The nice thing about reading a gigantic book is that if you have promised to write reviews in a blog of every book you read, then you kind of have an excuse not to blog for a while. Then you finish said giant book and you find yourself in a situation where now you have to write about a book that's so big that you kind of don't remember how it started. This is a universal complaint, I know. I think it's pretty much existed forever.
The book, by the way, is Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead. And listen, it's a heck of a book. It's a novel, first of all. And it's about World War II. Specifically, it's mostly about a recon platoon on the fictional island of Anopopei. There's another plot about a strained relationship between a General and a Lieutenant, and without giving too much away I'll say that the plots combine. Also, it's about how filthy guys can be when they're left out in the jungle for long enough, and I mean this in both their speech and their general cleanliness.
Mailer started it when he was 23, and wrote it in 15 months, so I already hate him. That the book is 718 pages and considered still to be one of the best books on war in American history, and then I'm like. On the back of the copy I have, the Providence Journal called it "The most important American novel since Moby-Dick." I know it doesn't do any good to compare yourself to others, but at 23 I'm pretty sure I was finishing Final Fantasy X. And even that I gave up because the final boss was too hard.
Mailer's obviously extraordinarily mature for his age at the time of writing, and his writing is, for the most part, phenomenal. Each character, throughout the book, gets his own sidebar where we find out what happened before the war to make them how they are today. A lot of the folks in the story are a little, uh, unlikeable, so this glimpse helps humanize them a bit. That being said, each of their stories ends up being just about the same.
Apparently 23-year-old Mailer had already decided that there wasn't a marriage that he could make it past the honeymoon, for example. He draws the experiences of the characters in the book from his own experience in the Philippines during the war, so I assume there's some truth to the stories each soldier experiences, but I also think he might have come back just a little jaded after hearing the older soldiers constantly harping on their old ladies.
I think when I imagined the war when I was younger, it was very much influenced by Saving Private Ryan, which is to say harrowing and violent and noisy. But since we knew so clearly who the bad guy was, it was also heroic. One of those things where even though the job is tough, and you're not sure you can do it, you know that you have to do it, because it's the right thing to do.
What The Naked and the Dead captured, though, was the boredom and uncertainty and just ugly slogging through mud that I'm also sure there was in that war, and in all other wars we've fought. A lot of the time the troops on the ground aren't exactly sure every single day that what they're doing is worth it. As I get older, I realize that even when the war is perhaps just, it's probably being run poorly sometimes, and soldiers who die often don't die for any good reason other than someone higher up trying to impress their own superiors, or they read a map wrong.
In summary, I learned a lot from it, both about writing and about war. My grandpa was a marine in the Pacific. While reading this book, I spent a bit of time with him at a family party, and tried to imagine the now 80-something year old man as a soldier in the jungle during his late teens and early twenties. Then, while helping my mom compile old 8mm family movies of him as a young dad, I saw a lot of my own dad in him, and even myself. I wondered what quiet family life feels like to someone who spent years in the jungle, and I hope to ask him very soon.
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
The phrase "it is what it is" is stupid and doesn't make sense
Originally posted 6/3/12
What it is is this. I haven't written for a while about anything. What that means is that I'm in a situation where I try to remember things I've read or watched and already the purpose of this blog this year is kind of lacking, because I wanted to be able to look back on this and see all the books, movies, and sweet sweet games I played. What will end up happening this time, maybe, is a quick catch-up.
Bear with me, though. I've been wearing a pedometer for work to see how much I walk, and it turns out that when I'm hiking all day looking for hawk (understand that I'm using the word "hawk" as a catch-all for all birds of prey, but if I say "raptors," at least one person invariably thinks I'm looking for dinosaur bones) nests, the steps add up. Looking at the thing right now, it looks like I logged 19,000 steps or so today, or 11 miles. This is day five of such stepping, and not even the most I've walked in a day. Long story short, I'm not sure if I'm awake enough to make even a decent point. Let alone be funny.
Why even write, you ask? When from the get-go I'm making excuses for the quality of a post that isn't even written yet? And why do I keep inferring that this blog is supposed to be funny? How come I'm asking all of these questions and not answering any of them? Didn't my Writing For Magazines professor get after me once for doing that?
