On Sat, 19 May 2001, Gordon Fitch wrote:
> O'Brien is evidently embarrassed because he looks on the situation
> from the point of view of those who started the war (the American
> ruling class) but did not suffer much for it
Unless there are two Tim O'Briens around, I'm pretty sure you're wrong about this, Gordon. O'Brien fought in the war as an infantryman and has been writing novels and memoirs about it ever since. He experienced what it was like to be in a free fire zone and probably remembers it as vividly as anyone, since his memoir, written in 1969, just after he got back, was first published in 1992, and reissued last year. So he's gotten to relive it in more detail than most, and recently. And that memoir is almost obsessively from the grunt's eye point of view. His animus must come from elsewhere. Very likely from the fact that he was against the war before he entered it, and still is, and yet he took part. He seems to suffer from too much knowledge of war's first hand effects, not too little.
Michael
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com