If I Die in a Combat Zone, by Tim O'Brien

This 1975 memoir, companion to O’Brien’s masterful novel The Things They Carried, tells of a young man drafted, inducted, prepared to flee to Sweden but, in the end, going through combat training then shipping out to Vietnam. 

Most of the chapters are short and vivid, such as “Step Carefully” which describes types of land mines and other explosive devices used abundantly by both sides, and the types of injuries they tend to inflict. He writes about what an anti-war thinker and philosopher sees and does, and learns about himself and our species, in situations of kill and be killed: “We walked to other villages, and the phantom Forty-Eighth Viet Cong Battalion walked with us. When a booby-trapped artillery round blew two popular soldiers into a hedgerow, men put their fists into the faces of the nearest Vietnamese, two frightened women living in the guilty hamlet, and when the troops were through with them, they hacked off chunks of thick black hair. The men were crying, doing this. An officer used his pistol, hammering it against a prisoner’s skull. 

     Scraps of our friends were dropped in plastic body bags. Jet fighters were called in. The hamlet was leveled, and napalm was used… But Chip and Tom were on the way to Graves Registration in Chu Lai, and they were dead, and it was hard to be filled with pity.” 

What army-grunt story would be complete without a demonstration of lethal stupidity? Alpha Company, in which O’Brien serves, has been stuck in a terrible place. “Tracks” (large army vehicles designed for transport through mud) have been ordered in for support, but crossing a rice paddy, they hit mines. The company’s new officer, blustering and ignorant, orders his men out of the Tracks. The paddy mud is knee-deep, the water thigh-deep. The grunts don’t realize, as they pile out and struggle to move, that the drivers’ strategy under bombardment is to back up. Behind the vehicles, the grunts in the Tracks’ path cannot get out of the way. 

O’Brien meets one courageous officer and a lot of noisy fools, and writes about courage as only a soldier trying to stay alive in a world determined to kill him, can. Morality is the first casualty in a combat zone, though hardly the last. To philosophize is a luxury, only available after survival has been assured. The constant risk of maiming and death leaves no space in which a warrior can act bravely: only reaction, fed by fear and panic, is possible.

To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf

1927. 2021. To the Lighthouse is as modern a novel as anything written now. Woolf gives us complete interiority of (some of) her characters, and as we watch them hesitate, yearn, bristle, struggle, we find each effort familiar, the ways our minds work too. The story takes place at a vacation house, an old manse growing shabby, on the Scottish coast, outside a small town. The Ramsays, Mr. and Mrs., their eight children, and their boarders – scholars, dreamers – spend their summers interacting and avoiding, gathered to dine at one long table but daily scattered.

Through Mrs. Ramsay we see a household run with conscious artistry, anchoring a social world in which every person is suitably paired-off, married and content. Through Mr. Ramsay we see scholarship honored, matters dealt with well, precisely, with thrift and consideration and inevitable though unrecognized success. Through Lily Briscoe, a painter, we see the tension between vision and execution, the moment of recognition followed by years of not bringing it to life. Through William Bankes, the older solicitor whom Mrs. Ramsay hopes to pair with Lily, we see a comfort in taking one’s time, in order, in details. Through Charles Tansley, one of the young scholars, we see the difficulty of relating with ordinary people, coupled with surges of admiration for Mrs. Ramsay. Through the Ramsay children we see expressions of pure freedom and joy, tamped down by their father’s rigid matter-of-factness that yields to enthusiasm only on his own behalf, never theirs. 

Woolf’s sentences are perfect expressions of how interiority is manifested in words: “But now – [William Bankes] turned, with his glasses raised to the scientific examination of [Lily Briscoe’s] canvas. The question being one of the relations of masses, of lights and shadows, which, to be honest, he had never considered before, he would like to have it explained – what then did she wish to make of it? And he indicated the scene before them. She looked. She could not show him what she wished to make of it, could not see it even herself, without a brush in her hand. She took up once more her old painting position with the dim eyes and the absent-minded manner, subduing all her impressions as a woman to something much more general; becoming once more under the power of that vision which she had seen clearly once and must now grope for among hedges and houses and mothers and children – her picture.” 

