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20050323.00
The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien
The following pages are the concatenation of two
versions of the same essay, which I have not edited
because I am even now overwhelmed by the brutality
inhumanity and barbarity of the text.
I am diffident about discussing this book is because I
read it only once, and it is quite possible that there are
many things about it I have over looked or that I have
forgotten. The reason I did not read it a second time, is
that after the first reading I felt uncomfortable, as if my
mind had somehow become soiled, and I needed to clean my
thinking. That was a lot of work. In fact 10 pages of
notes and considerations. Besides, I was concerned that the
damage done by a second reading might somehow prove
permanent, like a stain that not even the dry cleaner is
able to get rid of; so I thought I'd better not take the
risk.
Let me talk about the book rather than what the book
talks about. What this book talks about is the human
situation in its saddest dimensions. Each of us spends his
or her life grappling with that.
The last time I was exposed to so much obscenity was
when I was a medical student on rotation through the local
mental hospitals. Patients with frontal lobe disease can
lose their inhibitions, and then their language becomes
violent and obscene. I can't help but suspect that the
author of this book has serious emotional problems. I'm not
sure they were caused entirely by his exposure to violence
suffering and death in Vietnam, or merely aggravated, made
much worse by the experience.
This book was written by a man whose mind, whose spirit
or soul, if you will, has been injured by his experience as
a soldier in Vietnam. If the author had suffered a blow to
the back of his head and was blind, we would understand the
relationship between the trauma and the blindness. If it
was a frontal lobe injury, we would accept aggressiveness,
irresponsibility and indifference to a prefrontal lobotomy.
If he had a parietal lobe injury, it would explain why he
couldn't speak. But O'Brien's injury was from being forced
to witness and to participate in the Vietnam war, and that
is why it isn't recognized and it isn't understood. Some
will consider this book to be a document of insanity. Some
will consider this book to be a document of heroism. Some
will consider this book to be a document of tough
mindedness. Whether, to use William James' phrase, O'Brien
is to be considered tough-minded or tender-minded depends on
the reader. To a tender-minded reader he seems tough and
vice versa.
____________________________
Copyright 2005 Ernst Jochen Meyer
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Once a disease is recognized, the question is asked, is
it catching? And the answer to that question is obvious. Of
course it is. It was contracted by exposure to an
intolerable reality; and it is written in a style that
strives to simulate that reality. So that the situation is
like that of an alcoholic urging his friends to join him,
like an addict of horror movies dragging his friends to the
horror show.
I was reminded of the discussion in Plato's Protagoras
how dangerous it is to accept information that is unhealthy,
that is injurious to the soul. Plato argues that food for
the body can be carried home in containers and inspected.
But food for the spirit is absorbed as soon as it is
received, and if it is toxic or infectious, the damage
cannot be undone. Public censorship is repugnant to me. But
I think personal subjective censorship is probably not
unwise; and in any event for children, parental guidance is
imperative.
This is a document of psychopathology, perhaps of
sociopathology. For the author it was presumably
psychotherapeutic so to express himself; If art is the
laying bare of the artists soul, then art must also be the
expression of the artist's emotional illness. "Und wenn der
Mensch in seiner Qual verstummt, gab mir ein Gott zu sagen,
was ich leide." Clearly such expression of mental illness
may be edifying, but it may also be so distorting and so
disrupting that communication is precluded: that it becomes
meaningless if not indeed offensive. Is this book
meaningless? As narrative it has meaning. It paints a
picture at which one might not want to look. As an account
of man's position in society, of man's position in nature,
of man's relationship to his God, I find it confusing. If
meaning is there, I cannot find it. I don't think this book
solves any problems for the reader, perhaps not even for the
author. Wo keine Goetter walten, walten Gespenster.
I don't like to judge people and I don't like to judge
books. Would I want this book in my library on the
proverbial desert island? No. There are some individuals
with whom I'd rather not go on a journey, and there are some
books that I prefer not to read. This is one of them.
Numbers 21:8 gives an account of Jehovah's sending a
plague of fiery serpents to kill the Children of Israel, or
at least those that get bitten; and with the inconsistency
that is Jehovah's hallmark he instructs Moses about
preventive measures, viz. to make a brazen serpent on which
to gaze, to derive immunity to the serpent's poison by
gazing on the image. That was the origin of art, of
literature, of tragedy. That is how I would try to
interpret this book. But there is an obvious problem: to be
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effective, the brazen serpent must resemble the poisonous
serpent, the greater the resemblance, the more effective the
antidote: but only to the line where the antidote itself
becomes poisonous. This book, I believe has crossed that
line, at least so far as I and my family are concerned.
