There's a very interesting piece in The Guardian (actually from several days ago) about Vietnamese novelist Bao Ninh and his book, The Sorrow of War. Published in 1991 it brought him a great deal of notoriety and acclaim (at least outside Vietnam), but he has not published a novel since.

Ninh's main character, a thinly disguised portrait of the author as a young man, enlists in the army at age 17, leaving behind his childhood sweetheart. She takes a train with him to the front, and when a bomb throws him from the car she is gang-raped by his fellow soldiers. A decade after the fighting is over, he passes his days in drunkenness and depression - permanently damaged by the war.

It was instantly controversial: loved by the soldiers who fought in the war - including American veterans reading it in translation - and condemned by Vietnamese officialdom, including the writers' union. Although the novel was reissued in Vietnamese last year, it has yet to be published under its original title. Instead, Vietnamese know their most famous war novel as The Destiny of Love.

In the article there is a discussion of how difficult it is for some countries to let go of their heroic past and embrace the bitter honesty of war novels that tell the truth. I've written on this subject before, most recently in my current YA column at Bookslut, but I am constantly surprised by how this lesson needs to be retaught and relearned by every generation of human beings on the planet. We glorify war, we learn it is not glorious, those who witnessed it write about it, the governments or rebels or dictators who want more war suppress the books, arrest the authors, denounce them as traitors and then convince a whole new generation of the glories of war and well, here we go again.

I am at a loss as to how this cycle is different between countries, ethnicities or religions. It always seems to go around the same way, and it always ends with some amazing books, scarred soldiers, and yet more people at war.

If it wasn't so godawful tragic, it would be silly.

I have been thinking about war lately (haven't we all) largely because of an article I read over a week ago in the South Carolina State about three newly republished WWI titles from the Univ of SC Press that are part of a memorial to a WWI veteran.

The books, all in the public domain (meaning their copyrights had expired), come from the “Joseph M. Bruccoli Great War Collection” housed at USC’s Thomas Cooper Library. Bruccoli was a wounded soldier in World War I. The collection is his son Matthew J. Bruccoli’s way of honoring the memory of his father as well as those who served and sacrificed in a war that claimed more than 10 million casualties. Bruccoli and his wife Arlyn Bruccoli established the USC collection in 1997.

These well-written, sometimes long-forgotten novels “deserve another chance,” he said. “My great hope is that some of these books become assigned reading in class.”

I can't imagine a better way to honor a veteran, or to teach about the realities of war. I'm so interested to know how Mr. Bruccoli came up with this idea. It both fascinates and impresses me and is one of the more hopeful things I have read lately on how to effectively teach about the past and prevent future wars.

Then I read something like this (link via Critical Mass) and I learn all over again that while it is safe to be appalled by WWI, it is somehow not patriotic or prudent or secure to feel for the people of Gaza. Some places have war, and others have "disengagements" and while the volume of war literature is large and impressive, there is precious little written about why disengagements must end.

We change the names to make it okay, and we think that saves us from recriminations. How ironic that Israel should be the perpetrator in this instance, when the volume of Holocaust literature is so vital to their ethnic identity. How ironic, and how very very sad.