counting at war (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kerpingtack) wrote2007-10-14 01:07 pm
kerpingtack) wrote2007-10-14 01:07 pm
oh the dumb, how i have it
Re-read "How to Tell a True War Story" from Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried today. This book still makes me feel enormously conflicted. Just putting this entry as a placeholder for when I can gather my thoughts better. I got BBQ sauce on the book btw.
- - -
To calm myself down after being annoyed by mon roomie (after listening to some Nina Simone, which also soothed my spirit) I'm going to bash through my issues with this book.
"How to Tell a True War Story" fucked with my head A LOT. I remember reading it two summers ago and feeling FUCKED WITH. I think I can only write about it if I literally respond pace by pace to the lines of the story.
"If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story, you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil." It's so hard to read accounts of war and not think that it was one hundred percent horrible, that it is and completely is evil. Later when he talks about how war brings you closer to life, how war is beautiful in its own way, when people talk about bonds between soldiers and closeness - it's hard for me to reconcile those things with how bad war is supposed to be. Maybe that's just binary thinking, an unrefined desire to take information to extremes, to keep concepts in strictly delineated boxes. War as utterly contradictory? EVERYTHING IS SO CONFUSING IN THIS BOOK, I AM SO DUMB.
I think part of the problem is this equation with war with truth, and the association of truth as good. If war is so close to human truth, and people in war have then come so close to this human truth -- which I think is what O'Brien argues, with all his "you don't understand"ness -- and war changes you, changes you in an irreversible way -- for better or worse? People are not meant to know that truth, how far people can go?
The Rat Kiley letter thing: an unmanageable pain that manifests in this small ugly way, the small ugly pettiness of swear words when you're really trying to mean it. I always cringe when I read that section though. There's too much history of it, of women denigrated with those words and all other words like it. There's too much power behind it, and then for it to be excused with "because it's so incredibly sad and true: she never wrote back." What about her story, her pain, her brother dead half a world away and a letter written by someone she doesn't know describing her brother as someone she doesn't know, couldn't know, because the war had changed him and she can't understand. But is me asking that going to detract from the point he's making? It's not about our story, the civilians, whose pain is out of negative space and the lack of experience. It's about the ones who were there right? Is it right of me to demand a balanced view? He has a right to say "this is going to about my perspective, that's it". And maybe he's not blaming the sister for not writing back; maybe the "incredibly sad and true" is about the abstract pain of putting your soul and sending it away and waiting and never getting anything back, of silence when someone nineteen yrs old and so so out of his depth can't get even grasp this. And even though it sounds obnoxious, what Rat says, "Jesus Christ, man, I write this beautiful fuckin' letter, I slave over it, and what happens?", maybe you transcend the words and access that abstract pain. Because in war, words become meaningless? Does that mean different standards have to be used in evaluating people in war? Then what does that say about their stories?? OMG SO CONFUSED.
edit @ 6/22/08/
Just noticed this part: "Send guys to war, they come home talking dirty." What does that mean? If you send guys to war, they come back talking dirty, because they no longer can try to soften what they say, they can no longer format and paste their thoughts for polite society? Or they've fallen out of "polite society" and the ugliness of swear words is the way they can express themselves? WHAT THE FUCK, I HATE THIS BOOK, I WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND IT. URRGHHHH WORRRRGHHH.
/edit
Thing that fucked me up: the baby water buffalo story. I still don't really know what I make of it. I think I get it, and then at the end he calls the old woman dumb cooze in his head and calls that story a love story. AND I DON'T GET IT. OMG. WHAT THE FUCK.
This story was such a mindfuck, I swear. I don't think I'll ever get it. Maybe the point is that it jumbles you up? I SWEAR I WILL NEVER GET IT.
For a brief glorious window in senior year, I thought I understood what O'Brien was saying. LOLOLOL NOT ANYMORE!
Thoughts I wrote down from senior year:
In war it's hard to tell what's actually happening from what you think is happening. And that perception of reality supercedes reality. The confusion you feel about trying to find out the truth: THAT is the truth. ??????
But what about the rest of it? OMG. Seriously tell me what you thought about this.
- - -
To calm myself down after being annoyed by mon roomie (after listening to some Nina Simone, which also soothed my spirit) I'm going to bash through my issues with this book.
"How to Tell a True War Story" fucked with my head A LOT. I remember reading it two summers ago and feeling FUCKED WITH. I think I can only write about it if I literally respond pace by pace to the lines of the story.
A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story, you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil. Listen to Rat Kiley. Cooze, he says. He does not say bitch. He certainly does not say woman, or gilr. He says cooze. Then he spits and stares. He's nineteen years old -- it's too much for him -- so he looks at you with thos big sad gentle killer eyes and says cooze, because his friend is dead, and because it's so incredibly sad and true: she never wrote back.
