Before coming to Night Thoughts, I had known of its author, Wallace Shawn, as a character actor I had seen in a number of movies and TV shows through the years without being able to place a name on him. He was to me one of those character actors who is at once familiar from having seen him in movies and TV shows, and yet is unfamiliar at the same time because he remained largely anonymous in my awareness of him.

In this book, Shawn takes the reader on a philosophical journey in which he looks upon today's world with a critical eye while reflecting upon how civilization developed over time a world in which there are, essentially 2 classes of people, the 'lucky' and the 'unlucky.' The 'lucky' is a class of people who make up the corporate, political, military, scientific, and cultural elites who, by virtue of their power, wealth, and influence, lead privileged lives and enjoy a greater freedom in living than those people who are of the 'unlucky' class, who had to struggle and work hard all their lives to obtain for themselves and their families a sustainable standard of living.  Shawn (the son of William Shawn, the longtime editor of The New Yorker, a weekly magazine that has occupied a prominent place in U.S. culture since its founding in 1925) freely admits to being among the 'lucky' and his candor about his unease in being in that number is sobering.

What I most enjoyed about reading Night Thoughts was how much of Shawn's musings on life, people, the 'civilized' societies in which we live, reflect much of my own thoughts in these areas. He "considers justice, inequality, blame, revenge, eleventh-century Japanese court poetry, decadence, Beethoven, the relationship between the Islamic world and the West --- and the possibility that a better world could be created." I think Wallace Shawn should be complimented for making a brave attempt to give an honest appraisal of himself, the cultural milieu that has defined him throughout his life, and the world in its rawness, beauty, and brutality.

The following reflection that Shawn makes about 'Night' has a special resonance for me. He says that "Night is a wonderful blessing. It's amazing and I'm so grateful for it. In the darkness, lying in bed, we can stop. To be able to stop --- that's amazing. We can stop. We can think. Of course it's frightening too. We think of what may happen to us. We think about death. Murders and murderers stand around the bed. But night gives us a chance to consider the possibility that we can start again, that when day comes we can begin again in a different way."   I like that.