Anyway, I read The Family Fang. In it there's a family, named Fang, and they are performance artists. To be more precise, the parents are performance artists and they've kind of roped their kids into doing it because at least early on most kids don't have a lot of choice when it comes to these kinds of things. The Fang brand of performance art, though, is like a pretentious version of Punk'd. They stage elaborate pranks in public places and film them. Later, their now grown children are, um, a little messed up. But also very talented. Then there's a bit of an adventure.
It's a funny book, but it also gets into a discussion about what art is that I think is quite interesting. It's something I find myself constantly mulling over as I try to elevate my entertainment choices. Is anything anyone creates a kind of art? Even if it's something with a big budget and intense studio scrutiny? Or is art only found on the fringes, where people are pushing things in new directions that might be distasteful, and in some cases dangerous?
What it is is this. I haven't written for a while about anything. What that means is that I'm in a situation where I try to remember things I've read or watched and already the purpose of this blog this year is kind of lacking, because I wanted to be able to look back on this and see all the books, movies, and sweet sweet games I played. What will end up happening this time, maybe, is a quick catch-up.
Bear with me, though. I've been wearing a pedometer for work to see how much I walk, and it turns out that when I'm hiking all day looking for hawk (understand that I'm using the word "hawk" as a catch-all for all birds of prey, but if I say "raptors," at least one person invariably thinks I'm looking for dinosaur bones) nests, the steps add up. Looking at the thing right now, it looks like I logged 19,000 steps or so today, or 11 miles. This is day five of such stepping, and not even the most I've walked in a day. Long story short, I'm not sure if I'm awake enough to make even a decent point. Let alone be funny.
Why even write, you ask? When from the get-go I'm making excuses for the quality of a post that isn't even written yet? And why do I keep inferring that this blog is supposed to be funny? How come I'm asking all of these questions and not answering any of them? Didn't my Writing For Magazines professor get after me once for doing that?
Anyway, I read The Family Fang. In it there's a family, named Fang, and they are performance artists. To be more precise, the parents are performance artists and they've kind of roped their kids into doing it because at least early on most kids don't have a lot of choice when it comes to these kinds of things. The Fang brand of performance art, though, is like a pretentious version of Punk'd. They stage elaborate pranks in public places and film them. Later, their now grown children are, um, a little messed up. But also very talented. Then there's a bit of an adventure.
It's a funny book, but it also gets into a discussion about what art is that I think is quite interesting. It's something I find myself constantly mulling over as I try to elevate my entertainment choices. Is anything anyone creates a kind of art? Even if it's something with a big budget and intense studio scrutiny? Or is art only found on the fringes, where people are pushing things in new directions that might be distasteful, and in some cases dangerous?
On Guns and Eleanor Roosevelt
Somehow, given the household I grew up in, I never really became a gun guy. To put a finer point on it, when my dad gets a new car, the NRA sticker goes on it before the registration one; yet aside from shooting a .22 in hunter safety at maybe 12, I managed to go until my late twenties without firing one of them. Now I sometimes go shooting with him -- pistols and shotguns, mostly -- and as things that make a loud noise and put holes in targets, I think they're kinda cool. I like the kick the flash and the immediate disintegration of clay targets. I've got to say that yeah, on some sort of evolutionary boy level, I kinda get it now.
That's not the motivation, though, for the book I've been reading for the past few months that has essentially held you all back from hearing about new books from me. It's The Gun, and it's by C.J. Chivers.
Not since World War Z have I read a book that is so good, yet so hard to talk about without making me seem like sort of a nut job. Quick aside: while interviewing for a job once, I was asked what book I had most recently finished reading. Instead of saying The Road, which was the second-most recent read and would have probably been met with nods of approval, I dropped the zombie bomb. I think I backed it up pretty well, saying that it wasn't really about zombies, rather the way the world's societies would react to some kind of world-wide apocalypse, but I imagine there were weird looks. It was a phone interview, with like 10 people on the line at once. Also, I didn't get the job.