You can tell a true war story if it embarrasses you. If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care for the truth; if you don't care for the truth, watch how you vote. Send guys to war, they come home talking dirty.
Listen to Rat: "Jesus Christ, man, I write this beautiful fuckin' letter, I slave over it, and what happens? The dumb cooze never writes back."
"It does not restrain men from doing the things men have always done." This isn't the point O'Brien was getting at, but god that is just another strike against humanity. How history repeats itself; how individual people don't change, so how can we possibly expect this world to be okay? The world is so going to end soon, you guys. I'm pretty convinced of this. Somewhere down the line the only thing we're going to be able to do is make peace with the fact that "oh well, at least I'm not going to be alive" and say a really, really final goodbye to everything we love, and be prepared to know that we've screwed our children over to the nthnthnth degree. You can tell a true war story if it embarrasses you. If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care for the truth; if you don't care for the truth, watch how you vote. Send guys to war, they come home talking dirty.
Listen to Rat: "Jesus Christ, man, I write this beautiful fuckin' letter, I slave over it, and what happens? The dumb cooze never writes back."
"If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story, you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil." It's so hard to read accounts of war and not think that it was one hundred percent horrible, that it is and completely is evil. Later when he talks about how war brings you closer to life, how war is beautiful in its own way, when people talk about bonds between soldiers and closeness - it's hard for me to reconcile those things with how bad war is supposed to be. Maybe that's just binary thinking, an unrefined desire to take information to extremes, to keep concepts in strictly delineated boxes. War as utterly contradictory? EVERYTHING IS SO CONFUSING IN THIS BOOK, I AM SO DUMB.
I think part of the problem is this equation with war with truth, and the association of truth as good. If war is so close to human truth, and people in war have then come so close to this human truth -- which I think is what O'Brien argues, with all his "you don't understand"ness -- and war changes you, changes you in an irreversible way -- for better or worse? People are not meant to know that truth, how far people can go?
The Rat Kiley letter thing: an unmanageable pain that manifests in this small ugly way, the small ugly pettiness of swear words when you're really trying to mean it. I always cringe when I read that section though. There's too much history of it, of women denigrated with those words and all other words like it. There's too much power behind it, and then for it to be excused with "because it's so incredibly sad and true: she never wrote back." What about her story, her pain, her brother dead half a world away and a letter written by someone she doesn't know describing her brother as someone she doesn't know, couldn't know, because the war had changed him and she can't understand. But is me asking that going to detract from the point he's making? It's not about our story, the civilians, whose pain is out of negative space and the lack of experience. It's about the ones who were there right? Is it right of me to demand a balanced view? He has a right to say "this is going to about my perspective, that's it". And maybe he's not blaming the sister for not writing back; maybe the "incredibly sad and true" is about the abstract pain of putting your soul and sending it away and waiting and never getting anything back, of silence when someone nineteen yrs old and so so out of his depth can't get even grasp this. And even though it sounds obnoxious, what Rat says, "Jesus Christ, man, I write this beautiful fuckin' letter, I slave over it, and what happens?", maybe you transcend the words and access that abstract pain. Because in war, words become meaningless? Does that mean different standards have to be used in evaluating people in war? Then what does that say about their stories?? OMG SO CONFUSED.
edit @ 6/22/08/
Just noticed this part: "Send guys to war, they come home talking dirty." What does that mean? If you send guys to war, they come back talking dirty, because they no longer can try to soften what they say, they can no longer format and paste their thoughts for polite society? Or they've fallen out of "polite society" and the ugliness of swear words is the way they can express themselves? WHAT THE FUCK, I HATE THIS BOOK, I WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND IT. URRGHHHH WORRRRGHHH.
/edit
Thing that fucked me up: the baby water buffalo story. I still don't really know what I make of it. I think I get it, and then at the end he calls the old woman dumb cooze in his head and calls that story a love story. AND I DON'T GET IT. OMG. WHAT THE FUCK.
This story was such a mindfuck, I swear. I don't think I'll ever get it. Maybe the point is that it jumbles you up? I SWEAR I WILL NEVER GET IT.
For a brief glorious window in senior year, I thought I understood what O'Brien was saying. LOLOLOL NOT ANYMORE!
Thoughts I wrote down from senior year:
sense out of the senseless:
- war is senseless
--> stories to try to make sense of it
BUT if the stories make sense it's a lie
because the true ones know what the war was like: senseless
in real life no morals
I DON'T TRUST THESE AT ALL. - war is senseless
--> stories to try to make sense of it
BUT if the stories make sense it's a lie
because the true ones know what the war was like: senseless
in real life no morals
In war it's hard to tell what's actually happening from what you think is happening. And that perception of reality supercedes reality. The confusion you feel about trying to find out the truth: THAT is the truth. ??????
But what about the rest of it? OMG. Seriously tell me what you thought about this.