The last couple of years I've been trying to read more writing by contemporary U.S. authors writing about contemporary U.S events. Since reading had taken a backseat with most of my time spent perusing the world using the prosthetic extension of a cellphone attached to my body at all times, the exploration of American literature had not been really successful until the last few weeks.
I started with one of my favorite non-fiction authors, the mountaineer from Massachusetts, Jon Krakauer and his book about the all American hero, Pat Tillman, 'Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman'.
More than twenty years ago, I had followed the story of Pat Tillman when he made national headlines ditching a lucrative NFL career and signed up in the Army and got sent to Afghanistan along with his brother Kevin Tillman. I knew nothing about football, but I had cable TV and Netflix movies were being delivered as CDs in red envelopes which was slower than cable content delivery.
Tillman seemed like an interesting guy - an All American boy, a footballer who read books and sounded deep! A very interesting and rare combo and he was close to me in age. If he had an Instagram or YouTube channel, I would have been a subscriber.
But when things went horrifically wrong for Pat Tillman, I stopped following the story. The man was gone. A human being with so much potential for changing humanity whose life has been cut short and people were bickering to profit and spin his story into something it was not. I felt bad for his poor family, but the world moved on, so did I. While I knew Jon Krakauer had come out with his book about Tillman a few years later, for some unexplainable reason I didn't want to read it, maybe I didn't want to read about a good man's story with a fatal irreversible ending.
I read/listened to and finished "Where Men Win Glory : The Odyssey of Pat Tillman" yesterday. It was everything I thought it would be and more. It is a splendid homage to Tillman and I appreciate Krakauer writing it. Just like he wrote about Christopher McCandless's life and story in 'Into the Wild'. These men and women's lives are the stories that need to be told and heard, to enrich our human experience and for us to understand and be guided by these unique people. These are our contemporaries who went down these daringly different paths so that we do not have to, but yet left us with valuable life lessons. I am glad to have lived during the time these men lived.
For the fact-hoarder that I am, the book also provided a lot of setting-the-background type of historical information like the 2000 Bush-Gore election, Afghanistan being the graveyard of empires - with focus on Soviet occupation and American presence, the tribalism of Afghanistan, the Pashtun code (Pashtunwali) , the different factions of Islamic fighters in that area and their history, US deployments, US bases and their involvement since 1980s till mid-2000s in that region.
Salute, Pat Tillman, for choosing the difficult path rarely chosen. Krakauer had to rely on Pat's journal entries and notes as Tillman family refused to contribute to Krakauer's effort. Pat's mother had her own book published about Pat.
Maybe I will move onto Krakauer's Missoula or Under the Banner of Heaven next. Although I am about midway into Erik Larson's rundown to the start of the Civil War, 'The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War.' I need to finish that first.
“Man, supposing you and I, escaping this battle, would be able to live on forever, ageless, immortal, so neither would I myself go on fighting in the foremost nor would I urge you into the fighting where men win glory. But now, seeing that the spirits of death stand close about us in their thousands, no man can turn aside nor escape them, let us go on and win glory for ourselves, or yield it to others.”
- Homer, The Iliad
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