I have been reading Black Glasses Like Clark Kent by Terese Svoboda and finding it fascinating on multiple levels. On the one hand it is the story of her uncle, a WWII vet who became dreadfully depressed and killed himself not long after the Abu Ghraib revelations. Prior to his death he reached out to Terese and sent her several audio tapes which built a history around his time as an MP at a US military prison in Japan right after the end of the war. Don Svoboda hinted at a horrible thing at the prison - that due to overcrowding the MPs had executed several prisoners who had been sentenced to death (they were Americans and should have been shipped back to the US). The fact that the overwhelming number of these prisoners was black makes everything about their convictions and sentences deeply troubling to the author and clearly, from the way Don felt compelled to talk about it, the memories were still troubling to him.

The other narrative in the book is the story of how Terese tracks down the truth. Don gives her only a bit to go on and his own records from the war are hard to find (a fire destroyed many military records where his were stored). As a writer I thought it was really interesting to see her slowly uncover the layers of her uncle's past while also revealing a ton of relevant information from various military and historical records. She manages to weave together WWII and the Iraq War into a compelling single theme about what happened to some soldiers, even when they are far from combat. Any writer working on a book about history would find aspects of Terese's journey quite worthy of reading and would likely incorporate some of the narrative structure she uses here so effectively into their own work.

There are several interviews with Terese Svoboda online but this question and answer exchange really made me stop and think about the writing I want to do:

Barlow: Guilt is a powerful motivator, for writers and for researchers into the past--not to mention for those struggling to come to terms with their own pasts. As a country, the United States has done an excellent job of hiding its sins and denying its guilt, leading to a sense of "American exceptionalism," a belief that the country really is better than any other has ever been. Did your personal view of America change over the course of researching and writing this book? If so, how? If not, were your older beliefs confirmed?

Svoboda: Writers are forever eight, over-aware and indignant, wrote Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker a month ago. The indignant part of my upbringing was fueled by flag-burning and protests, poet David Shapiro with a cigar in the president’s office. I’m from a generation that believed, in the Lennon sense. How that belief sank in the face of greed is another story, and not mine. At the National Archives, I was made to feel guilty and a kook for even wanting to research this book. After a black scholar wrote to me to tell me that I was clearly mistaken about how the military behaved, I knew I had to pursue the story.

Deep in an election year we find ourselves, as a nation, wondering if the truth matters. As Svoboda makes clear - and her uncle understood all too well - yes it does. The truth must matter, always and forever, it simply must matter. If it doesn't then why do we bother at all? Why do we bother to even try and make a difference?

Does truth matter? I can't believe we are even asking ourselves that question; like so many other surreal things about this election, I can't believe that truth has now become an issue no one seems to care enough about anymore.