Completed: Matterhorn

Kelly,

Wow. This was a great book. If you know any history buffs, you could definitely give this one the Jenny seal of approval.

If you'll remember, last year I read The Things They Carried, which many consider the seminal novel about the Vietnam War. The brilliance of that novel is not only in its vivid portrayal of a soldier's life, but also in how it deconstructs the very act of writing about the war. It's a mobius strip of a novel, and I loved it. It's definitely one of those books that stuck with me, and I find myself thinking about it often.

Matterhorn, on the other hand, attempts to exactly capture the daily life of a Marine grunt, and I think it succeeds brilliantly. It is 1969, and the Marines of Bravo company are fighting in the northwestern corner of the country, near the DMZ and the border with Laos. The main character, Mellas, is fresh out of college and fresh in country. The novel follows his company as they claim, abandon, and then reclaim a large, imposing cliff of land called Matterhorn.

This novel is a damning indictment of the modern military. The commanding officers of Bravo company are vain, foolish, and arrogant. They continually send their troops into battle under the most appalling circumstances--forcing them to march for days without adequate rations, refusing to send in medivac choppers out of spite, insisting the Marines fight in the face of odds so overwhelming they are essentially ordering their men to commit suicide. You may remember the book Catch-22 from high school, which goes to great lengths to demonstrate the absurdity of war. Matterhorn, on the other hand, demonstrates the nihilism of war: it tells a story in which all the lives were lost for nothing,  just carelessly thrown away by the men ordering them into battle.

I know that sounds bleak and unredeeming. And it is. However, the book isn't only about these commanding officers. Because what happens between the men of Bravo company, the men who fight and die with each other, is...well...heartrendingly beautiful. The men, and often Marlantes points out that they aren't much more than boys, aren't fighting to win. They're fighting to save each other. They are fighting out of a sense of love and brotherhood that I will never experience, but at least now have a way of understanding.

The book was 600 pages, and so there was clearly a whole lot more going on then I've told you about here, but I think for me the amazing thing about this book is that it managed to capture and reveal something about what it means to be human. Marlantes is an excellent writer, and he has a knack for revealing metaphors. Here are two that will stick with me:

As Mellas lies injured, and fearing for his life: The fact of his eventual death shook him like a terrier shaking a rat. He could only squeal in pain...But the terrier shaking him by the neck laughed...The laughter turned him inside out, exposing his most secret parts. He lay before God as a woman opens herself to a man, with legs apart, stomach exposed, arms open. But unlike some women, he did not have the inner strength that allowed them to do such a thing without fear. There was no woman's strength in Mellas at all.

As Mellas' friend Hawke contemplates why he fights: Emotion constricted Hawke’s throat. He suddenly understood why the victims of concentration camps had walked quietly to the gas chambers. In the face of horror and insanity, it was the one human thing to do. Not the noble thing, not the heroic thing—the human thing. To live succumbing to the insanity, was the ultimate loss of pride.

I don't, right now, want to say much more. But I'm glad I read this book. I think it will be another one that sticks with me.

Jenny

Jenny's Book 5.12: Matterhorn

Kelly,

I've decided to tackle one of the Vietnam books this month, the novel Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes. This book got some great reviews last year when it came out. It's about Marines in Vietnam, and my Dad was a Marine, so it was hard to resist.

I started looking at the book this morning, and there's some very helpful things right at the beginning of the book. Along with maps and a flowchart of the Chain of Command, there's a page that says, "A glossary explaining slang, military jargon, and technical terms has been provided at the back of the book." This is genius! First of all, and I assume this is true of most civilian readers, I find the organization of the military to be mysterious and confusing. I went straight to the back and just read through the glossary first. I'm sure I'll occasionally have to flip back to it while reading, but it's especially smart to tell readers that its there right in the beginning of the book. How annoying it is to find such a thing at the end of the book only after you've muddled through.

If all goes well with this book, my plan will be to follow this up with my non-fiction selection about Vietnam in June, The Best and the Brightest. 

How goes the unpacking?!
Jenny

Completed: We Wish to Inform You...

Kelly,

I really need to inject some levity into the reading mix, because these brutally depressing books are overwhelming me. I mean, I'm glad I read this, but...wow.

Historical background, the Jenny version,  in one paragraph: In the late 1800s, European countries colonized Africa and spent the next 80 or so years royally fucking the place up. After decolonization in the late 50s and 60s, they left behind a raft of problems, propped up puppet dictators, and took off with a huge amount of the continent's wealth in their pockets. In Rwanda, a teeny tiny little country, colonizers had stirred up ethnic hatred between 2 groups, the Hutus and the Tutsi. By the mid-1990s, this long-standing conflict reached a rolling boil and the majority Hutus formed a party, Hutu Power, who decided to completely remove the Tutsis from the face of the Earth. On April 6th, 1994, the President of Rwanda died in a plane crash, and the Hutus used it as a pretext to attack the Tutsis. Over the next 100 days, the Hutus turned on their lifelong friends, neighbors, and countrymen and slaughtered about 1 million people. The Hutus systematically killed the Tutsis, roughly 100 people per hour, at the urging of the Hutu Power party, and they did it mostly by machete.

