Bloods, by Wallace Terry, was a great book--disturbing, enlightening, depressing, thought-provoking. I hadn't read any Vietnam veteran literature for quite some time and this compilation of oral history narratives reminded me of what a complicated war that was and what a shattering experience it was for so many veterans.
The experiences of black veterans is the focus of this collection; their additional difficulties dealing with race issues made their war stories more interesting and in many ways different from the accounts of white or other race combatants who survived the conflict that spanned a decade.
What really struck me about the stories presented in this book is the range of attitudes the men expressed toward Vietnam, the Vietnamese people, the military, the U.S., their reception when they returned home, as well as the impact of race relations and the civil rights struggle that was going on during that time.
Some of the men were bitter or traumatized by what they saw and did while there and angry with the government who sent them there, especially when they were treated so poorly at home. Others were not critical of the military or the policies that required them to fight. Some believed we were right to go there and still believe it. Some started out believing in the mission but changed their minds after they'd been there a while.
Some didn't see much action; others saw too much. A number of them spoke frankly about atrocities that they witnessed (on both sides) or participated in. Those were chilling accounts. Those who seemed to be the most well adjusted were ones who stayed in the military and made a career out of it. I've always thought that to be true; being around other soldiers probably allowed them to adjust to peacetime in a more gradual way. They had people to talk to who understood what they went through. They weren't judged or feared; they were appreciated.
I've read other accounts from Vietnam veterans, but I think this collection was the most balanced, giving a fuller picture, I think, than those which try to present a more unified view of the war, whether pro or con. I recommend it highly, especially now that we're having to deal with a whole new generation of war veterans. Even though we give them parades and presents, awards and decorations, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that they are still going to be deeply affected in unpredictable ways by what they have gone through.
And I think we should not lose sight of the fact that many of the Vietnam vets are still out there, still suffering and continue to need our help. Just because we want to forget how we treated them doesn't mean we should forget them.
After Bloods I read a light, fluffy little book that was really more of a reference book: French Fun: The Real Spoken Language of Quebec, by Steve Timmins. It was a dictionary-style collection of French Canadian idioms. It's designed for English-speaking students of French who live in Canada, though, as the author admits, it can also be useful for non-Canadian English speakers. There were some pretty funny idioms that, when translated literally, evoked a comical mental picture, accompanied, in some cases, by an actual picture--a drawing depicting its literal meaning. It was a much more entertaining read than I had imagined it would be. Another "T" book accomplished!
Until next time!
Monday, September 30, 2013
Saturday, September 14, 2013
Extraordinary People
I finished Ann Tyler's Searching for Caleb and I must say it was a very good book! The characters were very strange but interesting, and I got involved in their dilemmas. All worked out well in the end, though, so I highly recommend this book. Next on my list: Bloods.
Here's a review of Searching for Caleb that came out in The New York Times in 1975. I think it beautifully captures the book's essence:
By KATHA POLLITT
It's hard to classify Anne Tyler's novels. They are Southern in their sure sense of family and place but lack the taste for violence and the Gothic that often characterizes self- consciously Southern literature. They are modern in their fictional techniques, yet utterly unconcerned with the contemporary moment as a subject, so that, with only minor dislocations, her stories could just as well have taken place in the twenties or thirties. The current school of feminist-influenced novels seems to have passed her by completely: her women are strong, often stronger than the men in their lives, but solidly grounded in traditional roles. Among our better contemporary novelists, Tyler occupies a somewhat lonely place, polishing brighter and brighter a craft many novelists no longer deem essential to their purpose: the unfolding of character through brilliantly imagined and absolutely accurate detail.
In "Searching for Caleb" she has invented a family whose very conventionality borders on the eccentric. The Pecks of Baltimore are wealthy, standoffish, stolidly self-satisfied. In their suburban enclave of wide lawns and spacious houses, for generations have lived quietly together tactfully ignoring a world they consider loud and frivolous and full of rude people with outlandish surnames.
To be a true Peck is to sink into a kind of lukewarm bath that is comforting but enervating, a perpetual childhood presided over by the brisk, formal, aging grandfather, Daniel. Only two have rebelled: Caleb, Daniel's dreamy, cello-playing brother, who disappeared without a trace 60 years ago, and Duncan, Daniel's grandson, a wild boy in love with scrapes and danger who grows into a strange, private, restless adult.
When Duncan marries his cousin Justine, hitherto an ardent Peck, she begins to discover her own thirst for adventure. For years the two careen through the small towns of Maryland and Virginia as Duncan quits one makeshift job for another. He refuses to acknowledge the past that propels them both into an ever bleaker and dingier future. Justine is pulled both forward and back: an amateur teller of fortunes who advises her clients always to go along with change, she remains in thrall to her own childhood. And so, when Daniel decides to find his lost brother, Justine is the one who joins him. For the old man the quest is a way of recapturing the past, but for Justine it becomes a search for the self she has mislaid. The outcome is marvelously ironic, since the answers to her questions are themselves enigmatic. Yet she emerges triumphant, her own woman at last.
