Word: santoli
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Dates: during 1981-1981
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...Everything We Had, Santoli...
...Everything We Had, Santoli...
...Cacciato, Ron Kovic's Born on the Fourth of July, James Webb's Fields of Fire, Phil Caputo's A Rumor of War. Now, more veterans seem to be emerging from their long, isolated silence. They have recorded their memories of the war in two new oral histories: Al Santoli's Everything We Had and Mark Baker's Nam. A group of actors led by Tom Bird have formed the Veterans Experience Theater Company in New York City. T.J. Anderson, Fletcher Professor of Music at Tufts University, is working on an opera called Soldier Boy, Soldier, about the readjustment problems...
THERE IS an even more critical failing in Everything We Had. It does not even attempt to address the issue of what Vietnam did to America. Santoli has an understandable fascination with battle descriptions, but they are not enough. We need to know what the war did to these men's ideas about their country, for the damage it did to the American dream may be its most enduring legacy. This is the remaining conundrum that the politicians or the historians cannot answer. Everything We Had touches the edges of this question but does not confront it head...
...veterans' words are not enough for a 'comprehensive understanding of what the war meant to them. Santoli's reluctance to judge his fellow soldiers, as indicated by the almost non-existent biographies, comes off as diffidence and an abdication of responsibility. Even worse, the meager descriptions are tucked in the back of the book (and incorrectly alphabetized), so one must constantly flip back and forth to see who is talking. This mistake is particularly unfortunate because it hurts the collection's best asset--its penetrating and hypnotizing rhythm...