The international community did nothing. Less than nothing, actually. The UN field commander at the time said that with 5000 men, he probably could have put a stop to the whole thing. The US, rather than increasing the number of soldiers, instead insisted that UN peacekeepers be removed from Rwanda. The French came in and created a clear zone that they used to HELP the Hutus, and perhaps even provided them with more arms.

Now, I had known the rough outline of the thing. But it was this upcoming part of the story that I knew nothing about that was just as appalling in its own way. After killing a million Tutsis in those few months, the Hutu Power party urged the Hutus to flee from Rwanda. They insisted the entire time that it was self-defense and that the Tutsis were in fact to blame. The party elites told common Hutus that if they didn't flee from Rwanda, they would be killed by a Tutsi-led government that was fighting for control of Rwanda. So millions of Hutu killers fled into neighboring countries, creating a massive humanitarian crisis, living in huge refugee camps....and international aid organizations rushed onto the scene, TO SHELTER, FEED, AND SUPPORT THE PERPETRATORS OF THE GENOCIDE. The remaining Tutsis inside Rwanda, those who lost their families and everything, got nothing. Within a few years, the camps were forcibly emptied and the killers were moved back to Rwanda to live side by side with what remained of their victims.

I mean, really?

I dog eared so many things in this book that I wanted to share and write about, but there were some of the quotes that will stick with me for a long time.

"Genocide, after all, is an exercise in community building. A vigorous totalitarian order requires that people be invested in the leaders' scheme, and while genocide may be the most perverse and ambitious means to this end, it is also the most comprehensive" (95). 

These sentences stopped me in my tracks as I was reading. Genocide is community building?! But when you think about it, and the types of civilizations that have carried it out, that does seem to be the common, awful factor. We kill those people because THEY are not like US, and WE are better than THEM, and THEY don't deserve to be here. Genocide apparently isn't too impossible to imagine once you've turned "people into a people"(202). Absolutely chilling. Certainly gives me pause when I hear the angry rhetoric about Muslims or Mexicans or all the people other Americans seem to hate these days. What's the endgame to all that hatred?

"Just as the state's police swear to prevent and punish murder, so the signers of the Genocide Convention swore to police a brave new world order...The authors and signers of the Genocide Convention knew perfectly well that they had not fought WWII to stop the Holocaust but rather...to contain fascist aggression. What made those victorious powers, which dominated the UN then even more than they do now, imagine they would act differently in the future?" (149).

As you know, I teach Anne Frank every year, as so there's Holocaust questions that come up every year. I knew damn well that we didn't fight WW2 stop the Holocaust. But yet everyone feels to confident in singing out, "Never again!" But why were we so confident that we'd step in, when every time before, we turned a blind eye? The politics of the whole situation is crazy. Even this book got some angry press because the author makes what seems like the obvious comparisons to the Holocaust. I actually read an article that wanted to clarify that there were 2 kinds of genocide: ideological and retributive. And I realized something important about myself, I just can't intellectualize this stuff. It is all awful to me, and I don't see any point in playing the Opression Olympics, whereby human tragedies are ranked and compared in order and significance. Rwanda, the Holocaust, American Slavery, the removal of the American Indians, Apartheid. All of it is AWFUL and TERRIBLE and there's no need to compare them, or say one was worse than the others, or that some were not as bad. It was all bad. We're not good people. I get it.

"Never before in modern memory had a people who slaughtered another people, or in whose name the slaughter was carried out, been expected to live with the remainder of the people that was slaughtered, completely intermingled, in the same tiny communities, as one cohesive national society" (302) 

Hard to imagine this, right? Just go back and live with the people that destroyed your homes and killed your families. 

"After the genocide, [a survivor] said, 'I had to find my own clothes alone, and I had to find my food alone, and now these people return and are given food and humanitarian aid.' It was true; while the international community had spent more than a billion dollars in the camps, devastated Rwanda had gone begging for a few hundred million, and the tens of thousands of survivors, squatting in the ruins, had been systematically ignored" (315).

Obviously, I've got a do-gooder's heart with the Teach For America and everything. But I doubt I'll ever give another penny to an international aid organization again after reading this book. The Hutu Power played the entire international aid community for a bunch of dupes, and we fell for it hook line and sinker.

I don't know what else to say. I might need to subsist on a steady diet of romance novels for a few weeks. And thank God I have the luxury of saying that rather than living through it. I don't mean to sound ungrateful.

