The Way We Were

The Things They Carried. This book tells about the physical things they carried: girlfriends nylons around their neck; knives, letter, lots of stuff. That's at the beginning. As the author tells more about these very young men at war in Viet Nam, we learn that there is more. What they mostly carried was their histories, the culture that was evolving back home, their youth.

Tim O'Brien is my age. It was hard to realize this because he says many times "I am 43 years old and I am a writer." But this is an old book. He tells us how old he is and what he does for a living because he made it whole out of that war. At least, he is as whole as possible after he left some of the "things he carried" back in that insane war. He and his comrades were so achingly young. Do we send very young men to war because that is when they are the strongest and most fit? Or is it because they are too new to be able to resist? O'Brien writes about us, too, the ones who were at home and would never understand what was happening in those rice paddies.

If I found it hard to understand what my contemporaries were going through, what about the young people who are assigned this book to read now? They must be assigned this book, or why would Cliffs Notes publish a pamphlet about it? This is a very small book. The real one, not the yellow one. How hard could it be to read the stories of these men? How could you begin to sense O'Brien's deepening dispair as he repeats that he is 43 years old and a writer, as so many of his friends will never be?


On the lighter side, we have a serial killer loose in Scotland. Thank goodness we have Inspector Rebus to solve the crimes. Between beers. And disagreements with other law enforcement agencies. In the middle of a meeting of world leaders. Did I mention the beers? This is a good book of its type.

I'm also watching Season 5 of The Wire. I love that series. This, the last season, deals more with the Baltimore Sun. That is a Tribune owned newspaper, much like the Los Angeles Times. It highlights The Sun's editor at that time, John Carroll. He came to The Times after he left The Sun. Lovely man, but you can tell the reporter who left that newspaper to write for this series didn't care for him. It is painful to watch the horrible things that happen to the paper - downsizing and cutbacks, especially after experiencing much of the same at The Times. But The Wire is always great to watch. If you can stand a lot of violence and obscene language, you should watch this. The writing and acting is amazing, from the scene where they only use one word in many variations while investigating a crime scene to McNulty hearing an exact description of himself in a profile of a serial killer given by the FBI. This is a thing of beauty. If I were in the habit of buying DVD's , instead of Netflixing them, this is a set I would buy.