Woolf is experiencing a comeback these days, and rightly so: her ability to parse into words the restless movement of the human mind, helps us to dive beneath the surfaces that surround us, to quest for satisfaction, creative expression, understanding. Beyond what we see lies what it might mean, the myriad possibilities of that search and conclusion. If you read Woolf in high school, as I did, you’d benefit from revisiting her insights in the light of life experience.

The Perfect Stranger, by Gregory SETH Harris

This satiric novel by Denver author and poet Gregory SETH Harris, set in a world similar to ours yet degraded in ways the story plays with throughout, offers the observations of a visitor, that Perfect Stranger of the title, “S,” who stumbles upon the micropolis. This place seldom has visitors, and residents’ instinct is to regard any with suspicion. And yet, he is offered a garret room in the mansion of one of the town’s important people, banker Charles Dinero (“CD”) Smolet. Living in that household, S gets to know CD’s wife, Eleanore (“Mrs. Sticky Buns”); daughter Penny, about to turn 17 and thus be eligible for auction for marriage; son William (“Buck”), a high school student at Gladiator U; and spirited child Pearl, whose shadow plays games with S’s. Though S is the primary character, Pearl is the beating heart of the book, intuitive and mischievous. 

The micropolis is divided along class lines according to wealth, corpulence, and race, with ever-new books of codified rules designed to keep it that way. It is the season of the S-election, in which candidates for the ruling council are campaigning. And so we have intrigue: a group of young anarchists planning to disrupt the process; the populist candidate whose chameleonlike appearance and speeches change to fit his audience; and the sudden ambiguity of Buck, who seems set to win the top position by reason of his wealth and his primacy at the Turkey Shoot – of which I’ll say no more here. 

The town Libarian, Neimann Gorge, an erudite misfit who lives with his Auntie McAsser and her nasty little dog, teaches history to the group of anarchists, meanwhile hoping to woo the dazzlingly beautiful Assistant Libarian, Mz Pritt. Here’s a sample of the prose: 

“Saska Swamin,” Neimann began. “Slender as she is, is a tasty morsel.” He pressed her slim spine [an anorexic volume of natural lambskin] to his thin lips, looking inward a moment before proceeding. … “Hombres d’ Garbiage reinforce our mistaken assumption that we are less than we truly are. Some even exalt in their baser nature, convincing others to do the same. Thus we hire ourselves out to stress factories, servants to their (& ultimately our own), less-than-perfect nature. In the evening, we return home to lead lives of quiet defecation. Only the enlightened, the occasional brave, the uncommonly foolish – or the lucky – break thru the chains of the status woe to move ever closer to that wisdom etched in every atom of our beings.” 

Harris holds up a distorted mirror to our times and society, and the warped version of our world we see there should give us pause: that micropolis and its residents are more like us than we might like to admit. And yet, he does it with abundant wit and humor. These strange times call for a reckoning, indeed a reconnoitering, and The Perfect Stranger is a great place to start.

One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

This magnificent epic novel, a classic upon publication in 1967, in English in 1970 in a masterful translation by Gregory Rabassa, still sweeps readers away to Macondo, a village in the South American jungle, founded by the larger-than-life Buendia family, and ending with them a century later. Seven generations of Buendias struggle with plagues, pestilence, and natural disasters, but their bigger problems stem from their incestuous yearnings, wars, and the encroachments of the world. 

Among the book’s themes is memory, and its antithesis, forgetting. A plague of insomnia descends on Macondo, one of its effects being erosion of memory. To combat this, one Buendia decides to label each item. However, “Little by little, studying the infinite possibilities of a loss of memory, he realized that the day might come when things would be recognized by their inscriptions but that no one would remember their use.” 

Colonel Aureliano Buendia, who fought 32 wars and lost them all, eventually retreats from the world to the household workshop. The horrors of war fill his memory; the concentration required to craft tiny gold fishes is his only refuge. He is honored with a Jubilee, with a street named after him, but over generations he fades to legend, then is forgotten entirely. 

Even history experiences forgetting, a devastating form of solitude. For example, a bastard of a younger generation visits the town’s ancient priest to ask about his parentage: “Seeing him lost in the labyrinths of kinship, trembling with uncertainty, the arthritic priest, who was watching him from his hammock, asked him compassionately what his name was. 

“Aureliano Buendia,” he said. 

“Then don’t wear yourself out searching,” the priest exclaimed with final conviction. “Many years ago there used to be a street here with that name and in those days people had the custom of naming their children after streets.” 

