"...No Time for That, Gussman:" Book Report 2016, Fiction

Lt. Col. Scott Perry, Blackhawk Pilot, Battalion Commander, in Iraq, 2009

In December of 2009 Scott Perry, my battalion commander, burst into my office in his headquarters.  He was sending me on a mission the next day. When he finished the instructions he gave me, he looked down and saw a copy of "Aeneid" on my desk. We had a brief exchange that shows why fiction dropped from its high place in the world to its niche place in the busy, media-saturated world of the 21st Century.

"I've got no time for that Gussman," Perry said. "I've got so much to read, I just don't read fiction."

I knew that night the officers were having a movie night. So I asked him, "Which documentary are you watching tonight?"

"Documentary?" he said. "What are you talking about. We're watching Godfather, Part 2."

"You mean you watch fiction, you just don't read it."

"Shut up Gussman. Be on the ramp tomorrow at Zero Seven."

Most people stop reading fiction with the last book they were assigned in school, whether that was high school or college.  Fifty or more years ago, fiction writing provided entertainment for many people, but it movies, TV and digital games are eating away at the place of fiction in the world of entertainment.

But not on my booklist.  The category I will comment on for this post includes 15 of the 50 books I read last year. Although, 14 of the 15 books I listed in the "War" category are fiction and 3 of the 6 "Faith" books are fiction.  So really, 32 of 50 books, or 2 out of 3, are fiction.

Just to stay with the numbers, 10 of the 15 in this category were written in Russian or by a Russian-born author in English, so I have lately been more than a little obsessed with Russia and Russian literature.

My favorite story on this list "The Death of Ivan Ilych" by Leo Tolstoy should have been on the Faith list, at least for its effect on me.

This wrenching story begins with the announcement "Ivan Ilych is dead" then moves back to the time just before Ilych becomes fatally ill. As fiction the story is wonderfully told. As faith literature, it says a life devoted to material gain is pathetic. But many stories say that. The real beauty is in the character of Ivan Ilych's servant Gerasim. The good man Gerasim cares for his master while Ivan's wife and daughter go on with their lives and Ivan's friends go on with theirs.  Then there is the final agony Ivan suffers going from this life to the next.  From the first time I read this, I felt I could understand how suffering could be used for good and why we humans are never allowed to see beyond this life.

Another view of the spiritual life was Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse.  This fast moving story follows the main character from the day he defied his father, denied his fortune and struck out on his own, through many adventures, poverty, riches, deep love, self loathing and finally throwing off materialism.  I could have put this book in the Faith category also, but it was more of an adventure that happened to be concerned with the spiritual, than a spiritual journey that was an adventure--as was Narcissus and Goldmund.

Early in the year I read Lolita. I had never read a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, only essays.  The story is obsession from beginning to end, played out in kidnapping, murder and a wretched end for the protagonist.  It is beautifully written and in its own way as creepy as a horror novel.

Hamlet is my Shakespeare for 2016.  I can't remember how many times I have read, seen and listened to this play.  Ophelia's death hurts every time; the slaughter at the end never bothers me the same way.  But my favorite scene is the speech to the skull, "...alas poor Yurick...."

Turning to Russia, is the beautiful novel in verse, Eugene Onegin, which is where I will begin next post.

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1984: Big Brother Never Showed Up

I am re-reading "1984" for the Cold War class I am taking.  George Orwell's tale is so completely Evil Empire and so completely wrong.  In a bleak, battered London, Winston Smith toils rewriting history at his day job and trying to remember and write down the truth at night.

As a storyteller Orwell is brilliant and chilling.

As a prophet, he is a failure.  The world he imagined is nothing like what actually happened.  Orwell imagined a future with central control of information and nearly all history wiped out.  In this gray, impoverished world everyone is starving.

Closer to the future is Ray Bradbury's 1953 book "Fahrenheit 451."  You and I and everyone who read that book 30 years ago remember it as the book about burning books.  In this terrifying world in which Firemen start fires instead of putting them out.

But when I re-read the book several years ago, the thing that stood out was the video walls and the ear bugs.  The main character's wife had a room with three walls of video and wanted her husband to get promoted in the fire department so they could afford four walls of video.  With four walls, the video became interactive and she could be on game shows.  And everyone got music through bugs they fitted in their ears.  Bigger TVs, TVs that cover walls, music direct to your ears--that sounds like the near present and near future.

The guy who got the future right is Aldous Huxley in his 1931 book "Brave, New World."  Huxley imagines the future in which no one has to burn books because no one reads them.  In the Brave New World people are so glutted with entertainment and information that they are easy to manipulate.

Any prospect of the horrors of 1984 becoming reality died with the Soviet Union.  Communist China is becoming capitalist in a way that will eventually end the communist domination of the government.

