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Vietnam: 'Bright Shining Lie'

10/28/2022

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A WRITER'S WIT
Anyone who has been to an English public school will always feel comparatively at home in prison. It is the people brought up in the gay intimacy of the slums . . . who find prison so soul destroying.
​Evelyn Waugh
Author of Brideshead Revisited
​Born October 28, 1903
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E. Waugh

My Book World

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​Sheehan, Neil. A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam. New York: Random, 1988.

One might wonder how the story of a single man might also tell the complete story of a war that that man participates in. Yet that is precisely what the late journalist and author Neil Sheehan does in his award-winning book, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam. John Paul Vann might be a larger-than-life character if indeed he were a larger-than-life person. He is not. And Sheehan takes great pains to explain to readers Vann’s poverty-stricken childhood, one in which Vann (his adopted name) is born out of wedlock and would rather take the name of his stepfather than the name of the father who brings shame upon him (although he does become acquainted with the man later). Vann begins his wannabee life by earning a good education. He is always about self-improvement as far as his career is concerned and seeks more degrees even while working full time. At a personal level, Van remains a mess for the remainder of his life. His early poverty, the rejection of him by his mother, always plays a role in his judgment.
 
John Paul Vann commits a crime he ultimately gets away with (he does no jail time) because his wife testifies on his behalf and because he teaches himself to beat the military’s polygraph machine—another blemish on his larger-than-life image. Yet the existence of this trial dogs him as he attempts to climb the military ladder of success via the back door (certainly not West point). Vann places career before his wife and children. He allows his voracious sexual appetite (as many as three acts of coitus a day in his forties) commands him to do whatever necessary to satisfy it: lie, cheat, manipulate. He all but divorces his wife (and children) to accommodate his promiscuity, keeping secret from each other the lives of his Vietnamese lover and (illegal) wife.
 
Yet all the while Vann possesses an honest and accurate perception of the Vietnam War beginning early on in the 1950s. He perceives that the U.S. military complex, since its recent victories with World War II, develops an arrogance that keeps its leadership from assessing the Vietnam War honestly. Army leaders refuse to learn anything about Vietnam: its centuries-long battles to fight off (successfully) foreign invaders. It refuses to realize that South Vietnam government is weak and corrupt and as such never fights the North with full force. It refuses to realize that the Vietnam people are one and that often the enemy looks like the ally and vice-versa.
 
The Battle of Ap Bac, in 1962, is one in which everything that can go wrong does go wrong—the American Army losing hundreds of lives in spite of its military “superiority.” The Viet Cong (North Vietnam Communists) capture abandoned U.S. equipment, expensive weaponry, and use them against the South supported by the U.S. military. Miliary leaders fail to realize Vietnam is one country, that it cannot be divided as North Korea was. The people pass back and forth over the imagined line of the 38th Parallel undetected. Vann ultimately believes that how Vietnam determines its future ought to be up to its people, a struggle that, even if it turns to Communism, is not the business of the United States. There is no such thing as the so-called Domino Theory. The lives and money being spent for nearly two decades are a wasted expense, to say the least.
 
And yet, Vann, up until the very last of his career, continues to believe that with his superior leadership, the war can be won—even after the Tet Offensive and other failures. In June 1972, unable to obtain the service of his usual helicopter pilot, Vann makes an ill-advised night flight in fog with an inexperienced twenty-six-year-old pilot and all occupants crash to their deaths, Vann believing until the end that he has won the war. It will not end, of course, for several more years, in 1975, when the U.S. finally admits defeat and vacates the decimated country. 

​Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Jessica Valenti
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Thomas Mallon

THURS: A Writer's Wit | Walker Evans
FRI: My Book World | Lone Star Short Stories: Two Books

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A Writer's Wit: Fran Lebowitz

10/27/2022

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I place a high moral value on the way people behave. I find it repellent to have a lot, and to behave with anything other than courtesy in the old sense of the word—politeness of the heart, a gentleness of the spirit.
​Fran Lebowitz
Author of ​Social Studies 
Born October 27, 1951
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A. Lebowitz
Coming Next:
FRI: My Book World |Neil Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Jessica Valenti
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Thomas Mallon

THURS: A Writer's Wit | Walker Evans
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A Writer's Wit: Pat Conroy

10/26/2022

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The one thing you have to avoid when you’re writing is being afraid, because everybody makes you afraid. The critics will make you afraid. Your professors will make you afraid. The writers who teach you will make you afraid. Your friends make you afraid. Your parents make you afraid. Society makes you afraid. Everybody has ways of putting you down as a writer.
​Pat Conroy
Author of The Great Santini
Born October 26, 1945
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P. Conroy
Coming Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Fran Lebowitz
FRI: My Book World | Neil Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam
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A Writer's Wit: Anne Tyler

10/25/2022

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If I waited till I felt like writing, I'd never write at all.
​Anne Tyler
Author of ​The Accidental Tourist
​Born October 25, 1941
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A. Tyler
Coming Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Pat Conroy

THURS: A Writer's Wit | Fran Lebowitz
FRI: My Book World | Neil Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam
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Ackerley's 'Hindoo Holiday'

10/21/2022

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A WRITER'S WIT
All reduction of people to objects, all imposition of labels and patterns to which they must conform, all segregation can lead only to destruction.
​Maureen Duffy
Author of ​The Microcosm
​Born October 21, 1933
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M. Duffy

My Book World

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Ackerley, Joe Randolph. Hindoo Holiday: An Indian Journal. With an introduction by Eliot Weinberger. New York: NYRB, 2000 (1932).

As a young man in his thirties, Ackerley visits India for a protracted amount of time. This book is essentially his diary of what takes place. As out as he can be for his time, Ackerley has no problem stating his admiration for a handsome man. He is not, however, a typical British tourist. He lives the life, hiring a young man to tutor him in the language. The man turns out to be more of a pest, always conniving to extract money or favors from Ackerley, like a pesky dog begging for scraps. But Ackerley learns enough to get by. He also learns the intricacies of the Hindu religion, finding, as with Christians, that some believers practice it with a certain flexibility or laxity. A still entertaining book these many decades later.

​Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Anne Tyler
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Gelek Rimpoche

THURS: A Writer's Wit | Fran Lebowitz
FRI: My Book World | Neil Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Van and America in Vietnam

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A Writer's Wit: John Dewey

10/20/2022

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We naturally associate democracy . . . with freedom of action, but freedom of action without freed capacity of thought behind it is only chaos. 
John Dewey
Author of 
The Quest for Certainty
Born October 20, 1859
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J. Dewey
Coming Next:
FRI: My Book World |J. R. Ackerley's ​Hindoo Holiday
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Anne Tyler
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Gelek Rimpoche

THURS: A Writer's Wit | Fran Lebowitz
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A Writer's Wit: Dan Flores

10/19/2022

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We stood by and allowed what happened to the Great Plains a century ago, the destruction of one of the ecological wonders of the world. In modern America, we need to see this with clear eyes, and soberly, so that we understand well that the flyover country of our own time derives much of its forgettability from being a slate wiped almost clean of its original figures.
​Dan Flores
Author of 
Horizontal Yellow: Nature and History in the Near Southwest
​Born October 19, 1948
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D. Flores
Coming Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | John Dewey
FRI: My Book World | J. R. Ackerley's ​Hindoo Holiday
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A Writer's Wit: Wendy Wasserstein

10/18/2022

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The real reason for comedy is to hide the pain.
​Wendy Wasserstein
Playwright, The Heidi Chronicles
​Born October 18, 1950
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W. Wasserstein
Coming Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Dan Flores

THURS: A Writer's Wit | John Dewey
FRI: My Book World | J. R. Ackerley's Hindoo 
Holiday
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'Demon Inside' Is Old Story

10/14/2022

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A WRITER'S WIT
In order to go on living one must try to escape the death involved in perfectionism.
​Hannah Arendt
Author of 
​Born October 14, 1906

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H. Arendt

My Book World

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Wedgwood, Barbara. The Demon Inside. New York: Simon, 1993.

A sad but true story. Made sadder by the fact that I attended graduate school with the two principals: Walker Railey and Margaret “Peggy” Nicolai Railey. My young wife (at the time) and I entertained them in our efficiency apartment on the campus of Southern Methodist University. I was both a seminarian where I met Walker, as well as a student of graduate music, where I studied with the same organ professor as Peggy who was enrolled in the master of music program. The couple were about to be married, effervescent and fun to be with. After I left seminary, withdrawing before I graduated, I never saw them again. I only heard of them when their story hit the national news. I had left the church and divorced my wife, leaving the seminary life far behind. They were figures I no longer seemed to know.
 
I was aware of this book when it came out, but I was not interested in reading it at the time. Somewhat like learning about the Clutter family in the news (I grew up in Kansas), I had grown tired of hearing about whether Walker Railey had strangled his wife of ten years or not. In that she didn’t die as a result of the attempt but remained an invalid for more than twenty-five years, dying at the age of sixty-three, she remained frozen in time for me: a pretty, intelligent and gifted musician. Witty and with a mind of her own.
 
I read Wedgwood’s book with a wary eye when I noted in her foreword that she was a Dallasite who had grown up in the city’s First Methodist Church located downtown. Even though she’d left the area to pursue a more global career and life, I wondered how objective she might be. She also knew or seemed to know of many of the principals in the story: other Methodist ministers and spouses, Methodist bishops, and the like. But for the most part, I was impressed with her fanaticism for detail, almost too much at times (offering much more than a thumbnail sketch of minor characters, for example). All the dialogue, she claims, is lifted from “sworn testimony, quotations from newspapers and magazines or the recollections of two observers of a scene or one of the participants in a dialogue” (xi). She allows for the mistaken or distorted memories of people when recalling even such a traumatic event as this one.
 
But one element is missing. Facts. Walker Railey consistently refused to speak with law enforcement, except briefly, all the while claiming he was innocent. And, of course, Peggy Railey could no longer speak for herself—nothing more than a drooling ghoul the strangler had created the night of the attack. One time, early in her time at the Dallas hospital, she “woke” momentarily from her coma, ostensibly upon hearing the voice of her husband standing at the foot of her bed, and seemed startled. The older child, Ryan, five, had suffered some injury, the attacker apparently pushing him away from the scene, but he was too young ever to positively identify the violent intruder. Those events may be as close as the public ever gets to knowing the truth. A strange and lurid case made markedly so because it takes place within the context of one of the country’s largest churches of one Protestantism’s most established denominations. As the title suggests, the demon remains within, within the realm of its own story, perhaps never to be set free.

​Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Wendy Wasserstein
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Dan Flores

THURS: A Writer's Wit | John Dewey
FRI: My Book World | J. R. Ackerley's Hindoo Holiday

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A Writer's Wit: Lenny Bruce

10/13/2022

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People should be taught what is, not what should be. All my humor is based on destruction and despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I’d be standing in the breadline.
​Lenny Bruce
Comedian, Social Critic
​Born October 13,1925
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L. Bruce
Coming Next:
FRI: My Book World | Barbara Wedgwood's The Demon Inside
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Wendy Wasserstein
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Dan Flores

THURS: A Writer's Wit | John Dewey
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A Writer's Wit: Richard Price

10/12/2022

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I think the definition of an artist is not necessarily tied into excellence or talent; an artist is somebody who, if you took away their freedom to make art, would lose their mind.
​Richard Price
Author of ​Clockers
​Born October 12, 1949
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R. Price
Coming Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Lenny Bruce
FRI: My Book World | Barbara Wedgwood's The Demon Inside
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A Writer's Wit: Eleanor Roosevelt