The book is ambiguous to a degree that I cannot
interpret its consequences. What is the purpose, what is
the endpoint, what is the nature of the immunity? Is it to
make you sensitive to the horrors of war so as to make a
pacifist of you, or is it to make you insensitive to the
horrors of war so as to make you a candidate for the Marine
Corps, if not the Green Berets. Or is ambiguity itself the
essence of art? Then ultimately, how much ambiguity one can
tolerate might be a personal, individual characteristic,
analogous to ones sense of humor.
Consider the scene of the orphaned girl, whose village
has been destroyed by Tim O'Brien and his buddies, dancing
pointlessly, mindlessly; one of the soldiers mocking her,
and another of the soldiers threatening to dump the mocker
into a well, if he doesn't "dance right." How is one to
interpret this account? Is it condemnation, and if so,
condemnation of what? Of the destruction of the village and
the killing of the inhabitants, of the girl's dancing, of
the mockery of that dancing, of the threat to murder the one
who mocked? Is it approbation of the bravery of the
platoon, of the destruction of the village, of the
pluckiness of the orphan's dance, of the sardonic humor with
which she was mocked, or of the improvised righteousness of
the soldier who compelled the mocker to "dance right". Or
is this entire episode, this entire war, beyond good and
evil.
Does this difficult book perhaps lead to the discovery
of a principle of moral indeterminacy, a situation where the
distinction between good and evil vanishes, where everything
is good, as is America itself, "full of good intentions
...", or where everything evil is recorded for the final
judgment on the day of wrath, Dies Irae:
Liber scriptus proferetur
in qua omnis continetur
unde mundus judicetur.
and the reader is so paralysed by horror, as to be unable to
say which is which.
============================
This book is the chronicle of tragedy, of an
unjustified meaningless war, (is war ever justified? does it
ever have meaning?) of the death and maiming of countless
individuals. If it was intended to produce pity and fear
and the ensuing purification of the soul, it doesn't
succeed.
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One of the book's characteristics is that O'Brien is
both author and a character, and as a character in the novel
he on occasion has a pivotal role; clearly this lapse into
autobiography is most revealing. As preface, the
description of the meat processing plant. That was an
occupation of choice, not of necessity. There is, first,
the Rainy River piece: O'Brien's explanation for not dodging
the draft by fleeing to Canada. This seems to me
histrionic, staged, invented, contrived. The reason, not
cowardice but the lure of adventure. Then, similarly
histrionic, the man I killed: an unpersuasive self-serving
pseudo-reflection designed to exonerate the murderer. Then
the puerile, injustified hateful vendetta against the
incompetent medic Jorgenson, next the tourist visit with a
young daughter to the battleground; and finally the
sentimental account of the death of a 9 year old playmate.
Whether or not it is a good book I would rather not
commit myself. But I am sure it was a very bad war, and I
don't know whether there can be a good book about a bad war.
My opinions changed as I read. I realized I must suspend
judgment at least until I have finished the entire book.
Perhaps until I have read all the author's published
writings, perhaps until I have made myself comprehensively
familiar with the literature of war. In fact, I am totally
unfamiliar with that literature. This text is my
introduction to it.
I found it a frightening book. dangerous both
ethically and esthetically. Clearly, this is a book that
requires parental guidance. But who guides whom?
The threshold problem: There is no moral framework.
The soldiers are described without praise, without judgment,
without apology. Implicit in the uncritical account is that
what they are doing is good, or at least necessary or at
least inevitable. The reader is left to draw his own
conclusions about the children maimed and orphaned, about
the villages destroyed, about the Vietcong killed.
The language is mercilessly harsh and cruel. The
author asserts: "If you don't care for obscenity, you don't
care for the truth." (p 77) and he appears to practice what
he preaches. If one is hardened to war one takes the
obscenity for granted, Otherwise one is, initially,
confused.
In time, one orients oneself. Reality may be painful,
frightening, terrifying, nauseating, but reality is not
obscene. Obscenity when it appears, arises from the
language that purports to describe the reality. "In the
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beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the
word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All
things were made by the same, and without the same was not
anything made that was made." In this perspective obscenity
is sacrilege, is blasphemy, is taking the name of God in
vain. Classically language is euphemism, and as such
sublimates the dross of reality into something spiritual, -
but not here. Language, one reminds oneself, arises when
people talk one with another. Language is a function of
society. When language can no longer come to terms with the
world as it is without stooping to obscenity, there is
something wrong with the society. A society has no choice
but to rely on obscenity for access to reality is sick, and
society's illness is only denied, not cured when obscenity
is censored. Obscenity is the symptom: it is neither the
cause nor the cure of the societal disease.