Less perfectly realized than "Celestial Navigation," her extraordinarily moving and beautiful last novel, "Searching for Caleb" is Tyler's sunniest, most expansive book. While etching with a fine, sharp wit the narrow-mindedness and pettishness of the Pecks, she lavishes on them a tenderness that lifts them above satire. Consider Daniel Peck. A cold and unoriginal man, aging gracefully but without wisdom, he is yet allowed moments in which we glimpse his bewilderment at a life that has been in the end disappointing: "In my childhood I was trained to hold things in, you see. But I thought I was holding them in until a certain time. I assumed that someday, somewhere, I would again be given the opportunity to spend all that save-up feeling. When will that be?"
Reading "Searching for Caleb," one is constantly being startled by such moments: gestures, words, wrinkles of thought and feeling that are at once revelatory and exactly right. But at the center of Tyler's characters is a private, mysterious core which is left, wisely, inviolate. Ultimately this wisdom is what makes Tyler more than a fine crafts- man of realistic novels. Her complex, crotchety inventions surprise us, but one senses they surprise her too.
Katha Pollitt is a reviewer of contemporary fiction.
Here's a review of Searching for Caleb that came out in The New York Times in 1975. I think it beautifully captures the book's essence:
January 3, 1975
Searching For CalebBy KATHA POLLITT
It's hard to classify Anne Tyler's novels. They are Southern in their sure sense of family and place but lack the taste for violence and the Gothic that often characterizes self- consciously Southern literature. They are modern in their fictional techniques, yet utterly unconcerned with the contemporary moment as a subject, so that, with only minor dislocations, her stories could just as well have taken place in the twenties or thirties. The current school of feminist-influenced novels seems to have passed her by completely: her women are strong, often stronger than the men in their lives, but solidly grounded in traditional roles. Among our better contemporary novelists, Tyler occupies a somewhat lonely place, polishing brighter and brighter a craft many novelists no longer deem essential to their purpose: the unfolding of character through brilliantly imagined and absolutely accurate detail.
In "Searching for Caleb" she has invented a family whose very conventionality borders on the eccentric. The Pecks of Baltimore are wealthy, standoffish, stolidly self-satisfied. In their suburban enclave of wide lawns and spacious houses, for generations have lived quietly together tactfully ignoring a world they consider loud and frivolous and full of rude people with outlandish surnames.
To be a true Peck is to sink into a kind of lukewarm bath that is comforting but enervating, a perpetual childhood presided over by the brisk, formal, aging grandfather, Daniel. Only two have rebelled: Caleb, Daniel's dreamy, cello-playing brother, who disappeared without a trace 60 years ago, and Duncan, Daniel's grandson, a wild boy in love with scrapes and danger who grows into a strange, private, restless adult.
When Duncan marries his cousin Justine, hitherto an ardent Peck, she begins to discover her own thirst for adventure. For years the two careen through the small towns of Maryland and Virginia as Duncan quits one makeshift job for another. He refuses to acknowledge the past that propels them both into an ever bleaker and dingier future. Justine is pulled both forward and back: an amateur teller of fortunes who advises her clients always to go along with change, she remains in thrall to her own childhood. And so, when Daniel decides to find his lost brother, Justine is the one who joins him. For the old man the quest is a way of recapturing the past, but for Justine it becomes a search for the self she has mislaid. The outcome is marvelously ironic, since the answers to her questions are themselves enigmatic. Yet she emerges triumphant, her own woman at last.
Less perfectly realized than "Celestial Navigation," her extraordinarily moving and beautiful last novel, "Searching for Caleb" is Tyler's sunniest, most expansive book. While etching with a fine, sharp wit the narrow-mindedness and pettishness of the Pecks, she lavishes on them a tenderness that lifts them above satire. Consider Daniel Peck. A cold and unoriginal man, aging gracefully but without wisdom, he is yet allowed moments in which we glimpse his bewilderment at a life that has been in the end disappointing: "In my childhood I was trained to hold things in, you see. But I thought I was holding them in until a certain time. I assumed that someday, somewhere, I would again be given the opportunity to spend all that save-up feeling. When will that be?"
Reading "Searching for Caleb," one is constantly being startled by such moments: gestures, words, wrinkles of thought and feeling that are at once revelatory and exactly right. But at the center of Tyler's characters is a private, mysterious core which is left, wisely, inviolate. Ultimately this wisdom is what makes Tyler more than a fine crafts- man of realistic novels. Her complex, crotchety inventions surprise us, but one senses they surprise her too.
Katha Pollitt is a reviewer of contemporary fiction.
Monday, September 2, 2013
Ann Tyler and Literary Fiction
Well I finished the Ballard book and it was very good! A feel good story about teaching and sports.
I'm now back to my list, reading Ann Tyler's Searching for Caleb. It's a little strange, but compelling--a family saga of a sort that reminds me of Isabel Allende's work. It proves the maxim that I believe I first heard from Stephen King: literary fiction deals with extraordinary people in ordinary situtations; popular fiction deals with ordinary people in extraordinary situations. Tyler's book is in the literary fiction category.
More later . . .
I'm now back to my list, reading Ann Tyler's Searching for Caleb. It's a little strange, but compelling--a family saga of a sort that reminds me of Isabel Allende's work. It proves the maxim that I believe I first heard from Stephen King: literary fiction deals with extraordinary people in ordinary situtations; popular fiction deals with ordinary people in extraordinary situations. Tyler's book is in the literary fiction category.
More later . . .
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)