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Overview
Frederick Busch has an enduring love affair with great books, and here he brilliantly communicates his passion to us all. Whether expounding on Melville or Dickens, or celebrating Hemingway or O'Hara, he explains what literature can ineffably reveal about our own lives. For Busch, there was no other recourse save the "dangerous profession;" it was to be his calling, and in these piercing essays, he demonstrates that we as a culture ignore the fundamental truths about fiction only at our own peril. With keen ruminations that recall the critcs of yore- Edmund Wilson, Lionel Trilling, and Irving Howe-Busch, in this era of moral indirection, has revealed how the literature of our past is the key to our survival in the future.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780312246082 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 04/01/2011 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 256 |
| File size: | 273 KB |
About the Author
Frederick Busch is the author of Girls, The Children in the Woods, Harry&Catherine, and Closing Arguments.
Read an Excerpt
A Dangerous Profession
A Book About The Writing Life
By Frederick Busch
St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 1998 Frederick BuschAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-312-24608-2
CHAPTER 1
MY FATHER'S WAR
THE MAPS IN the 1945 West Publishing Company pocket diary that my father carried in the war are gathered at the end of the little leather book. My father was very much a man of maps. During World War II, as a sergeant in the Tenth Mountain Division, an elite outfit trained and equipped for combat in snow and ice, on mountainous terrain, he was a scout. Carrying a radio and a carbine, he moved in advance of the infantry and artillery, calling howitzer and mortar fire down onto map coordinates that were often perilously close to his own position. He spoke infrequently of his war, but whenever he did, I asked him if he had been frightened. I found so much to be afraid of in quotidian adventures that I thought of his war as a time of always fighting fearfulness. Each time I asked, he said that he had been entirely certain that he could never be killed. According to him, he volunteered for service in the Tenth. According to him, he lied about his nearsightedness by memorizing the eye chart. According to my mother, he left for the war when he could have stayed with her and me. I had learned of others lying about their eyesight in films starring such men as William Bendix, Lloyd Nolan, and John Wayne; men memorized the eye charts because it was the right and morally true action, and because vision was not only about what a nearsighted man like my father could not see: he, and those heroes, the movies said, could see. I was reminded of my father's volunteering as I labored to keep from serving in Vietnam. I did not want to suffer at the hands of yahoos in the basic training that might kill me before any combat did. I did not want to leave my wife of so few months. I did not, finally, want to kill Asian people, any more than I thought they ought to be killing me; everything about that war was wrong, I thought (and think). And I am not imagining my father's disappointment at my despair over passing my first draftboard physical. I think he wanted me to want to go. I think he thought I might become a man, perhaps something closer to his idea of what men were, if I learned to enjoy, as he apparently had, overcoming the rigors of boot camp and fending off the rednecks who were puzzled or angered by Jews. He had invited them into the boxing ring, he told me, and they willingly went. He was in his thirties then, older than most of the men he called "boys," and, he told me, "After a round or two, when they tasted their own blood, they got more friendly."
When I was a sullen kid, he offered to teach me to box. In the cement-floored basement with its big, noisy oil burner—I had played in the coal bins near the old coal-burning furnace in the forties—he laced us in and offered instruction in the rudiments. He didn't draw blood. But he liked it (I could see that in his clenched teeth, the half smile: a simulated but possibly felt ferocity) as he pawed me with his jab and slapped me again and again with the open glove. I am not certain what the lesson was, but I knew as he nicely enough toyed with me, teaching me technique I would forget, that he was teaching me something else: I am always holding back what you think you almost see. It is in me. It is always almost here. Or maybe I am thinking of what I thought and felt when I was the father of teenaged sons.
He carried the pocket diary with him through his year of combat, 1945. Its publishers offered information one wouldn't need today. There is, in one table, a chart of mail time to foreign places from New York: thirteen days to Belgrade, Yugoslavia, and eighteen days to Leningrad, Russia. The price charts are as out-of-date as the maps—ten cents is the surcharge given for special-delivery mail weighing up to two pounds. A couple of pages in the back of the book have been torn away. I wonder when he did that, and what he sought to hide. It was his book, after all, and it was unlikely that anyone in his house or his office in Manhattan would search his wartime diary for clues—although that is precisely what I have done fifty years later. But he might have known more than most of us about hiding information, or about digging it out. And he might have had something to hide.
It seems entirely likely that he tore out the pages when he was preparing to die. I suspect that he did so in the 1970s, given his claim that he had been unfrightened of death. However, I find a note about V-J Day written in his hand. He knew that his outfit was to participate in the invasion of Japan, and he writes, "To be assured of the end of war—the end of the dread of death." He might have felt differently about fighting in Asia. Or maybe he was a secret from himself. He didn't dread death, and he also did, perhaps, and perhaps each secret side of himself did not know the other. He feared to die and knew he wouldn't be killed. But he almost was—he was blown up pretty badly—and it is possible that he was telling a lie he needed to tell and to hear. He lived, I think, in compartments—like the watertight compartments of submarines, like the cells of spy groups or the partisan cells of World War II. If one compartment is flooded by some of the billion tons of water outside, the rest might survive awhile. If you know only five members of your cell, you cannot tell captors or a witch-hunt committee or the FBI the names of anyone else in the underground; the damage, if you name the names, is limited to you and the other four. If you compartmentalize your nights and days—at 956 East Eighteenth Street in Brooklyn, or at the firm of Katz &&&; Sommerich, Attorneys-at-Law, 120 Broadway in Manhattan—then all of your selves can't be caught.