Arguably it is the function of literature to intervene,
to mediate between reality and the individual, if he is
sensitive, to make reality intelligible, to make it
tolerable to him. but if he is insensitive, then to
sensitize him to it, to make him aware of its tragedy.
But does this novel sensitize by making the reader
aware of what he would not otherwise perceive? Or does it
desensitize, making tolerable what would otherwise be
unbearable? When is it desirable to be sensitized? When is
it desirable to be desensitized?
Literature about hell can have diverse and
contradictory effects. Someone who is oblivious of hell, it
can imbue with the fear of God. But the depiction of hell
can also have the effect of making evil seem ordinary and
acceptable.
The author, writing autobiographically in the first
person, apologized for not having avoided complicity in the
mayhem of the war by fleeing to Canada. He explains: He
wants to be liked, to be respected by his peers. "I
couldn't endure the mockery, or the disgrace, or the
patriotic ridicule." (p 61) Twenty years later, he still
wanted to be liked, that is why he wrote the book as he did,
he appears as part of his community, of his platoon. He
describes his comrades with sympathy and understanding.
They were not bad. They were soldiers in a difficult
situation. They were like himself.
The contrary tradition O'Brien seems not to have heard
of. He writes of the outward courage that makes a man
appear as a hero; but there is an inward courage which is
revealed not by what a man wills but by what a man is. Hier
stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders, Gott helfe mir, Amen.
"Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you
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and say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake.
"Rejoice and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in
heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were
before you." (Matt 5: 11-12)
Choice is an illusion. Action is not an expression not
of what one wills, but of who one is; I suspect "On the
rainy river" is invented. The symbolism is too smooth to be
persuasive. The decision not to go to Canada is self-
conscious. The description of the old man, the father
figure, the fishing lodge is contrived, invented, popular
magazine fodder. Is the argument for popularity persuasive?
An assertion of masculinity? Not being a sissy. If not to
me, then perhaps because I was brought up to think that what
was important was being different, being something special,
etwas besonderes, being predestined. That is why I wasn't
persuaded by this smiling martyr in the uniform of
vulgarity, the baseball cap.
Why does one not avoid the draft? Why does one go to
war? Why does one volunteer? Fascination with death.
Perhaps even the wish for death. The search of the reality
(meaning) of life. The distinction between killing and
being killed is not so great. Wer dem Tod ins Angesicht
schauen kann, Der Soldat allein ist der freie Mann. I don't
know why Tim O'Brien went to war, and I'm not sure he does.
===================
Civilization, culture is something that is built, that
develops, grows, that requires maintenance and repair
something that is fragile that can be broken and destroyed.
Civilization depends on masking. Persona is the mask of the
actor. We live in appearances. These are not necessarily
lies because they are appearances, and the unmasking of them
is not necessarily truth.
Wir brauchen mehr Masken. We cannot unmask ourselves.
We cannot do without masks. In the end the inside always
has a surface: This surface is its outside. The inside
cannot exist independent of the outside. Ripping off the
outside to get at the inside doesn't work.
Describing only the outside, in order to evoke the
inside, dialectically, perhaps. Denying feeling, sympathy,
because sympathy is insufficient: too horrible for words,
too horrible for description.
Art is the resonance imaging of subjectivity, of
feelings, thoughts, moods, visions. The playwright creates
subjective experience of history by inventing a mask, a
theatre to create a resonance image of the inaccessible
reality. The playwright evokes this image of the inner life
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by shielding it with yet another mask, admittedly contrived,
but in Shakespeares hands eminently effective in revealing
the complexities of the unavoidably hidden spirit.
That life itself is an art, Lebenskunst, that one
builds ones life, a monument, Horace said to oneself, Bach
said to God, to the divine; that literature is the account
of ones own life; is the composition of the mask that is
ones life.
Platos advice concerning sophistry: the soul becomes
what is introduced to it. Whether this literature is
edifying; whether literature which is not edifying should be
read at all. What should children be permitted to read?
When is something which is bad for children good for adults?
The concepts of good and evil make possible the
spiritualization of reality. Not as indices of judgment but
as directions that make life meaningful. Where there is no
good or evil, no right or wrong, no sin, no redemption, no
forgiveness, life is obscene, truth is obscene. This is the
end of realism.
I deal with the four letter words, and I say them aloud
to prove to you and to myself that I am not afraid of them:
fuck, shit ... but I handle them with rubber gloves, intact
and imperforate, and face mask, the way a surgeon would deal
with an anthrax pustule or an abscess caused by pasteurella
pestis. the way a professional plumber deals with raw
sewage, making sure that it is disposed of cleanly, with
good ventilation, that it does not leave stains or smells.
that it does not prove injurious to the health of the
occupants.
Is it really necessary for a plumber or for that matter
for a novelist, to prove his skills by inviting his
customers to picnic on the edge of an open cess pool, septic
tank, and to issue challenges to the effect "If you don't
care for obscenity, you don't care for the truth." (p 77) If
you don't want to take a swim in my cess pool, you really
don't know how to swim.
Nothing about right and wrong, nothing about good and
evil, nothing about sin and redemption. There are other
Curricula Vitae, other ways to express ones relationship to
good and evil, to God and the Devil, both in Literature and
in Life.
Education is above all helping the child to elaborate
his/her own personality.
This is a book addressed to those whose cars carry
bumper stickers: Proud to be an American. Support our
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Troops. For the rest of us it should not be required
reading. Or perhaps it is the book of judgment: Liber
scriptus proferetur in qua omnis continetur unde mundus
judicetur.
The desire for justice. Everything should be avenged.
Justice should be done. The passing away of all that which
comes into being as payment, as retribution for its
injustice.
Should any of the men say they were sorry? Should we
be sorry? What does it mean to be sorry? Did we do the
Vietnamese a favor? Should we pay them damages? reparation?
Is Tim O'Brien an Accessory after the fact? Does he
not make all of his readers accessories after the fact?
Shouldn't his book be entitled "In Cold Blood". What
burdens does Tim O'Brien carry? Is that smug, self-
satisfied smile under the Red Sox baseball cap, the facial
expression of a man who is penitent, who is sorry for the
lives he has destroyed, who is crushed by the criminality
and injustice in which he has been embroiled? I discern no
tears of remorse trickling over his cheeks. Is there any
way that one can avoid guilt by association? Is this book
Tim O'Brien's attempt to implicate us in the crimes he has
committed, or are we implicated already, and is this book a
reminder of our guilt?
Is this what realism leads to? What happened to the
classical belief that truth is beauty, to Platos
apprehensive description about the dangers of accepting
uncritically the teachings of sophists?
Muss das sein? Is this really necessary? Das hat mit
mir nichts zu tun.
"Henry Dobbins was a good man, and a superb soldier...
In many ways he was like America itself, big and strong,
full of good intentions ..." (129) Was Tim O'Brien full of
good intentions? were any or all of his comrades?
One goes through life making choices, about joining the
army or dodging the draft, choices about the books that one
reads, the movies that one sees, the way one spends ones
time, the 24*365*70 hours that one is allotted: 613200 hours
One constructs a dwelling, intellectual and emotional,
spiritual, in which one lives, where one is happy and
secure, in which one finds protection and peace. (The
romantic ars vivendi, Lebenskunst.)
One interprets this book according to ones bias. Tim
O'Brien obviously liked the men with whom he went on
ambushes. Are they likeable? Should one emulate them?
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Which one would you want to marry? Should one want to be
like them?
All characters in this book are invented. Was Tim
O'Brien also invented?
One must distinguish what writing does for the writer
and what writing does for the reader. For the writer it may
be a confession, a prayer for forgiveness. A psychoanalytic
discourse. That does not necessarily make it edifying for
the reader. Does it evoke pity and fear to an extent that
qualifies it as tragedy? Whom does one pity; what is there
to be afraid of? But it commands respect and the kind of
reverence which one owes a man who has suffered greatly, or
the politeness that one owes a man who says he has.
These soldiers are all of them abandoned by their
women: Feminism reigns. Mary Anne, the Sweetheart of Song
Tra Bong, is the quintessential liberated woman, goes so
masculine and wild she threatens even the Green Berets.
Lieutenant Jimmy Cross' girlfriend Martha who sent him her
picture signed "Love" but didn't mean it. I actually knew
her. She was my English teacher in 9th grade in Konnarock
Training School.
The dramatized horror of "the man I killed."
Reminiscent of Baudelaire looking at, staring at the
mutilated corpse. This melodrama to compensate for or even
to justify the studied indifference to all the other
killing. Is O'Brien trying to convince us of his
sensitivity inspite of the callousness of his other
description?
Getting along without God. The absence of religion.
Playing at being a monk. No guilt, no sin, no atonement.
Or is this the book of sins: liber scriptus proferetur in
quo totum continetur unde mundus judicetur
This book is not for everyone. It may serve to give
the person who is proud to be an American something to think
about. I think Tim O'Brien is proud to be an American.
That is why he had to write this book and why I expect he
will have to continue to write such books for the forseeable
future.
The dictionary definition of pornography is as follows:
1. The depiction of erotic behavior intended to arouse
sexual excitement. 2. Material that depicts erotic behavior
and is intended to arouse sexual excitement. 3. The
depiction of acts in a sensational manner so as to arouse a
quick intense emotional reaction.
