About This Book
Several Vietnam veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome strive to heal themselves by telling stories about themselves in Central Park that have nothing to do with Nam. In flight from years of unrewarding support-group therapy, all seven of them hope to work out their problems by playing roles which take off on Chaucer's storytelling characters (whose personalities they strikingly resemble)--on the theory that the truth is best arrived at by indirection and through a more personal and human approach. The pilgrimage to an American Canterbury is the brainchild of one Harry Baylor, a Broadway Avenue butcher and Vietnam vet in flight from an unhappy marriage and a recurring nightmare that he killed his best buddy during an enemy attack and ran from the field of battle. A Chaucer nut, Harry got hooked on the great medieval poet while attending night-classes at City College taught by Professor Dorsett, a paraplegic who served as a medic in Nam and who, too, is a member of the support group. Nam and Chaucer fuse to form Harry Baylor's dual obsession (now and then, when he is under duress, the conversation lapses into Middle English). Troubled Harry withdraws 58,178 dollars--corresponding to the number of names on the Wall of the Vietnam Veterans War Memorial in Washington, DC -- from his marital joint bank account and splurges them on his Chaucer gala; he puts up his fellow Nam vets in a plush hotel on Central Park South, outfits them in Chaucerian costumes (e.g., the former nurse in Vietnam, herself the splitting image of the flamboyant, sexy Wife of Bath, sports a heavy headdress of finely woven kerchiefs, scarlet and tightly gathered hose, and soft new shoes), and stages a medieval feast with spectacular entertainments (a la Chaucer's day) and food authentic down to the last--sometimes rather unappetizing--detail. Harry's dream of finding salvation in Central Park runs into opposition. The Pilgrims take a week off from their busy jobs with some misgiving and only after he persuades them that the stark alternative is living death or continuing to live like zombies each tormented by his or her own Nam-connected demon. And when they try to tell stories about themselves free of Nam, they either fail to complete them or the tales disintegrate into chaotic reminiscences of the particular Nam horror that has preyed on the mind of each all these years. The Chaucer gala turns into a shambles; their feelings of frustration cause Harry's fellow vets to turn against him, making him their scapegoat. Why, they ask, did you get us into this? Why did you promise us so much? How come you required us to tell a tale when you declined to do so? At least we tried! What have you got to hide? (Harry has pleaded his scholarly integrity;--the Host in The Canterbury Tales does not tell a story). Throughout his trial by fire, Harry Baylor's loving and admiiring Monica, his Wife of Bath, is tenderly supportive. (Soon Harry's divorce will come through and he will, a la Chaucer, become her sixth husband.) Like Chaucer's pilgrims to Canterbury, the Nam vets underake their journey during spring, the season of redemption and rebirth. In Central Park, the Wife of Bath, for example, tells her fairy tale of wish-fulfillment while ensconced in the lap of Alice in the Alice in Wonderland statue; the rambunctious Miller and the sinister psychiatrist... Jason Marks has written an accurate and thoughtful memorial to the many Vietnam Veterans who continue to suffer from the hellishness of war, and the humiliation of their homecoming. His story could not be more serendipitously timely. He gives life to the great loneliness that veterans have felt in a civilian world and, more tragically, among the politically and bureaucratically fragmented subculture of Vietnam veterans since the war. He shows how the power of the past and the depth of shame that connects us to the loved and dead cannot be underestimated; in fact, if one's story is desperately in need of telling, the willful silencing of it can determine the course of one's life. The great gulf between what we expect of ourselves-i.e., courage and heroism-and what we actually do in the chaos of battle can become an emptiness that simple forgiveness or religious exoneration cannot fill. He shows how guilt can become the primary emotional connection between the living and the dead, and how difficult it is to find a more livable way of honoring the lost. But most importantly, Mr. Marks reminds us that great literature can play a profound, transformative, even lifesaving part in soothing human unhappiness that springs from the dissatisfaction that moral people feel with themselves. Acceptance of human frailty-and Chaucer's genius was its portrayal-can be mysteriously difficult, and profoundly liberating. The descending wisdom of the lost owl, at the end, speaks for itself. I was moved to contemplation of these universal questions-especially since September 11, 2001-by r
