It Was All Absurd, Without

I Was Given The Ability To Create Stories And Characters. That's My Part Of The Long Chain Of Writers, Publishers, Agents, Booksellers, Librarians, And A Host Of Others Who Eventually Deliver Literature To The World. I Want To Do For Others What Eudora Welty Did For Me.

He Thought Of The Jungle, Already Regrowing Around Him To Cover The Scars They Had Created. He Thought Of The Tiger, Killing To Eat. Was That Evil? And Ants? They Killed. No, The Jungle Wasn’t Evil. It Was Indifferent. So, Too, Was The World. Evil, Then, Must Be The Negation Of Something Man Had Added To The World. Ultimately, It Was Caring About Something That Made The World Liable To Evil. Caring. And Then The Caring Gets Torn Asunder. Everybody Dies, But Not Everybody Cares.

I Mean... If You're Raised As A Decent Human Being, Killing Somebody Is Against Every Moral Thing You've Ever Been Taught. And So, Generally, In Combat It's 'krauts,' The 'gooks,' The 'yanks' - Whatever You Want To Do To Try And Make It So That It's Not A Human Being.

For Every Veteran Who Goes Through A Divorce, A Wife Goes Through One, Too. For Every Veteran Alone In The Basement, There Is A Wife Upstairs, Bewildered, Isolated And In Despair From The Dark Clouds Of War That Hangs Over Family Life.

It Was All Absurd, Without Reason Or Meaning. People Who Didn't Know Each Other Were Going To Kill Each Other Over A Hill None Of Them Cared About