To stigmatize the arousal of sexual excitement as
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pornographic is emblematic of the hypocrisy of a culture
that devotes millions if not billions of dollars to the
synthesis of chemical substances which do the same. The
defining characteristic of pornography is something entirely
different: it is the dispassionate scrutiny of passion, the
unterrified contemplation of terror, it is the emotional
detachment, the studied indifference to the vital experience
of another human being. To depict love and life and death
with interest, fascination perhaps, but with detachment,
with indifference, without passion, without involvement,
perhaps ultimately it is scientific detachment which is
obscene, which is pornographic.
Standards by which this book should be judged: Truman
Capote, In Cold Blood; Hannah Arendt, The Banality of Evil.
The soldiers are play-acting as if they were Vietcong:
Mary Anne, the Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong, the ruse to
frighten Jorgenson, the ambushes, all dramatize that one is
transformed into that which one hates, one is assimilated to
the enemy, alle Menschen werden Brueder, whether they intend
it or not. In the end the difference between the Vietcong
and the US Army shrinks, if it doesn't disappear entirely.
Would I include this book in my seminar on the
literature of war, in my seminar on the dialectic between
the sublime and the obscene, in my seminar on the dialectic
between literatures, sacred and profane? definitely. Would
I ask my psychiatrist to read it yes. Would I want my wife
to read it? No. Would I hide it from my grandchildren:
absolutely.
The misunderstanding of the subjective experience of
suffering and death. The limitations imposed by nature.
The crucifixion.
The artist as deviant. cf Th. Mann
The relationship between what is sacred and what is
obscene, between blasphemy and obscenity. The Platonic
concept that the idea, the logos, that the word is holy.
The relationship between insanity and art.
Scientific objectivity inspired realism and naturalism
in literature, based upon a misunderstanding both of
literature and science. Letting the characters speak for
themselves, describing their behavior without emotion,
without judgment, independent of all esthetic and all
ethical value: that is the goal of realism toward which
O'Brien aims. I don't think that is possible, because the
reader and the author have an obligation to truth and
justice and decency. Absent the discharge of this
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obligation they become accessories after the fact. To
describe without judgment, without feeling, without
involvement, with scientific accuracy and detachment leads
to - well - the equation of obscenity and truth.
I was impressed how favorably various participants in
the book group discussion were impressed by this book, how
they praised it and expressed their pleasure of reading it,
indifferent to and oblivious of the suffering that O'Brien
and his comrades had inflicted. I realized then that
O'Brien's obscenity is tantamount to seduction by evil. In
submitting the crimes in which he has participated for our
approval, - and receiving it, he has made us accessories
after the fact.
* * * * *
- 1 -
20050323.00
The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien
I don't like to judge people and I don't like to judge
books. Would I want this book in my library on the
proverbial desert island? No. There are some individuals
with whom I'd rather not go on a journey, and there are some
books that I prefer not to read. This is one of them.
Numbers 21:8 gives an account of Jehovah's sending a plague
of fiery serpents to kill the Children of Israel, or at
least those that get bitten; and with the inconsistency that
is Jehovah's hallmark he instructs Moses about preventive
measures, viz. to make a brazen serpent on which to gaze,
to derive immunity to the serpent's poison by gazing on the
image. That was the origin of art, of literature, of
tragedy. That is how I would try to interpret this book.
But there is an obvious problem: to be effective, the brazen
serpent must resemble the poisonous serpent, the greater the
resemblance, the more effective the antidote: but only to
the line where the antidote itself becomes poisonous. This
book, I believe has crossed that line, at least so far as I
and my family are concerned.
And then the question, what is the purpose, what is the
endpoint, what is the nature of the immunity? Is it to make
you sensitive to the horrors of war so as to make a pacifist
of you, or is it to make you insensitive to the horrors of
war so as to make you a candidate for the Marine Corps, if
not the Green Berets. Or is ambiguity itself the essence of
art? Then ultimately, how much ambiguity one can tolerate
might be a personal, individual characteristic, analogous to
ones sense of humor.
Consider the scene of the orphaned girl, whose village
has been destroyed by Tim O'Brien and his buddies, dancing
pointlessly, mindlessly; one of the soldiers mocking her,
and another of the soldiers threatening to dump the mocker
into a well, if he doesn't "dance right." How is one to
interpret this account? Is it condemnation, and if so,
condemnation of what? Of the destruction of the village and
the killing of the inhabitants, of the girl's dancing, of
the mockery of that dancing, of the threat to murder the one
who mocked? Is it approbation of the bravery of the
platoon, of the destruction of the village, of the
pluckiness of the orphan's dance, of the sardonic humor with
which she was mocked, or of the improvised righteousness of
the soldier who compelled the mocker to "dance right". Or
is this entire episode, this entire war, beyond good and
evil.
Does this difficult book perhaps lead to the discovery
of a principle of moral indeterminacy, a situation where the
- 2 -
distinction between good and evil vanishes, where everything
is good, as is America itself, "full of good intentions
...", or where everything evil is recorded for the final
judgment on the day of wrath, Dies Irae:
Liber scriptus proferetur
in qua omnis continetur
unde mundus judicetur.
and the reader is so paralysed by horror, as to be unable to
say which is which.
============================
This book is the chronicle of tragedy, of an
unjustified meaningless war, (is war ever justified? does it
ever have meaning?) of the death and maiming of countless
individuals. If it was intended to produce pity and fear
and the ensuing purification of the soul, it doesn't
succeed.
One of the book's characteristics is that O'Brien is
both author and a character, and as a character in the novel
he on occasion has a pivotal role; clearly this lapse into
autobiography is most revealing. There is, first, the Rainy
River piece: O'Brien's explanation for not dodging the draft
by fleeing to Canada. This seems to me histrionic, staged,
invented, contrived. The reason, not cowardice but the lure
of adventure. Then, similarly histrionic, the man I killed:
an unpersuasive self-serving pseudo-reflection designed to
exonerate the murderer.. Then the puerile, injustified
hateful vendetta against the incompetent medic Jorgenson,
and finally the sentimental account of the death of a 9 year
old playmate.
Whether or not it is a good book I would rather not
commit myself. But I am sure it was a very bad war, and I
don't know whether there can be a good book about a bad war.
My opinions changed as I read. I realized I must suspend
judgment at least until I have finished the entire book.
Perhaps until I have read all the author's published
writings, perhaps until I have made myself comprehensively
familiar with the literature of war. In fact, I am totally
unfamiliar with that literature. This text is my
introduction to it.
I found it a frightening book. dangerous both
ethically and esthetically. Clearly, this is a book that
requires parental guidance. But who guides whom?
The threshold problem: There is no moral framework.
The soldiers are described without praise, without judgment,
without apology. Implicit in the uncritical account is that
what they are doing is good, or at least necessary or at
least inevitable. The reader is left to draw his own
- 3 -
conclusions about the children maimed and orphaned, about
the villages destroyed, about the Vietcong killed.
The language is mercilessly harsh and cruel. The
author asserts: "If you don't care for obscenity, you don't
care for the truth." (p 77) and he appears to practice what
he preaches. If one is hardened to war one takes the
obscenity for granted, Otherwise one is, initially,
confused.
In time, one orients oneself. Reality may be painful,
frightening, terrifying, nauseating, but reality is not
obscene. Obscenity when it appears, arises from the
language that purports to describe the reality. "In the
beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the
word was God." In this perspective obscenity is sacrilege,
is blasphemy, is taking the name of God in vain.
Classically language is euphemism, and as such sublimates
the dross of reality into something spiritual, but not here.
Language, one reminds oneself, arises when people talk one
with another. Language is a function of society. When
language can no longer come to terms with the world as it is
without stooping to obscenity, there is something wrong with
the society. A society that has no choice but to rely on
obscenity for access to reality is sick, and society's
illness is only denied, not cured when obscenity is
censored. Obscenity is the symptom: it is neither the cause
nor the cure of the societal disease.
Arguably it is the function of literature to intervene,
to mediate between reality and the individual, if he is
sensitive, to make reality intelligible, to make it
tolerable to him. but if he is insensitive, then to
sensitize him to it, to make him aware of its tragedy.
But does this novel sensitize by making the reader
aware of what he would not otherwise perceive? Or does it
desensitize, making tolerable what would otherwise be
unbearable? When is it desirable to be sensitized? When is
it desirable to be desensitized?
Literature about hell can have diverse and
contradictory effects. Someone who is oblivious of hell, it
can imbue with the fear of God. But the depiction of hell
can also have the effect of making evil seem ordinary and
acceptable.
The author, writing autobiographically in the first
person, apologized for not having avoided complicity in the
mayhem of the war by fleeing to Canada. He explains: He
wants to be liked, to be respected by his peers. "I
couldn't endure the mockery, or the disgrace, or the
patriotic ridicule." (p 61) Twenty years later, he still
- 4 -
wanted to be liked, that is why he wrote the book as he did,
he appears as part of his community, of his platoon. He
describes his comrades with sympathy and understanding.
They were not bad. They were soldiers in a difficult
situation. They were like himself.
