Cheap paperback novels

“…the kind they sell in drug stores ” as in If you can read my mind.

Graham Greene in Paris of the Orient, Hemmingway in original Paris etc…both found inspiration out of war and wound ( “we’re all broken in many places….where light can shine through”.

Many soldiers were wishing to “someday, when this war ends.. we will march triumphantly under the Arc …” – or even better, will grab a nurse and kiss her right in Times Square (to then appear on TIME cover).

War brings out all kinds of people e.g. profiters, rhetoricians, mercenaries, suppliers, warehouse workers (3 of 4 are just behind the firing line, supplying the troop with meals and ammo).

Then the novelists with their paperback novels, romanticizing death and destruction.

In war, we’re in love. Time is of the essence. Short. No beating around the bush. No horseplay, No foreplay.

Just do it, Reaction time would be too slow. Shoot and kill. Search and destroy. Deny the enemies sanctuary. Let Court Marshall lawyers heck it out later. Shoot, aim, ready. \

War footing is quite different. Situation report, situation ethics. We signed up for this? Can’t wait for the war to be over (as oppose to “can’t wait to start one” not too long ago).

Last night, there was war in Israel once again. First in the news. Guns pop up here, and there (Ukraine).

Then follow by the newsmen, the support troop, the politicians and the paperback novels. The kind they sell in drug stores. Revisionist history. Looking back at them (wars) in new lens. One war that surprised me is the Korean one. Been since 1950, lasts a lifetime. There is no “when this war is over….we will march under the Arc….).

Other wars, like the one in Ukraine, it’s ongoing. With war correspondents in and out of the front. Had they a Continental or Caravelle Hotel like in Paris of the Orient, we would find novelists all over the coffee bar, trading snippets of war, a rumor here and there. “When are we pulling the plug” etc.. or as in the case of Ralph White in the last week of Saigon, praying in the Church, then pick up a chic ( I read until the part when he negotiated a deal to hire a call girl to be a personal page).

The mere fact that he mentioned it, his editors allowed it, it is to show, there had been a sad attempt to revise history. Trivializing man’s nobility and human suffering for a few dough, all the while, denying a sad fact that “we’re all broken in many places…where the light can come in.”

Even WWII triumphant march under the Arc today stands back near the curtain of history, yielding front row stage to new actors in this war theatre, much younger and Hard-back novel characters. The kind they sell in Barnes and Noble, under Non-Fiction and Current Affairs. Still, over coffee, I miss the old days, the tall figures of soldiers in B/W movies. Reminds me of my Dad, and allow me, to romanticize that selective past. The kind written in novels, whose paperback versions sold in drug stores.