boy who fell out of the sky http://boywhofell.com/blog/ en Copyright 2006 Mon, 27 Mar 2006 07:42:53 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=3.2 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss "Dave's Place" There are no home movies of David, and very few photographs of him after age ten or twelve. It's been so long since he died, it's easy to forget how his voice sounded, how he gestured when he talked, how he moved through a room. A film was made of the conference that took David to Jerusalem in 1988, and for a long time I held out hope that David was in the outtakes. But I waited too long to contact the filmmaker, and there are just one or two brief shots of David in the finished piece.

During the course of my research for the book, I ran across a woman who cast David in a student film at Brown, but David appears only briefly, here and there, and he never speaks (he stares into a mirror, he picks up a dead mouse and glowers at it).

]]> http://boywhofell.com/blog/2006/03/daves_place.html http://boywhofell.com/blog/2006/03/daves_place.html Mon, 27 Mar 2006 07:42:53 -0500 A Brief History of Publicity Photos I Have Taken (1) In the beginning, there was Entertainment Weekly magazine. On short notice, I was flown to NYC, then taken to an estate near West Point where I was met by the photographer, her lighting assistants, a stylist and a groomer, and a man driving a custom bus that he said was last used by U2 (this is where the styling and the grooming would happen). As an unknown author and employee of public television, I usually travel on my own custom bus, with my own stylist and groomer, but in this case I was persuaded to go with what was provided. Over the course of about eight hours, I ate catered food, tried on high-fashion clothes, then stood in the cold for hours trying to make the face of someone who'd lost his brother in a terrorist bombing (not eighteen years ago, but, say, last week). The photo appeared in the magazine a week or so later. I am convinced that some beard stubble was photo-shopped in to give me the look of a man who had holed up in an empty cabin for years wrestling with his demons. It worked. People told me I looked handsome, although, decidedly, sad. I bought two copies of the magazine but had no idea what to do with them.

]]> http://boywhofell.com/blog/2006/03/a_brief_history_of_publicity_p.html http://boywhofell.com/blog/2006/03/a_brief_history_of_publicity_p.html Sun, 26 Mar 2006 13:21:18 -0500 David Dornstein talks! I've got some tape recordings of my brother David's voice. I haven't listened to them in a long time because I've got two kids now and don't have a lot of time to put on headphones and listen to old recordings of my dead brother's voice. Also: I no longer own a tape player.

]]> http://boywhofell.com/blog/2006/03/welcome_sort_of.html http://boywhofell.com/blog/2006/03/welcome_sort_of.html Thu, 23 Mar 2006 10:40:53 -0500 What the Critics Are Saying ''The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky" is not just the memoir of a brother's loss or even the autobiography of a life cut short. It's more like a full-scale attempt at resurrection, or at least a part of such an effort, the same larger effort that the book itself chronicles. For the fullness of the attempt goes so much further than mere biography. The author made saving David -- if not from death, then at least from disappearing into the forgetfulness of the living -- first into a job and then into something like a life...

If the goal was to rescue David in some way, at least from the quicksand of time, then in this at least his younger brother can take comfort in having succeeded magnificently....Brilliant, handsome, restless, irresistible to women (and sometimes to men), alternately charismatic and crazed, David was in some ways the ideal older brother. His aspirations for himself were boundless but frustrated, and soon enough, as if sensing what was coming, he transferred them to Ken, to whom he wrote with heartbreaking candor of his affection: ''You are beautiful and your nature is a narcotic to me, my time is not ever so blissful and rich and fulfilling as when I am in contact with you. . . . I have absolute trust and belief in you. Just keep growing."

By the time you finish it, this is a hugely satisfying book. David's letters and diaries add psychological horsepower and tragic heft at every turn, and his faith in his brother's talents is redeemed as well. Ken is a talented writer who is sensitive to the literary and cultural context of everything he sees and feels (including his attraction to his dead brother's lovers). His journey into the heart of David, moreover, reveals not just truths about the Dornstein brothers but about love, loss, and ultimately life's inescapable transience.
--Daniel Akst, Boston Globe

]]> http://boywhofell.com/blog/2006/03/reviews.html http://boywhofell.com/blog/2006/03/reviews.html Tue, 21 Mar 2006 00:32:29 -0500