06 April 2018

AMERICA AND AMERICANS

AMERICA AND AMERICANS
By Andy Weddington
Friday, 06 April 2018




War is God's way of teaching Americans geography. Ambrose Bierce



The word is not the thing.

The map is not the territory.

The story is not the experience.  

The photograph is not the event.

Etcetera ...

But words and maps and stories and photographs - to talk about things, to represent territory, to tell stories, to preserve events - is the best man can do.

That is tragic.  

The past few weeks three books - about America and Americans - I've read. 

One a reread (for the umpteenth time).

And two for the first time. 

Each, differently, powerfully reminds of the privilege of living in America and staking claim to "American."

The core of each: hardship; courage; sacrifice; suffering; perseverance; triumph; and, of course, life and death. 

And still more.  

Despite the gripping storytelling - with emotional, gut-wrenching, descriptive words complemented with maps and photographs - each story is but the best the authors can do (falling well short of the experiences/events); try as they may and try as we may.  

So any representation of reality, though "truth," is comparatively poor. 

Such is our constraint. 

Read these books anyway!

First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung

Halsey's Typhoon by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin

With The Old Breed by E. B. Sledge (have read more times than I can recall)

To these haunting nonfiction stories, I wonder ...

Why so fortunate to be born American?

Why so fortunate to have not the horrid experiences of other Americans, and others who survived only by clinging to hope of becoming American? 

There are no words.

But the words in these books, and many like them, should be mandatory reading in America - starting in middle school.

For that, America could only be better. 

No comments: