Dawson's War (v)

from novelist B.K. Marshall and the Studies and Observations Group

It's a novel. What's new? You keep turning to the next page. I lie back on a couch, head supported, natural light on the page, a waking dream

this time for 8 chapters, on my third time through the book. After the second read I repeated here at length in words only what the cover says in words and pictures.

Then I expounded here on lines from the first and then on a page from the second chapter. This time I will just remember the dream, as from the couch, speaking to myself in the chair.

Funny story: first psychiatrist I consulted had a bad back so he lay on the couch and I sat on the chair, face melting off as I had not eaten or slept in weeks. You're not crazy,

he said. You are not even that ill. Then he got excited and told me about all the really crazy and profoundly ill men, his patients, who ran our native city.

If they were poor he would have them put away. He in fact did that for poor people. There is such a thing as crazy, and as mental illness, two distinct things.

He sent me away saying just ask yourself sometime, what's in it for me? You don't have to do it. You do have to ask yourself that.

What's in this novel for me? Well, I say from the couch, I enjoy the author's company. He radiates good nature. Good nature, I reply from my study chair,

showing that I have heard and am willing to hear more, or to sit quietly in good nature. The man who developed this technique, Carl Rogers,

came to think after counseling war veterans in the 1940s that we all seek happiness and health on our own terms given encouragement. Good nature?

Yes, I say, rising from the couch to my standing desk. The man is fucking cheerful. It's a Christian obligation, by the way, regarded as a sign of grace,

or of good works, depending on your congregation. Be of good cheer. This novel is a bildung, the tale of the development of self

in joining a community. A beloved community, on a hill in fact, on several hills, composed indeed of men who give their lives for each other in a matter of fact way

when it comes to that. Heroes of each other's life. Something we all long for so much that we will dream of the bloody, filthy, sleepless days and nights far ago and long away fighting battles

without outcome in a war where no one at the rank of sergeant or below, as our man puts it, saw a chance of victory. I like the book because we are listening to a robust idealist,

Pachelbel's canon in D in a convincing arrangement, cello, both deep and light. You could miss that because the novel is in soldier talk, the irony of the working class of infantry sergeants

and the office humor of middle-management captains, with comic appearances by the asshole major and the mad colonel, and grins from the sidemen, the rural clowns, the Cambodian strikers.

But these 8 chapters I just dreamed concern a young man joining society, told by one sunny old author. I want, I told the guys on the couch and in my chair, us to grow up like him.

This was the fifth Viet Nam letter of 8 so far addressed to Dawson’s War by B.K. Marshall. The first posted on February 12, 2022, the second on February 26, 2022, the third on March 16, 2022, the fourth on April 13, 2022, then the the sixth on June 18, 2022, the seventh on February 25, 2023, and the eighth on June 28, 2023.

Other posts from the United States Special Forces include 3 on their Vietnamese Phrase Book. We have posted 4 on the work of Loyd Little and 3 on Nick Brokhausen and 2 on Alan Farrell and 1 on William P. Yarborough.

Viet Nam letters respects the property of others under paragraph 107 of United States Code Title 17. If we asked for permission it wouldn’t be criticism. We explain our fair use at length in the letter of September 12, 2022.

The colophon of these Viet Nam letters, directly above, shows the janitor speaking with poet David A. Willson on a Veterans Day.