1968: The Year That Rocked the World

Near the end of this excellent history, Mark Kurlansky says:

"The year 1968 was a terrible year and yet one for which many people feel nostalgia.  Despite the thousands dead in Vietnam, the million starved in Biafra, the crushing of idealism in Poland and Czechoslovakia, the massacre in Mexico, the clubbings and brutalization of dissenters all over the world, the murder of the two Americans who most offered the world hope, to many it was a year of great possibilities and is missed. . . The thrilling thing about the year 1968 was that it was a time when significant segments of population all over the globe refused to be silent about the many things that were wrong with the world.  They could not be silenced.  There were too many of them, and if they were given no other opportunity, they would stand in the street and shout about them.  And this gave the world a sense of hope that it has rarely had, a sense that where there is wrong, there are always people who will expose it and try to change it."

I was only a junior in high school that year, a senior for the last of it, and was only vaguely aware of what was going on.  Not until I went to college in 1969 did I become involved in any sort of protest, first the mild demonstration that occurred on the Muhlenberg campus (I still have the "Peace" armband I wore then) and then some Washington marches.  There was definitely something in the air that I felt and absorbed.  By the end of my college years, much of the hope Kurlansky talks about was gone, especially after McGovern lost the election in '72n and the Vietnam War continued to drag into the 70's. 

It seems to me that people were less afraid in the 60's.  They spoke out.  They fought for their beliefs with their bodies, not just via e-mail or text or Facebook.  People have not given up - I applaud the Veterans for Peace who protested (130 of the protesters arrested) December 16th when they demonstrated against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and President Obama's decision to move our troop pullout from 2011 to 2014. 

What's so amazing is that, despite certain governments thinking it was all a conspiracy, the student revolutions happened at the same time, independently of each other.  I was aware of Paris and Czechoslovakia, but didn't know - or didn't remember -- the details, and don't remember hearing about Mexico and the other revolts that happened back then, in Italy, Spain, Germany. 

The government learned how to work the media for their own ends.  We don't see the coverage we should be seeing today; the war is a footnote.  How many of you knew there was a protest in December in Washington?  The numbers are manipulated, photos destroyed and data skewed (that went on in the 70's too) so that the wars can go on.  It happened then and happens today.  There will always be truth-tellers who can't be silenced, though (Joe Sacco, Michael Herr, Michael Moore).

I knew nothing about Alexander Dubcek, and plan to read more on him (HOPE DIES LAST: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALEXANDER DUBCEK).  He seemed to me a wise and compassionate man.  If you want to learn some sharp history with a slew of anecdotes, connections, and references to music, feminism, art, philosophy of the times, read this book.  It may not make you a revolutionary, but it will make you think about what matters, about what makes a nation great.  It will teach you much and if you already know all about it, will make you remember.

(You may be able to get a used copy at http://www.powells.com/ like I did.)

The Best Anti-War Book I've Ever Read

This is another older book that's been on  my "Books Wanted" list for a long time.  I finally purchased it at Powell's (if you still have Christmas shopping to do, Powell's has free shipping now, with guaranteed Christmas delivery at http://www.powell's.com/  -- I got the Vintage International 1991 edition for $7.95).

Hunter Thompson said "We have all spent ten years [now over 40!] trying to explain what happened to our heads and our lives in the decade we finally survived -- but Michael Herr's Dispatches puts all the rest of us in the shade."

This is one instance where the critics were right on.  It's a harrowing, heartbreaking, honest, enlightening book.  The theme of youth destroyed runs throughout:  "I realized later that, however childish I might remain [Herr was in his mid-20's when he was a Vietnam War correspondent] actual youth had been pressed out of me in just the three days that it took me to cross the sixty miles between Can Tho and Saigon."  He is meticulous about his word choice: "pressed out of me" is perfect, encompassing the weight of many things, among them the heat, death, constant danger.  Or what about this:

              ". . . it was never easy to guess the ages of Marines at Keh Sanh since nothing like youth ever         lasted in their faces for very long.  It was the eyes:  because they were always either strained or blazed-out or simply blank, they never had anything to do with what the rest of the face was doing, and it gave everyone the look of extreme fatigue or even a glancing madness.  (And age: If you take one of those platoon photographs from the Civil War and cover everything but the eyes, there is no difference between a man of fifty and a boy of thirteen.)"

What's changed?  War destroys youth, and the war we're involved in now is no different in that respect from Vietnam.  That destruction of youth, of innocence, of life itself - for what? - eats at Herr.  All becomes meaningless, a dream, a longing to escape hell.  "How many times did somebody have to run in front of a machine gun before it became an act of cowardice?"  Think about that.  Bravura has morphed into indifference, a desire for the ultimate escape.

This is the kind of book where each sentence is so striking I could have underlined entire chapters.  "Colleagues" is just what it says, what it felt like for Herr and his fellow reporters.  It is also an indictment of the military elite who worked in concert (a different type of collegialism) to lie to the American people - and the world - through their distortion of facts on the ground.  Herr and his friends saw the war firsthand and struggled against that hardened elite to reveal the extent and many levels of destruction.  Other "reporters" bought into the "cross-fertilization of ignorance", the "psychotic vaudeville" that disgusted Herr and his friends.

