In these excerpts from his new book, Death Comes to Happy Valley: Penn State and the Tragic Legacy of Joe Paterno, Jonathan Mahler looks at Paterno’s fall and at his campus legacy after his death.
Jonathan Mahler is the author of The Challenge: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and the Fight Over Presidential Power and the bestselling book Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning. He is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, and his work has also appeared in The New York Times Book Review, New York magazine, The New Republic, and Slate, among other publications.
To commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Nobel Prize-winning author talks to Jonathan Mahler about why he won’t use the word “holocaust” (“I use the word “Auschwitz” instead. The name “Auschwitz” should be the one in the conscience.”), his views on The Reader (“What it shows is a young man who made love to a woman, and the only person he felt sorry for was the woman!") and how language can never describe the experience of the camps (“We cannot find the words. I still believe that. What we do have now is more information.”)