This is upside-down, of course: streets are named after people. But it’s also one image in the tapestry of forgetfulness that ultimately seals the town’s fate. Terrible events are erased as though they never occurred, leaving the one who does remember in a state of solitary torment. 

Conversely, memory confers power. The matriarch, Ursula, eventually goes blind, but tells no one, and none suspect because she is so observant and her memory so spotless that she can not only navigate the house as well as anyone with sight, but even locate lost items: “So when she heard Fernanda all upset because she had lost her ring, Ursula remembered that the only thing different that she had done that day was to put the mattresses out in the sun because Meme had found a bedbug the night before. Since the children had been present at the fumigation, Ursula figured that Fernanda had put the ring in the only place where they could not reach it: the shelf. Fernanda, on the other hand, looked for it in vain along the paths of her everyday itinerary without knowing that the search for lost things is hindered by routine habits and that is why it is so difficult to find them.” 

This book is its own paean to memory – you can read it, then read it again, and again, and each time some new detail lodges in your mind. Populated with remarkable characters and told in both exquisite detail and narrative grandeur, One Hundred Years of Solitude will haunt you.

Know My Name, a memoir by Chanel Miller

This riveting account is written by the young woman who was raped by a champion swimmer at Stanford in January, 2015. She leads us step by step through her own awakening to what happened to her, how deeply into her psyche the violation sank, how even now nightmares return, how both the legal system and Stanford University chewed her up and spat her out, making it her task to right herself, to become a recentered and functioning person again.

During the trial of her assailant, she was the one under the microscope. She was isolated, blamed, her actions questioned minutely, every bite and sip taken into account, while his behavior was glossed with “young people, frat party, could be an Olympic swimmer” as though the assault was to be expected and by filing charges she is ruining his life. “One of the greatest dangers of victimhood is the singling out; all of your attributes and anecdotes assigned blame. In court they’ll try to make you believe you are unlike the others, you are different, an exception. You are dirtier, more stupid, more promiscuous. But it’s a trick. The assault is never personal, the blaming is.” 

Every effort to put herself back together is pushing against a tide of anguish, self-loathing, a sense of worthlessness. “My mind is one step behind where it used to be. I call it the lag. Before I was living in real time. Now I evaluate the moment before I can move into it. I am always asking permission, anticipating having to present myself to an invisible jury, answering questions before a defense. When I reach for a piece of clothing, the first thing I think is, “What will they think if I wear this?” When I go anywhere I think, “Will I be able to explain why I am going?” If I post a photo I think, “If this were submitted as evidence, would I look too silly, my shoulders too bare?” The time I spend questioning what I’m doing, turning things over and talking myself back to normalcy, has become the toll.”

Chanel Miller, like her mother, has a future as a writer – her ability to make real for the reader her treacherous path, is phenomenal. And yes, she gives us the whole person she was before this assault, and the person she reconstructs from the shattering. Stanford University built a small garden area where she had been assaulted behind a dumpster, but would not use the quote she chose for a commemorative plaque. “Keep things positive,” they insisted, as though sexual assault has some soothing context. Then she suggests a more appropriate memorial to victims of sexual assault: “a piece called Construction; each victim is given a nail for every day she has lived with what happened to her. There’s a haphazard pile of wood in the center of campus. Victims can come as they please, hammering nails into the wood. All day people hear the banging, all the drilling and incessant interruption. This is a lot of what surviving is like, trying to carry on and get work done, while your past pounds into you, distracts you, makes it impossible. At the end there’d be an immense wooden structure, randomly nailed together, large, useless, pointy, and dangerous in the middle of everything, people forced to walk around it interrupting the pretty view of the trees. This is also what assault feels like, what to do with this, where to put it, what is it.”

If you have ever wondered why sexual assault victims take years, even decades, to come forward, this book makes all too clear the cost of speaking up in a system stacked in favor of patriarchy: “boys will be boys, what did she expect, if you dress like that you’re waving a red flag in front of a bull, etc etc.” And yet, she is not vengeful: she wants him to admit assaulting her, admit it was wrong, and apologize. She recognizes the futility of hatred and contempt: “Do not become the ones who hurt you. Stay tender with your power. Never fight to injure, fight to uplift. Fight because you know that in this life, you deserve safety, joy, and freedom.”

