The Things They Carried

Read from Tuesday, July 19th to Thursday, July 21st.

As a follow-up to Going After Cacciato, I decided to read The Things They Carried, also by Tim O'Brien.  This is a brilliant collection of vignettes, essays and short stories about the Vietnam War.  Although it is classified as fiction, O'Brien claimed he drew on a lot of personal experiences, similar to Cacciato.  There are both short war stories about Tim and his group, but then there are commentaries on those stories by Tim himself.  He writes about the power of stories, he writes about death of friends in combat, and some by suicide, and life after the war, and returning to Vietnam many years later with his daughter.  She is young, and has trouble understanding why he is so interested in a low field, but then again, how could anyone really understand unless they were there?

The Things They Carried is the title story and also the lead story.  O'Brien details all the different equipment a soldier was expected to carry.  But it was more than physical.  There was also the mental burden each soldier had to carry.  There were the personal trinkets and talismans that made each soldier unique.  A stone sent by a lost high school crush, an illustrated Bible, stockings wrapped around like a scarf.  There are all the guns and explosives each soldier is required to have and to use when necessary. 

There is no specific plot, just memories and stories.  The unit loses a few men.  One steps on a mine and is blown into a tree.  Another is sniped while coming back from taking a piss.  The medic slowly loses his cool and shoots himself in the foot and is shipped off to Japan.  One night they camp in a field near a river.  But it is monsoon season, and the field floods, and it is the field where the nearby village goes the bathroom, so they are covered in a pool of shit.  Then they get mortared, and one soldier is sucked into a crater full of shit and dies.  The soldiers tell each other stories too.  There is the story of a group of soldiers in an isolated medic outpost.  One of them decides to fly his girlfriend over to keep him company.  Because there are no officers, she arrives and stays with them for weeks.  Slowly, she becomes accustomed to military life, and she shoots guns, and eventually she starts going on ambushes with a local green beret unit.  The soldier who flew her over loses his girlfriend to the jungle, as she melts into the landscape.

One of the most memorable scenes is actually something I first read in high school in English class, Junior year I believe.  Frustrated over the sniping of the soldier who got shot after taking a piss, another soldier finds a baby water buffalo.  He shoots it first in each knee, then blows off the nose, the ears, the jaw, slowly killing the beast, which just stands there taking the punishment.

What is real and what is fiction?  It is never completely clear.  O'Brien frequently says out in front that it is all made up, although it is written so realistically.  He discusses the power of war stories and what makes them important.  They reveal the brutal honesty of human existence, not the crazy heroics, but the simple moments of clarity.  Mesmerizing, fascinating and beautiful.  Four and a half out of five stars.

The Book of Imaginary Beings

Read from Monday, July 18th to Tuesday, July 19th.

The Book of Imaginary Beings, by Jorge Luis Borges.  I loved this simple anthology of all the imaginary, mythical creatures that the world has thought up in its history.  It spans all cultures and races, from Hindu, to Chinese, to Native American, Medieval, South American and even Wisconsin Logger.  The creatures come from Greek and Roman myths, from folklore, from religious books, and even from other contemporary writers like Kafka, C.S. Lewis and Edgar Allen Poe.  Over 140 creatures were listed with a page or two of description, both of what the creature looks like, how it acts, and how it is placed in the cultural history of mankind.

Of course it is always interesting to read about the creatures that you knew growing up.  There are dwarves, dragons, unicorns, faeries, elves and the Cheshire cat.  But some of my favorite creatures were the darker ones I had not heard of in detail before.  Creatures that could turn you to stone if you look at it, dogs that guard the gates of hell and devour those trying to escape.  Fish that hold the entire world on their back.  Banshees that scream at night, salamanders that live in fire, and Angels seen by a man who supposedly died for a short time.  The A Bao A Qu is a creature that lives in a tower, and as it follows the traveler up the steps of the tower, it slowly regains its true form and magnificence, only to disappear again when the traveler descends. 

I love Borges' writing style.  How he makes myths and fantasy (though I hate to use that word) come to life and sound realistic and enthralling.  These creatures, though just a compendium meant to browse through, fit in easily with this style.  I thoroughly enjoyed this read, and I want to encourage young readers to get lost in the world of these imaginary beings.  Four out of five stars.

The Trial

Read from Wednesday July 13th to Monday, July 18th.

The Trial, by Franz Kafka.  One of his most famous pieces, it was unfortunately left unfinished before his untimely death.  Kafka was not recognized for his genius during his life, and only became famous posthumously.  The Trial was an interesting story about the perversity of the law.  It is frustrating to read, and not much actually happens during the course of the short novel, and much of it is redundant, but that was the point that Kafka was trying to make.

It is the story about a young banker named Josef K.  K., who lives alone and is moderately successful, one day wakes up to find two police officers in his apartment.  They have to come to arrest him.  K. does not believe it at first, thinking that it might be a joke.  However, the officers and their supervisor process K. in a neighbor's apartment, and then he is released to go about his day.  What crime did he commit? He is not told, and it is never revealed.

K. returns to his job, flummoxed of course, and he has conversations with his landlady and a neighbor.  They both act as if it is no big deal.  A shame of course, but something that happens often to people for no particular reason.  Then K. is summoned for his first examination.  Seeing nothing else to do, he goes searching for the court, and finds it in an old apartment building.  There is a large courtroom with many old men arguing amongst themselves.  K. enters, interrupts the examining judge, and makes his case for himself that he is wrongly accused and is in fact a model citizen.

Pleased with himself, unfortunately the trial still goes on against him.  K. visits court offices in the attic of the building, and he is visited by his uncle from the country.  The uncle forces K. to get a lawyer, and he brings him to an old friend, Mr. Huld.  He is pretentious and full of talk and bluster, and he claims that he is the best at these types of cases.  But it is going to take a long time, and lots of documents, and even then the best hope that you have is just having your case postponed for a later date.  K. also meets Leni, the maid servant of Huld, and they have an affair, but later he learns that she is only attracted to the accused, desperate men who visit the lawyer.

K. is very frustrated by now with the whole process.  He is impatient, and stressed, and he is falling behind his competitors at the bank.  K. has conversations with the court painter, who explains some of the court processes, and the different types of lawyers.  He also talks with a dilapidated businessman who has been in trial for five years, and has subsequently lost his business trying to defend himself.  He has five lawyers, and none of them know about the others.  K. resolves to ditch his own lawyer, Huld, and find a new one, but when he goes to do that, Huld shows off the power he has over another client, in an effort to impress K. apparently (this chapter is left unfinished). 

Finally, K. thinks he is going to a cathedral to meet a bank client, but instead he has a long conversation with the priest.  The priest tells the following fable : "A man from the country seeks the law and wishes to gain entry to the law through a doorway. The doorkeeper tells the man that he cannot go through at the present time. The man asks if he can ever go through, and the doorkeeper says that is possible. The man waits by the door for years, bribing the doorkeeper with everything he has. The doorkeeper accepts the bribes, but tells the man that he accepts them "so that you do not think you have failed to do anything." The man waits at the door until he is about to die. Right before his death, he asks the doorkeeper why even though everyone seeks the law, no one else has come in all the years. The doorkeeper answers "No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it."

K. is confused from the fable, as it implies that his situation is hopeless.  And the fable prepares the reader for an unfortunate ending.  On the eve of his thirtieth birthday, K. is summoned by two men, led through the streets on their arms and into a field, where he is beheaded, "like a dog."  K. goes peacefully and knowingly to his death, because finally the trial has finished.  A powerful ending, it is appropriate for the existential absurdity of the entire story.  We are helpless before the Law, selected at random, and a meaningless cog in the system.  Three and a half out of five stars

Cities of the Plain

Read from Friday, July 8th to Wednesday, July 13th.

Cities of the Plain, the final installment in the Border Trilogy by Cormac McCarthy.  In this novel, John Grady Cole, from All the Pretty Horses, and Billy Parnham, from The Crossing are united.  Both fresh from their respective journeys in and out of Mexico, they now work as ranch hands on a ranch near El Paso in Texas.  Much of the beginning part of the book is spent depicting life on the ranch.  They are both good friends even though John is only 19 and Billy is in his upper twenties.  There are a few other workers, and the boss is nice, but the ranching industry is dying in that area because the government wants to take it over.  They comfort themselves with stories about the Old West, and they sometimes go to town for whiskey and beer.

The story begins, as with the others, when they cross the border into Mexico.  This time, the boys from the ranch go to a whorehouse in Juarez, just across the border.  There, John Grady sees a beautiful, young prostitute named Magdalena.  He doesn't 'meet her' that night, but goes back many times by himself.  He is captivated by her, and falls madly in love.  She is shy, and fragile, and has epilepsy and seizures that she keeps hidden from John Grady, but she loves him back.  Of course, she is a prostitute, and also someone else's property.  That man is Eduardo.  He refuses to sell Magdalena, mainly because he loves her as well, even though he beats her.

The novel progresses with John Grady wondering what to do.  Billy tries to talk sense into him; tells him that he is being unrealistic and no girl is worth that much trouble.  But John Grady follows his heart and he makes plans for their marriage.  He fixes up an old run-down cabin on the ranch and he sells his horse and possessions to pay for everything.  At one point, there are wild dogs picking off cattle on the ranch, and so the boys set off one night and hunt down the pack and kill most of them.  John Grady and Billy know that since one the dead dogs had been breast-feeding, there must be a litter of puppies, so they set out in search of them.  They find the litter, and John Grady keeps one of the dogs for himself and Magdalena.

Finally, the day arrives when Magdalena is supposed to leave and run away to the U.S. with John Grady.  Their plan is to meet at a diner near the border.  Magdalena sneaks out, and she is terrified, and makes it to the diner, where a man picks her up after awhile claiming to be a friend of John Grady.  He isn't, of course, and one of Eduardo's henchman kills her by the river.  John Grady is enraged and heartbroken when he finds out later that day by visiting the morgue.  He is a suspect in the murder because Eduardo reported him, so he has to stay hidden.  When Billy finds out, he goes to Juarez and confronts Eduardo and knocks out one of his henchmen, but Eduardo says there is nothing he can do.  Billy talks with the police and accuses Eduardo of the murder.

John Grady eventually emerges and confronts Eduardo in the alley behind the whorehouse.  They have a knife fight, but Eduardo is a skilled cuchillero and he slashes up John Grady.  In the same style as the prison fight in ATPH, John Grady lets himself get slashed up in order to strike a fatal blow to Eduardo when he gets in close enough.  He stabs him right up through the jaw.  John Grady staggers away to a small hovel, where he pays a boy to call the ranch, and Billy comes to find him.  He is able to comfort John Grady in his last moments of life, but he is too wounded to survive, and he dies.

Billy is distraught, and in a long epilogue, McCarthy tells the story of the rest of his life.  He wanders the southwest for years and years, always alone and always being chased by droughts.  Finally, as an old man in the present, he is travelling across highways as a bum.  He meets another man, and at first Billy believes he is Death come for him.  But this strange man is not, he is just another traveller, and he tells the story of a dream he had.  In the dream, he dreamt of another traveller in the ruins of an ancient civilization, and this person himself had a dream where he was to be sacrificed in that very spot.  It is a very interesting conversation they have about the meaning of life and death, the things you can know and not know, and the universality of those themes.

Once again, McCarthy writes a brilliant, gripping story about the journeys around the Mexican border.  More and more, the border stands for more things in these character's lives.  It is the border of life and death, from which there is no going back.  There is a lot of religious imagery and symbolism in the work as well.  Of course, it is a difficult book, as you are thrown right into the middle of the characters lives, and there is no backstory, and most of the plot is advanced through dialogue that is not always attached to a character.  Much of the dialogue is in Spanish as well, so if you do not have a background in Spanish you will have a lot of trouble.  It was a slow start as well, and took me awhile to figure out what was happening, who was who, and what relation people had to one another.  However, everything soon clicked and the story got really enthralling, and I finished the book with a long reading session in which I couldn't put the book down for hours on end.  Really great book and really great series overall.  Four and a half out of five stars.

How We Are Hungry

Read from Wednesday, July 6th to Thursday, July 7th.

How We Are Hungry, by Dave Eggers.  This is a collection of short stories by one of my favorite authors, Dave Eggers.  It is a small collection, and I read it very quickly one morning on a bus ride up to New York City.  Some stories are just a page long and involve an intimate moment in a character's life, while other stories are more in-depth and span a longer period of time.  I love Eggers' style of writing, and there are many animalistic elements to these stories.

One of the more memorable stories is 'The Only Meaning of Oil-Wet Water,' in which a young woman travels to Costa Rica to visit her friend Hand, a character from You Shall Know Our Velocity, and they spend the week surfing and hooking up.  It is about the spiritual zen of surfing, and about escaping from the ordinary routine of life and taking an adventure in an unknown land.  There are wild horses that watch the couple throughout their stay.  Another story is about a man who visits his cousin in the hospital after he tried to commit suicide for the umpteenth time.  One of the longer stories is about a woman who tries to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. She is traveling alone, but with a tour group. Some of the tour group get sick and can't make it to the top, and then some of the porters, the black employees hired to climb and carry equipment, die in their sleep one night.  She eventually makes it to the top, mostly as a personal accomplishment.

