Author's Comment to Charlie Rose

The Reader

"The individual moral sense is too weak to overcome that situation....We need institutions...to bolster us...And when those institutions fail..." Bernard Schlink, author of The Reader, book, and now movie.

And Charlie Rose's interview with the performers:

http://www.charlierose.com/view/clip/9895

"It remains freightening...how thin the ice is."

Other parts of the transcript notes I have taken:

Best interview ever based on his incisive questions of the author.


Hannah was more ashamed of her illiteracy than allowing people to burn to death. An element of moral blindness. Something really lacking in her. Moral sense. Freedom to do the right thing. Something lacking. Amount of shame about her illiteracy…where everybody masters (literacy).

Working in a factory. Late -- between 2-4 am, workers opened up and told what they did/saw.

Big Auschwitz trial in Frankfort.

There’s a line and once you step over, pretty much anything goes. The first killing and shooting did it. Allowed them to do anything. Many of them. Didn’t want to expose themselves as not doing what the others did.

I can’t forgive.

The individual moral sense is too weak.