'Soldiers are dreamers'

And not to bore with you passages from other books, but I also found this passage at the beginning of O'Brien's war memoir very moving.

Now, war ended, all I am left with are simple, unprofound scraps of truth. Men die. Fear hurts and humiliates. It is hard to be brave. It is hard to know what bravery is. Dead human beings are heavy and awkward to carry, things smell different in Vietnam, soldiers are dreamers, drill sergeants are boors, some men thought the war was proper and others didn't and most didn't care. Is that the stuff for a morality lesson, even for a theme?

Do dreams offer lessons? Do nightmares have themes, do we awaken and analyze them and live our lives and advise others as a result? Can the foot soldier teach anything important about war, merely for having been there? I think not. He can tell war stories.

The first paragraph as a summary of the war experience is just amazing ("most didn't care"). But the question in the second, "Do dreams offer lessons?", seems to foreshadow the format of "Cacciato," how it's one big daydream in a way. So, do you have any thoughts on how Paul Berlin's dream offers a lesson?

Courage

I really loved this passage from "If I die in a Combat Zone." It's about how true courage can't exist without other qualities. I think it informs some of the scenes in "Cacciato," scenes where apparent cowardice might more properly be interpreted as courage.

For courage, according to Plato, is one of the four parts of virtue. It is there with temperance, justice and wisdom, and all parts are necessary to make a sublime human being. In fact, Plato says, men without courage are men without temperance, justice or wisdom, just as without wisdom men are not truly courageous. Men must know what they do is courageous, they must know it is right, and that kind of knowledge is wisdom and nothing else. Which is why I know few brave men. Either they are stupid and do not know what is right. Or they know what is right and cannot bring themselves to do it. Or they know what is right and do it, but do not feel and understand the fear that must be overcome.

The girl

Any thoughts on Sarkin Aung Wan and her determination to play house in Paris with Paul Berlin?

Best and worst

What was your favorite aspect of the book? And least favorite?

My favorite: I loved the notion of traveling overland from Vietnam to Paris and the descriptions of the places they saw: Mandalay, India, Tehran, Greece, etc. And I admired the depiction of the war-without-a-front as a psychological battle that occurred in each man's head. I also found the events leading up to Lt. Martin's murder eerie and awe-inspiring.

My least favorite: Maybe this is a comment on my own comprehension rather than the author's skill, but I found many of the characters hard to picture and hard to distinguish one from the other. Even Paul Berlin. I didn't feel I had a great grasp on who he actually was. (I did like the portraits of the two lieutenants: the strict, by the book Lt. Martin and the more realistic, more humane Lt. Corson, who fell in love in India and wanted to stay).

Vietnam

One of the things I really like about Tim O'Brien's books about Vietnam is how they give you a visceral sense of being there — feeling what the physical landscape is like, the terrible heat, the dampness, the insects, the rice paddies, the mountains and villages and land-mined trails; and the psychological landscape, the constant fear and exhaustion and homesickness.

Do you think he did a good job with this? (I actually have a stronger sense of these things in his other books, but I'm curious what you think having just read "Cacciato").

What did you think?

I found this book challenging at first because the characters seemed kind of a blur to me and trying to sort out what was real and what was imagined was rather tiring. But I enjoyed the book more as it went on, maybe because at some point I was able to conclude that it's ALL fiction or, conversely, that it's ALL truth, and I was more comfortable just being carried along by the narrative.

Kim's pick

For early November?

WTF?

What was the deal with Madam and Miss Emily, shacking up together in that weird house with some big Nigerian servant dude and who knows who else? I feel like there's some code to understanding and appreciating this book that has completely eluded me.

If I were some British writer wanting to explore how the government has taken charge of an individual's body to make it conform to its plan, I'd write about this amazing man.

Emotion

The narration of "Never Let Me Go" seemed almost void of emotion, even when describing the deaths of close friends and her own impending death. Did that lessen the emotional weight for you as a reader?

Ruth

Why do you think Kathy was friends with Ruth?

Science fiction

I've seen this book compared to "1984" and "Brave New World." Do you think the book is successful in its portrayal of a dystopia that clones individuals to be organ factories? Does it seem horrifying, or does it seem too unlikely to be taken seriously?

"Never Let Me Go"

Did you like it? Any general impressions? Do you think it deserves to be on TIME's list of top 100 novels?

Erin's pick

"Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro

Related reading

Just read an interesting post on Salon ("History is bunk after all") about Margaret MacMillan's "Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History," which is quite relevant to our discussions on Horwitz. An excerpt:

"Dangerous Games" calls for "professional historians" (by which I think MacMillan means "academics") to "contest the one-sided, even false, histories that are out there in the public domain. If we do not, we allow our leaders and opinion makers to use history to bolster false claims and justify bad and foolish policies." In recent years, she complains, academic historians have become either unduly "self-referential" or preoccupied with "fun" but ultimately insignificant fluff like culture studies.

The whole post is here.

Your past

One of the things that really fascinates me is how people differ so much in their relationship to their past. Some people are completely uninterested in their ancestors and whatnot. But others — and not just disenfranchised minorities — are really drawn to what they consider their ethnic/racial/cultural/religious roots. And it ranges from simple historical curiosity to stringent identity politics to obsessive, off-the-wall kookiness. Horwitz encounters all types in his book, which underlines his point that history "lives" in both expected and unexpected ways.

Where do you think you fall on that spectrum of interest in your deep past?

Also, people's pride in their ancestry takes different forms. For some, it's about dignity and careful preservation and respect. But others seem to prefer showing their pride through festivals and marketing to tourists, etc. It's almost like a kind of cynical commercialism is always pawing at the door of authenticity.

Why are we so stubbornly stupid?

Did you think there was sufficient explanation in the book for WHY people are so tenaciously attached to false history? Or did Horwitz just treat it as a given that people cling to their myths — religious, historic and otherwise — even when they are demonstrated absurdities? Like it's just human nature to hold on to the first thing you were told?

I sometimes wished he would explore this phenomenon more. He touches on it when he makes comments to the effect that history is written by the winners, which in this case was white, Anglo Protestants, but I sometimes wished he would talk to a psychologist (vs. a local historian, say) to delve into this weird mental hurdle people have with perpetuating bad history.

Good and bad history

Were there incidents of "fake history" that especially stood out as something you remember learning as a kid? And did any aspects of the real history surprise you?

Horwitz's method

Did you enjoy the book?

What did you think of Horwitz's method of interspersing historic accounts with present-day treks to the sites?

Tales of the Black Freighter

What do you think is the purpose of the pirate comic that is interspersed throughout the story? How does it relate to the main narrative?

And in a related question, did you like all the extra materials between each chapter? Or did it get in the way?

God

I read a piece of a review of "Watchmen" that argued that the theme of the book was what it means to be God.

There's a quote in the book from some military guy or something after Jon's accident that says, "There is a God, and he's American." And Jon does have some godlike powers, including the ability to see and travel through time and space, survive on Mars, give Laurie some kind of force field, get disintegrated and still survive, etc.

And then we have Veidt, who is certainly playing God in his attempt to manipulate world politics by sacrificing millions of lives.

Thoughts?