The second part of this chapter could be subtitled "War As Movie".  Herr begins by saying "I kept thinking about all the kids who got wiped out by seventeen years of war movies before coming to Vietnam to get wiped out for good."  Growing up on war movies made the war initially seem unreal - you were in your own movie -- and it quickly became a horror movie.  This chapter also contains the crux of the problems faced by the reporters, "what we knew together, that in back of every column of print you read about Vietnam there was a dripping, laughing death-face; it hid there in the newspapers and magazines and held to your television screens for hours after the set was turned off for the night, an after-image that simply wanted to tell you at last what somehow had not been told."

He talks about an older correspondent who blew off the numbers in Khe Sanh (200 dead, 1000 wounded) by saying, "Oh, two hundred isn't anything.  We lost more than that in an hour on Guadalcanal."  This so disturbs Herr and his friends that they leave the table, but they "heard that kind of talk all the time, as though it could invalidate the deaths at Keh Sanh, render them somehow less dead than the dead from Guadalcanal, as though light losses didn't lie as still as moderate losses or heavy losses.  And these were American dead they were talking about; you should have heard them when the dead were Vietnamese."  This passage reminded me of a poem I wrote years ago:

                                                           Significant Losses

(Madeline Albright stated that “significant losses”

were not expected in a war with Iraq)

What makes a loss “significant”?

What is the magic number that

crosses the border into “significance”?

One death reverberates.

One death is significant

to the mother,

the father, wife, children,

sisters, brothers,

grandmothers, grandfathers,

aunts, uncles, cousins,

not to mention to

the one killed.

And what of the innocents gone?

The many children maimed, dead?

Those who were in the line of fire,

losing their arms, legs, heads?

Are they significant?

Those who calculate loss

as significant

only when the numbers climb

until the death toll reaches

a particular thousand

and the screams and protests of

the survivors grow to a blood-red

river’s roar –

then, and only then, say

it’s time to stop,

to pull out.

After they’ve proven their guns

still work,

their bombs still kill,

that they’re still significantly

effective.

Your mother and my mother,

your sister and my sister

say

One death –

one –

is not slight.

One death is a

significant

loss.

The Cool Cat with More than 9 Lives

It's hard to imagine any Rolling Stones fan who won't want to read Keith Richards' Life, and anyone who's at all familiar with Richards from past articles won't be buying it for the gossip factor.
Mick Jagger claimed in Sunday's NY Times Style magazine, "Personally, I think it's really quite tedious raking over the past.  Mostly, people only do it for the money."  Notice that he says "most people" - Keith may or may not be included in that company.  It's hard to believe that would have been Richards' motivation, as he turns an exceedingly critical eye upon his own past behavior -- there would have been less painful ways to make money.  And his compliments regarding Mick far outweigh any gibes.  That's not why I bought the book -- and I don't think it's hit the bestseller list because of what Keith might have to say about Mick.  I wanted to hear him tell about how the band started, but especially to hear what he has to say about the songs.  And I got what I was looking for.

Sure, he tells long and harrowing stories about his past drug addiction(s).   Even then, though, what comes through is his concern about how his behavior affected the band and its music.  He's worried more about collateral damage than any harm to himself.  The guy does remember a lot, though, considering his state much of the time, for decades.  His descriptions of the lure and horrors of heroin abuse - and cocaine - seemed to me (a person who has dealt with this in her own family) to be unabashedly honest.  He completely captures the power of addictive desire and the ravages that desire can bring to a person's world and the people around him.  He has no compunction about showing things as they were, no matter how selfish or damaged he may appear.  As revealing  -- and often laugh-out-loud amusing -- as Keith's stories are, the extended quotes by other musicians and friends like Tom Waits are just as revelatory - Waits' being, unsurprisingly for such a literate musician, very good indeed.

What redeems Keith, and always has, is his talent and tremendous love for music and fellow musicians, which is apparent whenever you see him play.  His vulnerability and care for his true "mates" -- male and female -- also comes through, unforced and uncloying.  The man has a great heart, which is probably why so many remain(ed) so loyal to him through thick and thin.

I remember seeing the Chuck Berry film Keith talks about in his book, and thinking how patient he was dealing with Chuck's crazy demands and quirks.  That story's in here, along with many others on fellow musicians (Willie Nelson, John Lennon, Etta James).  For me, though, some of the best parts of the book are when he describes the genesis of a song.  Another reason for wanting Keith's story is you know the man fears no type of censure (the book only reinforces this). 

Re: songwriting, Keith repeatedly says,

                  "Good songs write themselves.You're just being led by the nose, or the ears.
                   The skill is not to interfere with it too much.  Ignore intelligence, ignore everything;
                   just follow it where it takes you. . . You think, where did I steal this from?  No, no,
                   that's original. . . And you realize that songs write themselves; you're just the conveyor." 

Sure, this has been said before, (the same thing happens with poems, as other poets, too, have said before), but I think we're getting some originality here, a truly individual way of wording a truism.  I just like the way he puts it. 

It would be interesting to get Charlie Watts' take on the band's history (Keith has nothing but good things to say about his pal and bandmate, from the get-go).  But if Charlie never does (and it seems unlikely given his quiet reticence), we have this loud and honest memoir by the father of all rock 'n roll pirates.