The contrary tradition O'Brien seems not to have heard
of. He writes of the outward courage that makes a man
appear as a hero; but there is an inward courage which is
revealed not by what a man wills but by what a man is. Hier
stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders, Gott helfe mir, Amen.
"Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you
and say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake.
"Rejoice and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in
heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were
before you."
(Matt 5: 11-12)
Choice is an illusion. Action is not an expression not
of what one wills, but of who one is; I suspect "On the
rainy river" is invented. The symbolism is too smooth to be
persuasive. The decision not to go to Canada is self-
conscious. The description of the old man, the father
figure, the fishing lodge is contrived, invented, popular
magazine fodder. Is the argument for popularity persuasive?
An assertion of masculinity? Not being a sissy. If not to
me, then perhaps because I was brought up to think that what
was important was being different, being something special,
etwas besonderes, being predestined. That is why I wasn't
persuaded by this smiling martyr in the uniform of
vulgarity, the baseball cap.
Why does one not avoid the draft? Why does one go to
war? Why does one volunteer? Fascination with death.
Death wish. The search of the reality (meaning) of life.
The distinction between killing and being killed is not so
great. Wer dem Tod ins Angesicht schauen kann, Der Soldat
allein ist der freie Mann. I don't know why Tim O'Brien
went to war, and I'm not sure he does.
===================
Civilization, culture is something that is built, that
develops, grows, that requires maintenance and repair
something that is fragile that can be broken and destroyed.
Civilization depends on masking. Persona is the mask of the
actor. We live in appearances. These are not necessarily
lies because they are appearances, and the unmasking of them
is not necessarily truth.
Wir brauchen mehr Masken. We cannot unmask ourselves.
We cannot do without masks. In the end the inside always
has a surface: This surface is its outside. The inside
- 5 -
cannot exist independent of the outside. Ripping off the
outside to get at the inside doesn't work.
Describing only the outside, in order to evoke the
inside, dialectically, perhaps. Denying feeling, sympathy,
because sympathy is insufficient: too horrible for words,
too horrible for description.
That life itself is an art, Lebenskunst, that one
builds ones life, a monument, Horace said to oneself, Bach
said to God, to the divine; that literature is the account
of ones own life; is the composition of the mask that is
ones life.
Platos advice concerning sophistry: the soul becomes
what is introduced to it. Whether this literature is
edifying; whether literature which is not edifying should be
read at all. What should children be permitted to read?
When is something which is bad for children good for adults?
The concepts of good and evil make possible the
spiritualization of reality. Not as indices of judgment but
as directions that make life meaningful. Where there is no
good or evil, no right or wrong, no sin, no redemption, no
forgiveness, life is obscene, truth is obscene. This is the
end of realism. Is it a cul de sac?
The serpent in the wilderness. Art as the life-saving
cure by making evil objective.
I deal with the four letter words, and I say them aloud to
prove to you and to myself that I am not afraid of them:
fuck, shit ... but I handle them with rubber gloves, intact
and imperforate, and face mask, the way a surgeon would deal
with an anthrax pustule or an abscess caused by pasteurella
pestis. the way a professional plumber deals with raw
sewage, making sure that it is disposed of cleanly, with
good ventilation, that it does not leave stains or smells.
that it does not prove injurious to the health of the
occupants.
Is it really necessary for a plumber or for that matter
for a novelist, to prove his skills by inviting his
customers to picnic on the edge of an open cess pool, septic
tank, and to issue challenges to the effect "If you don't
care for obscenity, you don't care for the truth." (p 77) If
you don't want to take a swim in my cess pool, you really
don't know how to swim.
Nothing about right and wrong, nothing about good and
evil, nothing about sin and redemption. There are other
Curricula Vitae, other ways to express ones relationship to
good and evil, to God and the Devil, both in Literature and
- 6 -
in Life.
Education is above all helping the child to elaborate
his/her own personality.
This is a book addressed to those whose cars carry
bumper stickers: Proud to be an American. Support our
Troops. For the rest of us it should not be required
reading.
Perhaps it is the book of judgment: Liber scriptus
proferetur in qua omnis continetur unde mundus judicetur.
The desire for justice. Everything should be avenged.
Justice should be done. The passing away of all that which
comes into being as payment, as retribution for its
injustice.
Should any of the men say they were sorry? Should we
be sorry? What does it mean to be sorry? Did we do the
Vietnamese a favor? Should we pay them damages? reparation?
Is Tim O'Brien an Accessory after the fact? Does he
not make all of his readers accessories after the fact?
Shouldn't his book be entitled "In Cold Blood". What
burdens does Tim O'Brien carry? Is that smug, self-
satisfied smile under the Red Sox baseball cap, the facial
expression of a man who is penitent, who is sorry for the
lives he has destroyed, who is crushed by the criminality
and injustice in which he has been embroiled? I discern no
tears of remorse trickling over his cheeks. Is there any
way that one can avoid guilt by association? Is this book
Tim O'Brien's attempt to implicate us in the crimes he has
committed, or are we implicated already, and is this book a
reminder of our guilt?
Is this what realism leads to? What happened to the
classical belief that truth is beauty, to Platos
apprehensive description about the dangers of accepting
uncritically the teachings of sophists?
Muss das sein? Is this really necessary? Das hat mit
mir nichts zu tun.
"Henry Dobbins was a good man, and a superb soldier...
In many ways he was like America itself, big and strong,
full of good intentions ..." (129) Was Tim O'Brien full of
good intentions? were any or all of his comrades?
One goes through life making choices, about joining the
army or dodging the draft, choices about the books that one
reads, the movies that one sees, the way one spends ones
time, the 24*365*70 hours that one is allotted: 613200 hours
- 7 -
One constructs a dwelling, intellectual and emotional,
spiritual, in which one lives, where one is happy and
secure, in which one finds protection and peace. (The
romantic ars vivendi, Lebenskunst.)
One interprets this book according to ones bias. Tim
O'Brien obviously liked the men with whom he went on
ambushes. Are they likeable? Should one emulate them?
Which one would you want to marry? Should one want to be
like them?
All characters in this book are invented. Was Tim
O'Brien also invented?
One must distinguish what writing does for the writer
and what writing does for the reader. For the writer it may
be a confession, a prayer for forgiveness. A psychoanalytic
discourse. That does not necessarily make it edifying for
the reader. Does it evoke pity and fear to an extent that
qualifies it as tragedy? Whom does one pity; what is there
to be afraid of? But it commands respect and the kind of
reverence which one owes a man who has suffered greatly, or
the politeness that one owes a man who says he has.
These soldiers are all of them abandoned by their
women: Feminism reigns. Mary Anne, the Sweetheart of Song
Tra Bong, is the quintessential liberated woman, goes so
masculine and wild she threatens even the Green Berets.
Lieutenant Jimmy Cross' girlfriend Martha who sent him her
picture signed "Love" but didn't mean it. I actually knew
her. She was my English teacher in 9th grade in Konnarock
Training School.
The dramatized horror of "the man I killed."
Reminiscent of Baudelaire looking at, staring at the
mutilated corpse. This melodrama to compensate for or even
to justify the studied indifference to all the other
killing. Is O'Brien trying to convince us of his
sensitivity inspite of the callousness of his other
description?
Getting along without God. The absence of religion.
Playing at being a monk. No guilt, no sin, no atonement.
Or is this the book of sins: liber scriptus proferetur in
quo totum continetur unde mundus judicetur
This book is not for everyone. It may serve to give
the person who is proud to be an American something to think
about. I think Tim O'Brien is proud to be an American.
That is why he had to write this book and why I expect he
will have to continue to write such books for the forseeable
future.
- 8 -
The dictionary definition of pornography is as follows:
1. The depiction of erotic behavior intended to arouse
sexual excitement. 2. Material that depicts erotic behavior
and is intended to arouse sexual excitement. 3. The
depiction of acts in a sensational manner so as to arouse a
quick intense emotional reaction.
To stigmatize the arousal of sexual excitement as
pornographic is emblematic of the hypocrisy of a culture
that devotes millions if not billions of dollars to the
synthesis of chemical substances which do the same. The
defining characteristic of pornography is something entirely
different: it is the dispassionate scrutiny of passion, the
unterrified contemplation of terror, it is the emotional
detachment, the studied indifference to the vital experience
of another human being. To depict love and life and death
with interest, fascination perhaps, but with detachment,
with indifference, without passion, without involvement,
that is obscene, that is pornographic.
Truman Capote: In Cold Blood; Hannah Arendt: The
Banality of Evil
The soldiers are play-acting as if they were Vietcong:
Mary Anne, the Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong, the ruse to
frighten Jorgenson, the ambushes, all dramatize that one is
transformed into that which one hates, one is assimilated to
the enemy, alle Menschen werden Brueder, whether they intend
it or not. In the end the difference between the Vietcong
and the US Army shrinks, if it doesn't disappear entirely.
Would I include this book in my seminar on the
literature of war, in my seminar on the dialectic between
the sublime and the obscene, in my seminar on the dialectic
between literatures, sacred and profane? definitely. Would
I ask my psychiatrist to read it yes. Would I want my wife
to read it? No. Would I hide it from my grandchildren:
absolutely.
* * * * *
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