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This writer circles poignant issues but I don't feel like he has enough insight to shed any real illumination on them. I'm actually pretty alarmed that he seem

by pryce 8y ago

This writer circles poignant issues but I don't feel like he has enough insight to shed any real illumination on them. I'm actually pretty alarmed that he seems to think society no longer glamourises war and in almost the same breath describes how our cultural depictions are transmuted from showing outright psychopathy to evoking glamour (Wagner being played for the US invasion of Granada in 1983, 4 years after Apocalypse Now hit cinemas).

baruchthescribe 8y ago
He fought in Vietnam. He has more than enough insight by definition.
- pryce 8y ago
  Insight and personal experience are not synonyms: as an example, poor coders may possess a great deal of experience, but little insight. This author certainly has thought about this a great deal - I love how he intentionally weaves a kind of incoherence into his own writing while showing why attempting to 'telling it straight' could never communicate what it was like on the ground. I absolutely love Tim O'Brien's writing for this. But deciding 'he fought in Vietnam, therefore his analysis of what War means for Men In General are beyond critique' seems a warped view to have; is this any different from the kind of childish thought-terminating cliches that we see when people defer to the 'Founding Fathers'? the idea that the matter at hand is to be settled by nominating a Person Who Is Always Right? I think it would more more of an insult to him to declare his experiences immune from criticism than it would be to engage with them and try to figure out what does or doesn't stick. And for me the incoherence of claiming that the romantic notion of war died with Verdun and Passchendaele and then demonstrating that this is an outright lie with the Grenada story might even amount to a neat trick if it was done deftly. And deftly would mean not later glamourising it himself towards the end of the same article as the great and eternal Crucible of Manhood.

by pryce 8y ago

baruchthescribe 8y ago

He fought in Vietnam. He has more than enough insight by definition.

pryce 8y ago
Insight and personal experience are not synonyms: as an example, poor coders may possess a great deal of experience, but little insight. This author certainly has thought about this a great deal - I love how he intentionally weaves a kind of incoherence into his own writing while showing why attempting to 'telling it straight' could never communicate what it was like on the ground. I absolutely love Tim O'Brien's writing for this. But deciding 'he fought in Vietnam, therefore his analysis of what War means for Men In General are beyond critique' seems a warped view to have; is this any different from the kind of childish thought-terminating cliches that we see when people defer to the 'Founding Fathers'? the idea that the matter at hand is to be settled by nominating a Person Who Is Always Right? I think it would more more of an insult to him to declare his experiences immune from criticism than it would be to engage with them and try to figure out what does or doesn't stick. And for me the incoherence of claiming that the romantic notion of war died with Verdun and Passchendaele and then demonstrating that this is an outright lie with the Grenada story might even amount to a neat trick if it was done deftly. And deftly would mean not later glamourising it himself towards the end of the same article as the great and eternal Crucible of Manhood.