But people who no longer read, who are obsessed with music and video, who are lazy and stupid--that world is here.  Prophetic Gold Medal to Huxley, Silver to Bradbury, no medal for Orwell.

My Wife Says This Story is Creepy

WARNING:  My wife read this story and said it was too creepy for a family blog.  It is a story I wrote about what I thought might happen if our base was attacked.  It is fiction.
One way I will be making the transition out of the Army is to begin writing stories set in the places I served.  In this story, Camp Adder, Iraq, gets attacked, which never happened during the time I was there.
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I died happy.  The bullet tore through my neck, sliced my aorta, and severed my spine. I grabbed my neck and tried to scream, but the scream in my head was just gurgling in my throat.  The men around me just saw me slump to the ground.  No sound from me.  Just the single shot that ripped the air and the hollow thunk as the round tore through my throat and spiraled through my chest.

I stopped breathing right away with all the blood in my throat.  I was dead as soon as my body hit the ground and brain dead as I bled out on the Iraqi tarmac.  The AK-47 round broke the titanium plate that held my neck together.  The neurosurgeon that had put in the plate said if I got hit by a Humvee that plate would hold the last three vertebra in my neck together.  He didn’t say anything about an AK round.

My last tour ended when the Blackhawk crashed and I broke my neck.  I left that tour on a MEDEVAC to Germany.  This time I would go home in a body bag.  No agony this time.  If I have to die, I am glad it was fast.

My soul was on its way to Purgatory.  Would I be there in a second, a minute, hours, who knows?  Time was smearing. I am not supposed to believe in Purgatory; I am a Presbyterian. But belief makes no difference here.  We think we know who God is when he is far away, like a star light years away is just a shining circle in the sky.  Here you know there is someone in charge.  Someone powerful and real.  Someone close, but mysterious too. The corpse bleeding out at the Camp Adder west gate is starting to seem like someone I used to know.

I can’t say any more now.  The OPSEC rules are tight in eternity.  But I can see the place I died.  The gunner on our MRAP armored truck is swinging the turret looking for something, someone to light up.  The rest of the squad is down at the gate or behind the berm looking for the Hadji motherfucker who killed me. 

I can’t tell anybody, but the little bastard is 200 meters out buried in the dune.  He knew this would be a suicide mission.  His Momma in Nasariyah is getting $2000 for this. Now he is out there with his gun under belly, stone still having seventy-second thoughts about getting his virgins. 

The Apaches are up.  If the little fuck can stay still he might last till morning.  Sergeant Blewell is on the radio.  Major Tedesco is in the lead Apache.  Blewell is cold furious about me being dead.  Not like I am a teacher’s pet or anything but she trained us and she was waiting for us at the gate. Now this little fuck dropped one of her boys and there ain’t no way she will sit still for that.

The gunner on the MRAP sees something on the dune 200 meters southwest of the gate.  Tracers slam into the sand.  The Apaches swoop down from their scan toward the impact zone. 

Nothing.  Minutes pass.

Then fifty meters right of the MRAP gunners aiming point, Hadji loses his nerve and bolts.  Tedesco and the .50 cal gunner both see the kid jump.  Three steps later he is vaporized by 100 machine gun rounds, as many 30mm cannon shells from the lead Apache and the rounds from a half-dozen M4s. 

Sergeant Blewell emptied the magazine from her M4.  As soon as the Apaches pulled up Blewell started running toward the body—or the smear.  “There better not be a piece left of him bigger than an ant’s asshole,” she said as the nearest fire team looked at each other then ran after her. 

The three men grabbed her by the arms and the vest.  “You know you can’t go out there Sergeant Blewell,”  the team leader said.  “They’ll bust your ass to E-fuckin’-nothin’.”  She struggled, but she knew they were right.  And she was NOT going to get dragged back.  She turned and walked back to the gate in the last light of the dirty sunset.

I was gone.  I was being pulled up so high or far or something that I could not tell what was happening. 

Then I was on my face in the dirt.  I picked up my head and saw a brown face in front of me.  He was lying on his belly too.  By the look on his face he had no more idea where he was than I did.  I could swear I knew this guy, but he looked like an Arab GQ model.  How would I know a dude from an airbrushed magazine cover? 

Then I knew who he was.  He was the vaporized little fuck that killed me. 

And I knew at that moment that we whatever we were going through we were going to be partners.

Shit!!!

Going to heaven is supposed some kind of family reunion with rainbows and unicorns and shit. 

Fuck.  It means I have to love the little shitbag who shot me. I knew this eternity shit would have a catch.

He smiled weakly and reached toward me with a dark, open hand. 

We grabbed each other’s hands.  They were real hands.  We had bodies. 

A mountain loomed in front of us. I knew we had to go.  I think he did too.