Accounts like yours give shape and depth to our understanding of the past by revealing how the unique trajectories of each life is woven into the fabric of history. Each is unique but familiar in aggregate, revealing times, people and places. Moments where we intersect. I appreciate what you offer here.
Thank you for your kind remarks Dennis. I felt compelled for the benefit of the few remaining family, friends, colleagues and army comrades to reprise this journey, albeit heavily abridged.
I so envy your vocabulary. The introduction held back no future proverbial punches in your story. Raw and inviting caused me, the reader, to want to discover more. You wrote: "inconsequential extras in a vast drama." It brought to mind the ending of the 1965 war/romance movie Dr. Zhivago and the words spoken to the character Lara: "another nameless number on a list that was later misplaced." I want to believe that we are so much more than that.
I look forward to reading more of A Ghost Of Childhood.
Joel the problem in writing a memoir is that you put yourself in the center of events, in effect making yourself the hero when, in fact, many of those in your frame were far more consequential. Pasternak understood this and sought to emphasize the passive association of his characters to the inevitable forces of history.
Yes, the forces of history are much greater than most of us. At this moment, I feel the turning of history, as if it were palpable, so to speak. We are witnessing something significant on a national and international stage. It is as if we are at the fulcrum of something significantly good and something very bad. So, in that respect, we are inconsequential extras in this vast drama.
Irving. You do not disappoint. I have personally taken a different approach to sharing my life by being stingy and concentrating on a war instead of myself directly, so my book and my life are but a short reel of my life's movie with few flashbacks and no causal links that fully explain my existence, let alone my place on this planet. You are deeper and more generous in your sharing and I admire your recollections as well as your courage that says essentially: This is me. I am singular and unique and yet not unlike others who may have had more connections or approvals. I am the architect for most of my successes and failings (not failures), but those human traits and outer circumstances that eventually define us, alive or not. I relate my life, not to boast or complain, but to illustrate rather than explain Irvingness to those not Irving. Thank you.
Thanks, George. This all started in response to and interview on an NPR program about "old people" and how they adjust to life's exigencies. It made we examine my own history in an effort to try to understand how I responded to events as I have. I'm glad to see that you may be migrating your blog onto Substack--it may be more suitable for invigorating exchanges.
Irving: A couple of my essays have wound up on Steve Schmidt's daily piece (Substack) on email, but usually I stay with my loyal base of about a hundred readers. I usually agree with him, but recently when he compared Trump's troops and his "military" leaders to service academy graduates, I took strong exception and feel that Steve was way out of line. I specifically mentioned West Point and our 65th reunion coming up and that all the academies had developed leaders devoted to Duty, Honor and Country.
Irving-
Accounts like yours give shape and depth to our understanding of the past by revealing how the unique trajectories of each life is woven into the fabric of history. Each is unique but familiar in aggregate, revealing times, people and places. Moments where we intersect. I appreciate what you offer here.
Dennis
Thank you for your kind remarks Dennis. I felt compelled for the benefit of the few remaining family, friends, colleagues and army comrades to reprise this journey, albeit heavily abridged.
Irving,
I so envy your vocabulary. The introduction held back no future proverbial punches in your story. Raw and inviting caused me, the reader, to want to discover more. You wrote: "inconsequential extras in a vast drama." It brought to mind the ending of the 1965 war/romance movie Dr. Zhivago and the words spoken to the character Lara: "another nameless number on a list that was later misplaced." I want to believe that we are so much more than that.
I look forward to reading more of A Ghost Of Childhood.
Joel
Joel the problem in writing a memoir is that you put yourself in the center of events, in effect making yourself the hero when, in fact, many of those in your frame were far more consequential. Pasternak understood this and sought to emphasize the passive association of his characters to the inevitable forces of history.
Yes, the forces of history are much greater than most of us. At this moment, I feel the turning of history, as if it were palpable, so to speak. We are witnessing something significant on a national and international stage. It is as if we are at the fulcrum of something significantly good and something very bad. So, in that respect, we are inconsequential extras in this vast drama.
Irving. You do not disappoint. I have personally taken a different approach to sharing my life by being stingy and concentrating on a war instead of myself directly, so my book and my life are but a short reel of my life's movie with few flashbacks and no causal links that fully explain my existence, let alone my place on this planet. You are deeper and more generous in your sharing and I admire your recollections as well as your courage that says essentially: This is me. I am singular and unique and yet not unlike others who may have had more connections or approvals. I am the architect for most of my successes and failings (not failures), but those human traits and outer circumstances that eventually define us, alive or not. I relate my life, not to boast or complain, but to illustrate rather than explain Irvingness to those not Irving. Thank you.
Thanks, George. This all started in response to and interview on an NPR program about "old people" and how they adjust to life's exigencies. It made we examine my own history in an effort to try to understand how I responded to events as I have. I'm glad to see that you may be migrating your blog onto Substack--it may be more suitable for invigorating exchanges.
Irving: A couple of my essays have wound up on Steve Schmidt's daily piece (Substack) on email, but usually I stay with my loyal base of about a hundred readers. I usually agree with him, but recently when he compared Trump's troops and his "military" leaders to service academy graduates, I took strong exception and feel that Steve was way out of line. I specifically mentioned West Point and our 65th reunion coming up and that all the academies had developed leaders devoted to Duty, Honor and Country.