Wherever you come down on the endlessly intriguing question of what the hell is going on with Iran and the NIE, there’s a much more fundamental point about Iran that we shouldn’t overlook.

Jeffrey Herf addresses this question. Writing in Germany, Herf asks: “Where Are the Anti-Fascists?”

Occasionally one hears reassuring voices on both sides of the Atlantic. They say that Ahmadinejad is not the real seat of power in Tehran, or that he is simply making such threats to mobilize his supporters at home against domestic opponents, or that if he did possess nuclear weapons, he would certainly not be so crazy at to use them against a state such as Israel with its own nuclear deterrent. While I have heard such arguments from political scientists in the United States, many of whom tend to dismiss the causal significance of ideological fanaticism in international affairs, such reassuring tones sound particularly peculiar when voiced in this country. To put it mildly, German politics and intellectual life is not famous for sunny optimism.  …

Why do those who live in a country that was destroyed by the actions of a fanatic in power assume that Germany was unique, and that another country outside Europe could not produce a fanatic of a very different sort, and that Ahmadinejad does not really mean what he says?

[e.a.]

Indeed, Benjamin Netanyahu (who’s been awfully quiet, by the way—have you noticed? what’s up with that?) made exactly this point about Iran a year ago:

“Believe [Ahmadinejad] and stop him,”

No one believed bin Laden either back in the early 1990s, when he was making all kinds of threats against the United States.

Given what we know now—that bin Laden meant every word he said—why would anyone rational choose not to believe Iran’s malign intentions, which it boasts about?

on the stereo:

I’m in Havana, courtesy of Rubén González:

While we’re waiting for a John Le Carré -caliber*** thriller writer to emerge who is talented enough to address the war on terror, let me direct you toward two posts (and their comments sections) over on the Belmont Club.

Long live the blogosphere!

————-

*** Le Carré has turned into an anti-American political crank, but his Smiley novels were deeply satisfying entertainments. And The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is one of the most astute books ever written about the moral compromises foisted on people by Soviet-style totalitarianism.

It looks like Amazon has hit the sweet spot with the Kindle, its new reading device. There’s a ton of press, much of it positive.

Peter Osnos, publisher of Public Affairs and director of the multi-platform publishing project Caravan (who, coincidentally, is also Scott McLellan’s editor and who I mentioned here in that regard, and obviously a very industrious guy) sings its praises here. [e.a.]

Now comes the Kindle, Amazon’s device for wireless reading that makes it possible to carry an entire library in a machine the size of a paperback. I ordered one on the day it was released at the high price of $399. It arrived two days later, and within minutes I was settled in an easy-chair downloading and reading David Halberstam’s The Coldest Winter, which I had bought for $9.99, less than a third of its list price for the printed version. … There will be a great many people who conclude that they only way they really enjoy a book is holding the printed pages in their hand, but for those who choose a machine (like those who have switched over time to MP3s from Hi-Fi, and to DVDs from the big screen), the Kindle is a major breakthrough.

A colleague will be pleased to note the device’s usefulness to publishing professionals:

As an editor, I was especially interested in the promise of downloading documents and manuscripts from my computer so I could read them and take notes without hauling wheelbarrows full of paper.

Alas, Osnos’s path to setting up the damn thing wasn’t obstacle-free. Read about it here. But read it!

I think it was a year and a half ago that I wrote “the future of books is here.” There’s an awful lot of press right now, so it’s hard to say amidst the fog of PR whether or not the Kindle will ignite (ha ha ha HA!) the imaginations of gadget lovers as well as book lovers. Its wireless capability just may give it the kind of crossover appeal to make the idea of an electronic device for reading books stick. And that’s more than half the battle, I believe.

Which means that books may finally be tipping over into the digital realm for real. I’ve been writing about this subject for a long time on the blog. And I’m also the author of the slogan

if you love books, set them free™

So I’m pleased about this development.

But I’m even more pleased to note a certain buzz around books that I haven’t picked up in a good long while. This one even made it into the news pages of the New York Times.

Maybe by coincidence, I’ve noted a mini-trend among the twentysomethings of my own acquaintance (not a scientific sample—not even close—but it’s still worth reporting, because it’s a change in their behavior): they’re not only reading more, but they’re reading more widely. And they’re drawn to big-canvas stories: Hemingway and Ayn Rand [!] are having a resurgence.

The extraordinary two-week outpouring of affection after the recent death of Norman Mailer put the spotlight on an era when authors—and books, of course—mattered. Articles about Mailer appeared so far and wide in the media that they left an impression. In the last couple of weeks, I’ve gotten a lot of requests for guidance about the post-war mid-twentieth-century writers. I’ve pointed my young friends toward Bellow, Heller, Roth, Malamud, Capote, Talese, Thompson, Mailer, Wolfe, and Updike. Did I leave anyone out?

It’s an unexpected pleasure to be asked for book recommendations. You know what I mean?

Also, for me it’s just another indicator that the popular culture—TV and the movies—isn’t providing enough in the way of stories to satisfy the voracious hunger of the entertainment-consuming public. And the ongoing Hollywood writers’ strike isn’t helping.

A restless public could do worse than turn to books, of course.

But even if they don’t—and this is my real point—storytellers should stop worrying and relax. The form in which they tell their tales will change and evolve.

But as long as there are human beings who want to know what happened? or what’s happening?, storytellers will never run out of business.

So: if you love books, set them free™—and let them evolve.