went. And what I found was the story that the words were too good to show. The deep-thinking sociology behind the presentation. The heat in England in the summer of 1935. The most fantastic one-shot interpretation of the Dunkirk evacuation and the many distinct reactions it created. The unexpected tragedy at the Balham tube station. Of course, the disturbing story was still there in full force. But this time, I understood a different part of it. Not the words that created it, but the setting that did. The time. The place. The prejudices. A period when passions were damned and brutalities were customary. A place where this juxtaposition didn't seem to occur to anyone.

It didn't occur to me when I read its extraordinary recount, perfectly presented. But I saw it. In high definition.

The absurdity of the wars we create.