Weather, by Jenny Offill

This slim novel, told in fragments, covers a lot of emotional and cultural territory. Our narrator, Lizzie, is a librarian at a university – not one of the credentialed people, just a flunky. She has a husband with a PhD in classics who writes code for educational video games from the couch, a six-year-old son, and a mentally ill brother who struggles, as she does, with addiction. And to supplement her meager income, she moonlights as assistant to a woman who tours lecturing about climate change. 

Sound grim? It actually has many laugh-out-loud moments. And Offill’s wry observations are both deadpan and deadly accurate – we can only nod in admiration as she pulls it off: “I remind myself (as I often do) never to become so addicted to drugs or alcohol that I’m not allowed to use them.” – that is, to avoid her brother’s fate. Unlike the relief Lizzie can feel getting toasted in a bar, he is immediately headed down the rabbit-hole with any drug. 

She talks about “the hum in the air” about climate change: “It was the same after 9/11, there was that hum in the air. Everyone walking around talking about the same thing. In stores, in restaurants, on the subway. My friend met me at a diner for coffee. His family fled Iran one week before the Shah fell. He didn’t want to talk about the hum. I pressed him though. Your people have finally fallen into history, he said. The rest of us are already here.” 

She has an emotionally-charged affair with a man she encounters on the bus. They spend a lot of time together, but she is married and he is a journalist, a foreign correspondent, taking some mental R&R before his next assignment. So no sex, but their interactions are the deepest intimacy in the book. 

With all the gaps in its narrative, I fell through sometimes. I’m not sure what precisely is grieving her at the end. But the reading to get there is fine – well-placed words, apt observations, a kind person trying to stay afloat in a hurricane. “And then it is another day and another and another, but I will not go on about this because no doubt you too have experienced time.” 

You really should read this.

Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country, by Pam Houston

This memoir was a timely read for me, given that a significant section describes the 2015 fire season in Colorado, during which her ranch was surrounded and narrowly escaped destruction. I was reading about this during our 2020 fire season, in which the largest, Pine Gulch Fire, threatens to overtake the 2002 Hayman Fire as Colorado's largest in history (for now!). I haven't seen the mountains ordinarily visible from the nearby park, for weeks, due to smoke from multiple wildfires, in Colorado and California.

She talks about the courage of firefighters, of friends who help evacuate her horses and burros to a safe location, about watching a wall of flame descend toward her buildings, including the 100-year-old hand-built barn, stopped ultimately by the moisture content in the aspen grove behind her house. And she gives some thought to how climate change and the drying of the western US exacerbates these fires, making them not only larger but more catastrophic, burning even the soil, turning the earth into a barren landscape. 

Starting life as the child of narcissistic alcoholics, she takes refuge in the woman hired to look after her, and flees home as a teenager. With a lot to work out of her system she finds high-risk occupations in the wild: Dall sheep hunting guide in Alaska, whitewater raft guide, had her arm broken into tiny fragments by a rearing thoroughbred's hoof... And becomes a successful author, able to make payments on her property by teaching writing at various universities, participating in conferences, and so on, which require her to spend significant stretches away from the ranch.

Nature and animals have been her refuge from trauma, and on one of the journeys she is gifted due to her writing, she observes: "We may have more complicated language, opposable thumbs, and this dangerous thing called reason, but any self-respecting llama or buffalo or spider knows enough not to destroy its own home." 

She is unafraid to call out the insanities of our culture: "It is the Wilderness Ranch Subdivision which remains evacuated (NFS Inci-Web). I pause over the words "Wilderness Ranch Subdivision." What in the f***, I wonder, what in the f*** is wrong with us anyway." Fair question. 

As the Trump administration busily removes all restraints on the most rapacious urges of corporations, which as Bill McKibben has pointed out have only a single purpose, to make money for their investors, and therefore cannot recognize consequences beyond that purpose, we are accelerating the catastrophic damage to our only home. This administration has weakened protections on air, water, forests, public lands - PUBLIC, not "his" - and the creatures who depend on them. He has rolled back regulations on methane capture - methane being among the most potent greenhouse gases accelerating our race toward an uninhabitable planet. There's no polluter, no matter how egregious, he does not support. There is no non-human creature who counts for anything. Endangered species? A wave of extinctions is arriving. The web of life itself? Of no concern to this administration. 

VOTE FOR THE EARTH - tell Trump it's time to go.