Joel John Roberts
Southern California
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Saturday, February, 6, 2010
Book on homeless man and Los Angeles journalist is highlighted by Long Beach Book Week




Imagine one city reading the same book. For the past nine years, the City of Long Beach’s Public Library Foundation encouraged the whole city to read one book at the same time.

This year, the foundation chose the book, “The Soloist: A Lost Dream, An Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music.” Written by Los Angeles Times columnist, Steve Lopez, the book chronicles the journalist’s relationship with Nathaniel Ayers, a man who was once homeless on the tough streets of downtown Los Angeles.

After numerous encounters with Ayers, Lopez discovers that this homeless man was once a promising classical bass student at New York’s Juilliard School of Music. The book is a moving narrative of how a successful journalist helps a homeless man struggling with mental health issues access permanent housing.

“The Soloist is a symphony, providing an honest look at mental illness, human dignity and the need for social connection. It is also a call to action. As masters of their arts, Steve Lopez and Nathaniel Ayers deserve a standing ovation,” says Michael J. Fitzpatrick, Executive Director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

From March 3 through March 14, the city will be hosting numerous events to encourage its citizens to read the book, from a panel discussion on homelessness to a special showing of the movie, “The Soloist.”

 



Bill Cady: One of the characters in a fiction series I write is homeless when the first story begins. I use myself under an alias as that character, who then goes on to assist the homeless while completing a list of jobs given him by God. The books are all part of The Shimmering Image series. The homeless are, to the surprise of many, interesting in many ways. In the novel I'm just now finishing in another series the theme is a serial killer in Oceanside, CA who murders homeless people to avenge a death for a woman he fell in love with. We, the homeless, are large enough to be an entire "community", and therefore interesting enough to be a factor in everyone's life in one way or another. There are 3,500,000 of us just in the U.S., and the numbers are staggering. Last year there were 42,000+ traffic deaths in this country and we spend hundreds of millions of dollars to investigate those who are gone and, hopefully, prevent more deaths. Yet we spend only pennies on 3,500,000 people who are still here today and will be here tomorrow if we don't help. Sound all that smart to you?
Posted 2010-02-19 18:33:46
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