Jenny

Kelly's Book 4.12: Olive Kitteridge

Dear Jenny,

As you know, my life is insane right now. (Cross country move? Why the heck not?!) I just realized that I never posted my April book choice. I saw your suggestion to burn through Nox, but it was already packed. Sooo... eBook it is! Of my few eBooks on the TBR, Olive Kitteridge was the shortest. Done.

I've been doing pretty well, considering -- mostly reading in the few minutes before I pass out at night, and catching a few pages while scarfing down food, waiting in lines, etc.

Plus, I have a long flight this Saturday (did someone say something about moving?) so I should be able to knock it out then. Whew.

The TBP has certainly suffered this month, though... not much time for perusing. ;)

love,
kelly

Jenny's Book 4.12: We Wish to Inform You...

Kelly,

After Charlie Wilson's War, I sort of want to tackle my pair of Vietnam books, but they are both quite long, and so I want to try to hold off for summer. Instead, I decided on another non-fiction title, already throwing my fiction/non-fiction plan out of whack. I suppose it's better to read more non-fiction and save myself some novels, though!

I decided to go with this depressing book by Philip Gourevitch called We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families. It's about the genocide in Rwanda. I actually bought this book used, and I did it around this time of year back in 2008. (Thank you Amazon, for telling me when I purchased things right on the tops of your pages.) It's because at this time every year, I teach a unit on Africa. And although I don't teach this story specifically, I do usually want to add to my general knowledge of the continent and its history. Basically, this is the time of year it makes the most sense to read it, and if I don't do it now, I'm afraid it will wait another year.

In other book reading news, I'm supposed to be reading Jane Eyre for my bookclub. I'm just finding it stultifying and humorless. Bah. I hate the Victorians. I've read about 1/3 of it is my guess, and I think I'm done with it. I just have too many things I really want to read, so why waste time on that? Maybe I'll skip forward and read the end. Meanwhile, I posted the following as my Facebook status the other day: "Newsflash: Jane Eyre is boring." and I got 40 very funny responses. You should check into the Jenny channel and read it. It's hilarious. The best comment came from my friend Jean, who's just highly quotable in general. She gave the most succinct movie review ever by once saying, "I just saw I am Number Four. It was number two." Hee! About Jane Eyre she said, "It's just so ludicrous. Listen lady, you've been acting crazy. Your ass is living in the attic now. What could go wrong with this plan? Just in case, I'll leave you with an alcoholic nurse and some matches." Love. It.

 Also, next month, new Sookie Stackhouse! Exciting.
Jenny

Completed: Starvation Lake

Dear Jenny,

I originally bought this book for Bill because it seems to focus on hockey and, as you know, he likes hockey (Yes, yes. Understatement there.) Even though I don't read a lot of mysteries, I thought that I might also be interested in it, so when I made the TBR pile, I slapped this one on there.

It was a fine read. Nothing too earth shattering, but pretty enjoyable. I liked the writing and I especially liked the near-constant hockey references. There were several times that a normal phrase was turned on its head to be more hockey-ish. For instance, rather than saying a guy was "dumber than a bag of hammers," the author writes that he's "dumber than a bag of hockey pucks" [175]. Ha! I might have to start saying that, actually.

And there was one particular passage about what we call "glove hand" in our house that really rang true:

Little Wilf turned the palm to his face and inhaled deeply. "Ahhhhh," he said. "Hockey." Nothing smells worse than the inside of a an old sweat-drenched hockey glove, except a hand that just came out of one. And nothing smells more like hockey. [99]

Not having played hockey my entire life, I don't fully appreciate the smell of "glove hand" and the memories it brings back. But I've seen my husband's face when he catches a whiff of glove hand and I know that clearly, for a person who's whole life has been hockey, nothing smells more like hockey. (Also, nothing smells worse. It's really atrocious.)

As for the plot, I'm not usually one to see what's coming, I must admit. For the most part, I don't even try. I'm a reader who just waits to see what happens. Back when you were talking about Swamplandia!, you were saying that you saw the rape coming, and you were cringing, hoping that it would not be true. As I was reading this book, I thought I saw something coming, hoped I would not be correct, and... I was.

There was a bit of a twist, but the most obvious explanation for the "missing year" up where the town's beloved coach used to live? Give it about three seconds. Hrm. Coach of young boys... unexplained year-long gap in his career history.... hrmmm. Of course it's pedophilia. I wonder what else it could have been, because my immediate thought was that and that, of course, was what it was. I was hoping for something less predictable (He joined the circus! He was a juror! He stopped coaching for one year to participate in Dancing with the Stars! Anything, really.) But nope.

I just read through some of the reviews on Amazon. Most of the one stars were because people didn't like all of the hockey talk which, of course, was what I really liked (meanwhile, there's a damned goalie on the front cover, people -- what were you expecting?!) but the word "predictable" also comes up a lot. I hate to say this, but it must be predictable if I was able to see it coming.

