Here are a few loosely connected items floating around my cerebrum this morning: In the Washington Post, Philip Caputo reviews Sebastian Junger’s new book War, based on Junger’s extended experience embedded with an Airborn platoon in Afghanistan in 2007 and 2008. Caputo gives War an excellent review, particularly for its insights into the psychology of men in combat.
I’ll probably pass. I don’t read a lot of war journalism or novels or see a lot of war movies because, What’s new to say about that? The last war novel I read was James Jones’ The Thin Red Line, recommended by Broschat as (I quote from memory), “far and away the best war novel I’ve ever read.” I heartily agree. Jones writes about the army’s bloody capture of Guadalcanal, and though it’s a novel, Jones was there himself as a combat soldier. What distinguishes The Thin Red Line is its riveting psychological portrayal of very different men in combat. There’s heroism in Jones’ novel, but mostly there’s fear, brutality, and pure dumb luck, good or bad.
I watched the film version of the book just a few days ago and found it to be sadly lacking, sadly. I doubt any film could capture the omniscient narrator’s insights into the minds of soldiers in combat, but this film seems to fall particularly short because it takes its name from such a powerful novel. It could have changed the title and few would have noticed any cinemagraphic plagiarism.
Loosely connected item number one: Junger also wrote The Perfect Storm, which I happened to be reading shortly after its release while teaching summer school for two months aboard the California Maritime Academy’s training ship The Golden Bear as we cruised the South Pacific and visited mostly undiscovered or uninhabited islands.
And yes, I got paid for it. Hate me if you must.
The Perfect Storm, published in 1997, is also a creative nonfiction book based on a massive storm that battered New England and cost lives on ships at sea. Chances are good you’ve seen the movie if you didn’t read the book.
Interestingly, the ship’s officers on the Golden Bear were unanimously scornful of The Perfect Storm. In their view, Junger didn’t know squat about ships or storms, and mess hall conversation in no small part consisted of ridiculing particular points of the book.
I wasn’t qualified to say, of course. My only ongoing criticism is that the phrase “the perfect storm” should have been retired from the language no later than about Y2K, as it is now used to describe everything from an oil rig explosion and massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico to the release of the iPad to a city council meeting gone bad.
As a career writing teacher and sometime writer myself, I admonished students to avoid clichés like the plague. Enough with the perfect storm.
So I have my doubts about Junger’s verisimilitude, or “truthiness,” as Colbert would call it, in his new book. Not to say it might not be a book worth reading. Maybe it is.
Better, I’ll bet, is Jon Krakauer’s Where Men Win Glory, the story of NFL star player Pat Tilman, who gave up his successful football career to join the army and become a Ranger after 9/11, only to be killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan. (This is loosely connected item number two, as I recently finished the book.)
The military and the Bush administration not only did their best to cover up how he died, they tried with initial success to use his story to promote public opinion in support of the war, as things by now were going very badly in Iraq. Krakauer’s book brings back all the powerful emotions of disgust I had for the Bush administration and its most vocal spokespersons, (Henny Penny Rumsfeld engenders particular disdain once again.) And while I initially saw Tilman as just another jock-bully-blindly patriotic-and-overpaid-sports popstar, I quickly began to develop the highest regard for him. It's a book well worth reading.
Loosely connected item the third is that reviewer Philip Caputo (back to Junger here) has just published a well-reviewed novel about life on the border entitled Crossers. My brief time this winter along the California and Arizona borders with Mexico, combined with my continuing efforts to learn a bit of Spanish, have left me thinking a lot about border and immigration issues lately. With a nod to the Arizona legislature and governor for keeping the kettle boiling, time will tell whether the current situation in Arizona will ultimately help move the cause of immigration reform forward or whether it will only serve to make real reforms politically more difficult.
I vote the latter and doubt, for that matter, that we’ll see much in the way of reform in coming years. I believe even more strongly lately that legalizing marijuana is the only effective way to dramatically reduce drug smuggling and deal a serious blow to the cartels, but don’t hold your breath. Don’t even inhale.
I’ve ordered Crossers onto my Kindle.
And since I’m coupling loosely this morning, I watched the film Frida last night. It could have been better, but I thought it was quite good overall, if a little lacking in gritty, and I learned a lot about Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. Who knew that they hosted Trotsky in Mexico, where he was murdered by Stalin’s hit men? A quick Web seach this morning tells me not to make too much of this as history, but still. . . .
Also, Selma Hayek naked. Both she and Alfred Molina as Rivera turn in fine performances.
The fight against terrorism, the border with Mexico, The Taliban, and the drug cartels: not so loosely coupled, maybe.
The movie I just happened to watch last night. Mexico is such a beautiful country and so rich in cultural history. It's sad to see it fall into such turmoil, and not just along the border. I'd love to visit to continue my language study, but there are few areas left that aren't on the State Department's caution list. Better, maybe, to go someplace safe, like Cuba, for example.
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