There are other quirky stories that I enjoyed a lot as well.  One story is about a super-couple talking to their child, 'Your Mother and I.'  This story recounts how somehow they were able to bring about world-peace, solve all of humanity's problems, and even some minor problems as well.  It was so easy, they said, once everyone worked together and stopped dividing upon ideological extremes.  Another was just notes about a potential story Eggers would write in the future.  It is about an old man who wants to make his death a large, public event in a stadium.  He reconnects with his kids and an old flame to plan the thing, and it is the only way he would be happy dying.  Finally, the most interesting story, and the one that will stick with me, is the story 'After I was Thrown in the River and Before I Drowned.'  It is told from the perspective of a dog.  As a puppy, he was thrown in a river, but he was rescued and went to live with a family.  However, all the dog wanted to do was run in the woods at night with other dogs, that he could communicate with.  They had races for fun along a course that ended with a jump over a river.  One night, a dog jumped and broke her leg.  It is a bad omen, but the main dog wanted to race again.  He jumped, but the river was swollen from rain, and he drowned.  The story continues with life after death, including what it was like on the river bed, and then what dog heaven looked like; a giant field with nothing to do but roam around.  The story, and book, ended with this quote about his realization in heaven:

"The one big surprise is that as it turns out, God is the sun.  It makes sense, if you think about it.  Why we didn't see it sooner I cannot say.  Every day the sun was right there burning, our and other planets hovering around it, always apologizing, and we didn't think it was God.  Why would there be a God and also a sun? Of course God is the sun.  Everyone in the life before was cranky, I think, because they just wanted to know."

I liked these stories a lot, and I look forward to more by Dave Eggers.  Four out of five stars.

The Dharma Bums

Read from Tuesday, July 5th to Wednesday, July 6th.

The Dharma Bums, by Jack Kerouac.  It's been years since I last read On the Road, one of my favorites, and I have owned Dharma Bums for a long time now, and finally have got around to reading it.  It is a simple book consisting mostly of experiences living as one of these Dharma Bums in the early 1950's, mostly out west.  The characters are based on real people Kerouac knew, and the story takes place in the years before On the Road.

Ray Smith is the narrator, and he is a bum, but one of the old time romantic bums.  He is young, he catches trains, and he sleeps out under the stars.  He crashes at friend's houses, writes poetry, and also practices buddhism.  The story begins when Ray meets Japhy Ryder, another bum similar to Ray.  Japhy teaches Ray about the wonders of the outdoors, and the spiritual Zen of mountain climbing.  Together, along with one other friend, they climb the Matterhorn peak in California, spending nights sleeping outside, and days running and having fun along the trail, and meditating.  Dharma Bums is the name of the group that forms around these hikes and practices.  They also experience 'yab-yum,' a kind of Buddhist free love orgy. 

Ray hitchhikes home to North Carolina for the winter where he can sleep on his family's enclosed porch.  He still spends days meditating under a tree in the woods, surrounded by local dogs.  The family doesn't approve completely, and thinks he is a strange, black sheep, but they love him anyways.  In the spring, Ray hitchhikes back west to meet up with Japhy, and they spend the spring living together in a shack, throwing mad parties with lots of wine and poetry and jazz.  Finally, Japhy has to leave for a long trip to Japan to learn more about Buddhism, and they throw a three day massive party in his honor.  Towards the end of the party, Japhy and Ray grow tired of it all, and go for a long hike in the woods.  Once Japhy left, Ray hitchhiked up north to Washington State, where he had a job lined up to be a fire-watcher in a lonely, desolate cabin up on top of a mountain.  He spent the rest of the summer meditating by himself, finally at peace.

It is an interesting story, mainly because there is no conflict, just experiences pieced together.  Ray Smith is Jack Kerouac, and Japhy another of his poet friends.  Beautifully written, it is similar to OTR, but there is a definite contrast in the city life and the car, versus the nature and trail of Dharma Bums.  However, the spirituality of the road and trail and the vast, awesomeness of America is the same.  Of course, it makes me want to travel and hike and explore.  Three and a half out of five stars.