Despite the predictability, I liked the characters, the town, and all of the hockey references. I found myself looking forward to picking it up again, so it was certainly enjoyable. It might have been a bit long (there were some sub-plots that didn't seem necessary to me) but it didn't drag. And there's a bit of a surprise at the very end, after all.

April's selection is going to have to be an eBook to keep up with me, as I am not going to have much time to read for the next few weeks. What are you reading?

love,
kelly

Completed: Charlie Wilson's War

Kelly,

You can shoot down a helicopter with this sucker.

Well. I went down to the wire on this one! Lots of bookish activity for this month, so I'm just happy I was able to finish it. It helped that it was a great read.

Charlie Wilson's War is one of those books that proves that truth really is stranger than fiction. This story is set during the last dying gasps of the Cold War. The basic story can be summed up in one sentence: A Texas Congressman, powerful because of his seat on the all-important Appropriations Committee, manages to funnel millions and millions of dollars through the CIA to help fund Afghanistan's mujahideen as they fight off the Soviet Invasion. However, it's the political twists and turns that make the story so interesting. Charlie and a CIA counterpart, Gust Avrakotos, manage to strong arm the entire Congress and CIA into funding the war, what they continually liken to The USSR's own Vietnam.

The reason the book is so interesting, of course, is because of the way we are currently embroiled in Afghanistan. One of the hallmarks of Charlie's War was the the US insisted on keeping American influence as secret as possible. Everything---arms, training, food, medicine, etc---was funneled through Pakistan. The CIA spent billions of dollars funding the armed resistance of militant Islam, and most of the actual fighters never knew that Americans helped them. The book makes a very strongest case I've ever seen for the impact of unintended consequences: the very arms that we gleefully provided to Afghanistan in the 80s are the very weapons they are turning against us now.

I don't really feel like I can do much more justice to the plot, because it is so complex and convoluted. However, it is a fascinating and interesting look at the inner workings of both Congress and the CIA. The way in which Charlie and Gust manage to basically make war without anyone actually having much of an idea what they were up to? It's an amazing story. Honestly, if you knew a history or war buff, this book would make a great gift. If you're interested in the short version, I'd also recommend the film with Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts.

My only complaint about the book is that it assumes that the reader has a great deal of background knowledge about the last 20 years of the Cold War. And, as we have previously discussed on at least a thousand occasions, we got super crappy history instruction. In other words, there's some gaps in my knowledge base. For example, I wish the author would have spent at least a page or two explaining why the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in the first place. I mean, that seems sort of obvious, but I have no idea of what their basic objective even was. The book isn't a history of the war itself, but rather the incredible tale of Charlie and Gust, but it would have been nice to get a brief overview.

I wished I has stuck to my original plan, which was to read the books in roughly chronological order, because there was also lots of references to Vietnam. If I had followed my original sequence of books, I would have read The Best and the Brightest first, and maybe some of that would have made more sense. But the book is also continually referencing the Iran-Contra affair and the war in Nicaragua. I mean, outside of being vaguely able to pull the face of Oliver North into my brain...I've got NOTHING on those events. In other words, reading this has just made apparent new, unexplored areas of historical ignorance. Fantastic.

Finally, one last note about ebooks vs. pbooks. I read Charlie Wilson's War half on my Kindle (borrowed from the Kindle lending library for free!) and half in a paperback. I love reading on my Kindle, but I think it has its drawbacks, especially when it comes to non-fiction. The book has footnotes, at least a few in every chapter. I hate clicking down to the right line of text and then over to the footnote on a Kindle. When I was reading at home, I'd actually read with my Kindle and keep the book on my lap. When a footnote came up, I'd page forward to the footnote in the book while reading on my Kindle. That's ridiculous, I know, but it was easier and faster. Most damning is that the Kindle version doesn't have an index. This is a complex book, with lots of characters and places, many of those with confusing or similar names; complex references to specific branches of government; types of weapons and military terms. I can hardly believe this book didn't have a separate "cast of characters" list. But to not have an index? When I was reading, there were times I'd forget a specific term.  I guess I could have used the "Search this book" function, but again, it just seemed far more laborious than flipping to the index and finding it quickly. Not to mention an index will also break down a topic into subheadings. If I wanted to find something particular with reference to Pakistan's president, I could look up "Zia" in the index and scan through a list of subheadings. With the search this function, I'd be able to find every mention of his name in the text, but then I'd have to scroll through hundreds of references looking for the exact thing I wanted to find. I'm sure that the Kindle will make all this more seamless eventually, but I still prefer a pbook when reading this kind of complex non-fiction.

All in all, a great read. Remember that line from The Princess Bride: "Never get involved in a land war in Asia." Well, reading this book sure helps to explain why! Also, I think I want to know more about the CIA. Wonder where that will take me?
Jenny