I was struck, Thane, by one of your students’ questions. She argued that the story told in the Book of Daniel could be a counter-argument to both Tony and Edgar’s support for the idea that healing redemption is always a better way to go than revenge. [The context of the film MUNICH is a remarkable coincidence to this evening where revenge killings clearly spiralled out of control -- ending with suicide bombings and literal airplane bombings perhaps ad infinitum!]. Her argument was to focus on “Daniel’s” violent behavior towards his wife and his son as caused by his inability (failure?) to take revenge on the real villains. Certainly we see images of this kind of behavior all over society — the oppressed man (a person of color subjected to racism as in THE WINDING SHEET, the oppressed worker [ethnicity irrelevant] in story after story) who beats his weaker family members.

I think the question missed something in Edgar’s book and it wasn’t clarified in the answer. By the end of the novel, when Daniel is confronting Selig Mindish he “lets go” of any desire to take any vengeance. And, the Daniel at the end of the novel (remember he says, “I think I can now cry” or something close to that) is MUCH DIFFERENT from the more violent mercurial Daniel at the beginning and the middle.

If anyone is interested (completely shameless plug coming up) my daughter Ivy’s film HEIR TO AN EXECUTION has on the DVD version a long interview with Tony where he goes into much more detail about his view on the need for redemption and forgiveness — even suggesting that David Greenglass is a candidate for forgiveness and redemption — . You don’t have to buy it, you can rent it from NetFlix or take it from a library.

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