Going After Cacciato

Read from Friday, July 1st to Tuesday, July 5th.

Going After Cacciato, by Tim O'Brien.  I started this book on July 1st, and I have made it my goal to read ten books in the month of July.  I will only read small and medium length books, of course, and so far I am on pace.  Need to read a book every three days, so even though this one took a bit longer (birthday weekend!), the next two were a lot shorter.  Anyway, Going after Cacciato was amazing.  It was talked about at length in How to Read Literature like a Professor, and that is how I found out about it.  It is a war novel, but also a psychological, experimental, and fantasy novel. 

Paul Berlin is the narrator, and he tells the disjointed story of Cacciato, another member in his unit, that one day decided to walk away from the Vietnam war, all the way to Paris.  Berlin relates the news about Cacciato going AWOL to their Lieutenant Corson, and he orders that the entire squad goes after him.  Berlin, Lieutenant, and a few others (Eddie, Stink, Oscar, and Doc) follow Cacciato through the mountains for a day or two, until they have him cornered on a hilltop.  At this point the story begins to get hazy, as Cacciato apparently escapes from that ambush, and continues onto Paris.  The group, including Berlin, continue their chase.

The whole story is not presented in chronological order.  In some chapters, Berlin is on a lookout post on a beach, keeping watch for an entire night, and he relates his thoughts on previous war experiences.  He had been with the squad a few months prior to Cacciato's disappearance.  They had a different lieutenant at that time, Sidney Martin, who made the soldiers check the tunnels prior to bombing them.  This led to two comrades being killed in the tunnels, but still Sidney Martin was stubborn, and insisted upon checking them, and so members of the squad contemplated killing him.  It is not revealed what ultimately happened to him.  Berlin also remembers other members of the squad that were killed, including one that had his face blown off, and another that had a heart attack after stepping on a mine, and literally died of fright.  These stories of the day to day life of Berlin and the other soldiers help to establish the fear and inner turmoil they felt, that ultimately led up to the chase. 

Back on the trail, after Cacciato escapes, they meet a young woman, Sarkin Aung Wan, on the trail traveling with her two aunts and two oxen, one of which is shot to pieces by trigger-happy Stink.  Sarkin is a refugee from the war, and she travels with them, becoming Paul Berlin's lover.  The squad falls into a hole at one point, all the way into an elaborate network of the Vietcong.  They are told they are held hostage, and cannot escape, but Sarkin shows them the way out.  It is simple, you just have to fall up.  This action establishes the story as fictional and not based in reality, and it works very well. 

After the tunnels, they leave the jungle and take a train across India to Delhi, where they stay as tourists for awhile.  The lieutenant falls in love with a woman there, and they have to kidnap him to get him to leave finally.  At this point the hunt for Cacciato is just a formality.  They are a squad of armed, uniformed soldiers venturing across the continent, supposedly still on their mission.  But Paul yearns for Paris himself, and a permanent escape from the horrors of the war.  After India, they spend some time in Tehran, Iran, where they are arrested for not having passports and for espionage, and they are sentenced to be executed.  But at the last moment, Cacciato arrives, gives them a gun, blows up the jail so they can escape, and provides a getaway sports car, and they escape the Middle East.  Cacciato disappears again after the escape, so they are still looking for him, all the way through Athens, Italy, and finally into Paris.

In Paris, the group becomes lackadaisical.  They spend days exploring the city, even though they claim to be looking for Cacciato.  Sarkin and Paul agree to find an apartment and permanently stay in the city.  Paul is conflicted.  He wants to be free and happy, but he also needs to finish his mission, and in the larger picture, the entire war, because the obligation is very strong.  Finally, he does find Cacciato one day, and the group surrounds him in the hotel he is staying at.  In a scene strongly reminiscent of the ambush on the hill, Berlin is terrified, pees his pants, and Cacciato escapes.  The scene is twisted, and it is revealed they are back on the hilltop in Vietnam, and Cacciato's story will never be revealed.  The next day, the squad returns to the war, and they are stationed at a look-out on the beach, where Berlin relates the workings of his imagination. 

This was an amazing, inventive story of what might happen if a soldier just decided to pick up one day and walk to Paris.  There is the external conflict, but also the inner turmoil of freedom and happiness versus obligations to your friends and country.  Much more than a war story, this is in a genre all on its own.  A full five out of five stars.