‘Fearless’ After a Crash

I was disappointed in Kenneth Turan’s review “ ‘Fearless’: Bellyful of a Plane Crash Survivor” (Oct. 15).

I watched Jeff Bridges take Max Klein through his very personal spiritual odyssey. I deeply sensed his suffering. I saw him as isolated, lonely and alone, as a man whose personal reaction to the horror of random carnage left him without any meaningful anchors in his life and sent him on a desperate, death-defying search to reconstruct--or reconnect to--something worth living for. I saw myself--and all of us--in him.

Survivors of psychological trauma are not always likable or attractive. They disappoint those of us who love them because they are in the middle of profound change and are quite unsure of our importance in their lives. We want them to be the way they were and fight to have them back, unchanged.

They do not suffer fools gladly. Confronted with the reality of random death and the fragile, temporary nature of their own visit here, they cannot find the time for niceties. Often they become quite outspoken, even blunt and rude. As might be expected, they have no tolerance for the vacuous, superficial and venal.

If we can conclude that Max Klein has become a total jerk, impervious to empathy, perhaps we can avoid coming to terms with “There but for the grace of. . . .”

BOB BOYLE

Denver

Psychologist Boyle has counseled survivors of the 1989 United Air Lines Flight 232 crash in Sioux City, Iowa.