10/11/2022

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The marines that I have seen around the world have the cleanest bodies, the filthiest minds, the highest morale, and the lowest morals of any group of animals I have ever seen. Thank God for the United States Marines!
​Eleanor Roosevelt
Author of ​Tomorrow Is Now
​Born October 11, 1884
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E. Roosevelt
Coming Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Richard Price

THURS: A Writer's Wit | Lenny Bruce
FRI: My Book World | Barbara Wedgwood's The Demon Inside
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'The Dutch House" a Big Novel

10/7/2022

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A WRITER'S WIT
Today’s lynching is a felony charge. Today’s lynching is incarceration. Today’s lynch mobs are professionals. They have a badge; they have a law degree. A felony is a modern way of saying, “I’m going to hang you up and burn you.” Once you get that F,  you’re on fire.
​Michelle Alexander
Author of The New Jim Crow
Born October 7, 1967
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M. Alexander

My Book World

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Patchett, Ann. The Dutch House: A Novel. New York: HarperCollins, 2019.

If readers want to ascertain the entire plot of this novel, they can consult Wikipedia; it’s otherwise too complex and contains too many spoilers. Danny Conroy, who happens to have graduated high school and college the same years I did, narrates this engrossing but compressed epic about him and his sister, Maeve (in my head I keep seeing the beautiful Maeve character created by Emma Mackey in Netflix’s Sex Education). The brother and sister experience a sort of orphanhood when first their biological mother leaves them as young children—to serve as a missionary in India.

They experience it again when their father dies and their truly wicked stepmother banishes them from their home, the Dutch House of Elkins Park, Philadelphia—the home built in 1920 and probably serving as the central character of the book. Both times, the siblings must serve as parents to each other because they simply have no one else (except for three kind servants who have no legal authority). This intimacy is both helpful and harmful to them: Maeve never marries, and Danny’s wife always feels she’s competing for Danny’s attention. Danny’s role as narrator is similar to the role that Nick Carraway takes in The Great Gatsby, except that Danny’s account is more or less reliable, marred perhaps only by depending on his childhood memories which, in many cases, are distorted by the hurt of abandonment. In all, the novel is a satisfying read, worthy of its nomination for a Pulitzer. It is one of those you could sit up all night reading and fall asleep in the morning quite satisfied, book clutched to your chest.

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Eleanor Roosevelt
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Richard Price

THURS: A Writer's Wit | Lenny Bruce
FRI: My Book World | Barbara Wedgwood's The Demon Inside

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A Writer's Wit: Thor Heyerdahl

10/6/2022

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Any scientist can testify that a dead ocean means a dead planet . . . . No national law, no national precautions can save the planet. The ocean, more than any other part of our planet . . . is a classic example of the absolute need for international global action.
​Thor Heyerdahl
Author of The Kon-Tiki Expedition
​Born October 6, 1914
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T. Heyerdahl
Coming Next:
FRI: My Book World | Ann Patchett's The Dutch House
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Eleanor Roosevelt
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Richard Price

THURS: A Writer's Wit | Lenny Bruce
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A Writer's Wit: Peter Ackroyd

10/5/2022

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Rioting has always been a London tradition. It has been since the early Middle Ages. There's hardly a spate of years that goes by without violent rioting of one kind or another. They happen so frequently that they are almost part of London's texture.
​Peter Ackroyd
Author of ​Queer City
​Born October 5, 1949
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P. Ackroyd
Coming Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Thor Heyerdahl
FRI: My Book World | Ann Patchett's ​The Dutch House
0 Comments

A Writer's Wit: Heidi Hayes Jacobs

10/4/2022

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In America, we have 19th century school conditions and a curriculum that prepares our kids for the 1990s.
​Heidi Hayes Jacobs
Author of ​Bold Moves for Schools: How We Create Remarkable Learning Environments
​Born October 4, 1948
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H. H. Jacobs
Coming Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Peter Ackroyd 

THURS: A Writer's Wit | Thor Heyerdahl
FRI: My Book World | Ann Patchett's The Dutch House
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    Richard Jespers is a writer living in Lubbock, Texas, USA.

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