Anyway, I find myself in the same situation when people ask what I'm reading now. "It's about the history of the AK-47," I say. And then they politely talk about literally anything else in the world. "No," I say, "It's not, like, about the gun. I mean, it's in the title, but it's about the history of modern war. And industrialization. And the parts of the Soviet system that worked. And let's be honest. When that thing was doing what it was best at? It was the best at it." Like all good history books, The Gun tells a story with a consistent narrative instead of just listing facts. The only difference between it and other epic, multi-generational stories, is that its main character is possibly the most deadly weapon in history.
It's a rough read, though. I had to take quite a break after the World War I bit, for example, because guys, World War I was horrible. There is a reason that all you see in movies is filthy people slowly dying of disease as they ran around in trenches, occasionally being shot right through the helmet anytime they were talking to the main character. It's because that's what it was. Well, aside from the charges. In the Battle of the Somme, more than 1 million troops died, with the British suffering almost 60,000 casualties on the first day. Turns out you don't march with bayonets against machine guns. Those are the kinds of lessons you get from The Gun. I haven't even gotten to the terrorist and child soldier parts yet.
So yeah, I take breaks. During the most recent one, I read Dead End in Norvelt, by Jack Gantos. It's fun, this book.
That's not the motivation, though, for the book I've been reading for the past few months that has essentially held you all back from hearing about new books from me. It's The Gun, and it's by C.J. Chivers.
Not since World War Z have I read a book that is so good, yet so hard to talk about without making me seem like sort of a nut job. Quick aside: while interviewing for a job once, I was asked what book I had most recently finished reading. Instead of saying The Road, which was the second-most recent read and would have probably been met with nods of approval, I dropped the zombie bomb. I think I backed it up pretty well, saying that it wasn't really about zombies, rather the way the world's societies would react to some kind of world-wide apocalypse, but I imagine there were weird looks. It was a phone interview, with like 10 people on the line at once. Also, I didn't get the job.
Anyway, I find myself in the same situation when people ask what I'm reading now. "It's about the history of the AK-47," I say. And then they politely talk about literally anything else in the world. "No," I say, "It's not, like, about the gun. I mean, it's in the title, but it's about the history of modern war. And industrialization. And the parts of the Soviet system that worked. And let's be honest. When that thing was doing what it was best at? It was the best at it." Like all good history books, The Gun tells a story with a consistent narrative instead of just listing facts. The only difference between it and other epic, multi-generational stories, is that its main character is possibly the most deadly weapon in history.
So yeah, I take breaks. During the most recent one, I read Dead End in Norvelt, by Jack Gantos. It's fun, this book.
Norvelt, it turns out, is a real place. And hey, you know how people like to point out that the location of a story is as much a character as any of the living characters are? And how they act like they're the first to say that? Well Norvelt, Pennsylvania is as much a character in this story as any of the living characters are. Eleanor Roosevelt (Nor-Velt, get it?) decided that laid off miners needed a place to live that wasn't super crappy. Her husband and his advisors had laid out a plan for a bunch of shacks that folks could build themselves and live in, pitching in together to build different parts and then paying them off by working their own land and a community plot. She pushed for New England-style houses instead, and at least for a while, it worked pretty fine.
By the time Jack comes to age, though, it's a little shabby. That first generation of miners have all died of the black lung by the 60s, and it's hard to tell if the town itself or those miner's widows are dying faster. Jack, grounded for the whole freaking summer, only has one reprieve from digging his commie-fearing dad's planned bomb shelter, and that's writing obituaries as dictated by an old lady. As you can tell this is a very funny book. I actually mean that. It made me laugh quite a bit, and the writing is sharp and fun and it made me forget, however briefly, about guns that harness the recoil and gas expansion of an exploding bullet and use it to feed the next round into the chamber in fractions of a second. So thank's for that, Dead End in Norvelt.
I'm looking at my stack of books, and I realized that Mailer's World War II novel, The Naked and the Dead is next. I'll be honest, that one might get put aside for a bit.
Check back tomorrow, by the way, cause I think I've got another one of these things brewin'.
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