He spent Christmas Eve of 1944, says his spiky, meticulous hand, on the train to Camp Patrick Henry in Norfolk, Virginia. On Wednesday, January third: "Called Home—Spoke to Mom, Freddy and Phyllis." I can see him, slender and balding, with sensuous lips and dreamy blue eyes, a handsome thirty-three-year old man who had been a beautiful boy, traveling in the dim train into a dark southern night in the time of both the festival about families and about the loss of time. Once stationed at Patrick Henry, he enters "Ditto," or sometimes "Do," under the date of each day he spent there. And then, on January fifth, with no reference to Europe (which is unmarked by him in the map section), he writes, "Train to Pier—Embarkation—U.S.S. General Meigs at P.M." The next day, he writes, "Shipboard—sailed at 12:30 PM." There is something likable about the care with which he noted times and tended to his spellings and observed the forms—that "U.S.S." I wonder if the care about details was a stay against panic or whether he had concluded that a soldier kept a journal that was correct about dates and times and places and that left emotions out. I think of Hemingway, and my father's respect for his work, and how his Frederic Henry says, in A Farewell to Arms:
I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice.... There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Certain numbers were the same way and certain dates and these with the names of the places were all you could say and have them mean anything. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.
The next nine days say "Ditto." The tenth says that, too, and then "Gibraltar a.m.—African Coast." I think he must have smiled his broad grin, the boy from Brooklyn, to see that shore crawl past the rail.
After much more "Ditto," they anchored off Naples. He notes, "Vesuvius—Pompeii." On Friday, January nineteenth: "Tried Red Cross for cable—n.g." No good: He couldn't cable home to say he'd survived the Atlantic crossing. In LCI 194, a Landing Craft Infantry, they "began journey North—Bad weather—turned back." Then, in entries confined to place names, and with a few verbs—docked and spent —he describes his movements in LCI 194 from Naples to Pozzuoli, north past Elba to Leghorn. Wednesday, January twenty-fourth: "Truck convoy to 3rd staging area—Rain at night." Then "Ditto," then "Ditto," then "Ditto."
On Sunday, January twenty-eighth, he writes, "On to the Front," then "Lizzano in Belvedere—Billet in Theatre—on floor." In darker ink, perhaps with firmer pressure, he writes, "One year since induction in U.S. Army." And, with two notes about "Mail call," he spends four days of "Ditto," which, on Friday, February second, he changes to "Same," as if to combat the sameness of his experience.
Think of yourself at the front in a war, waiting for combat, for his was a combat outfit. Think of knowing that you will soon, at any dawn or dusk, go into battle. What would you record, should you choose to record anything at all? Here, among the thousands in the Tenth awaiting their first fight and possibly their death, is Benjamin J. Busch. He was given no middle initial by his parents but was renamed Busch, Benjamin J., by the army to distinguish him, alive and dead, from another Busch, Benjamin, on the rolls. There is his life with Phyllis and me and his parents, his sisters Ann and Rose, his brother, Jack, his legal career, and whatever else concerned him in civilian life. There is the matter of climbing rocks while carrying the heavy radio over booby traps into mortar fire. He is in a kind of suspension. It is "Same" to him, and we cannot know, by looking at his pages, whether he bathed, and how or what he ate. I wonder what he dreamed about. He will not tell. He notes his "Ist week at front" with no reference to explosions on the skyline or the condition of his bowels and brains. There is no statement about death or fear; they are all I can imagine myself imagining. Everything is "Same," except when he receives a cable from one of his sisters, then from my mother, though he doesn't report what they say to him, or how he feels.
On Wednesday, February 14, 1945, in his second week at the front, after ten days of "Same": "St. Valentine's Day Corsage &&&; cable should be delivered to Phyllis today." Three days later, he goes on "Patrol up front at Fame." All most of us know about patrols are breathless moments in movies or books. He doesn't confirm or deny what we know.
Sunday, February eighteenth, begins "Same," notes his "3rd Week at Lizzano"; on the nineteenth: "Attack on Ridge near Farne" and "Ridge is taken"; he was one of the takers, but the passive voice separates him from the dangers within which he writes. On the twentieth "Attack continues" and "Air Support" and "Belvedere is Taken." On the twenty-first: "Battle continues" and "We advance up Mt—Shelling around road." He told of that road. He spoke of their having to cross it one at a time because the large German mortars were so accurate and were backed up by heavy machine-gun fire. He spoke of men closing their eyes and running. And when I asked him—what a frightened child I must have been—if he had been scared, he turned the corners of his mouth down happily and told me, "Nah." On the twenty-second: They "Advance past Gaggis" and receive "Shelling of our positions." He "Rec'd letters from home." Next day: "Same Positions—Battle continues.—" On the twenty-fourth: "Same" and, in a shakier, hastier hand, "Rec'd letters from home &&&; pictures of Freddy."
The next week, his handwriting changes from day to day, as does the pressure of the pen. "Attack &&&; Counter attack continues," he writes on February twenty-fifth, and he is proud that news of his division is "flashed to America." He receives mail and pictures, then notes, "We change positions," which seems to be in response to shelling, so, on the twenty-sixth, they change positions again and he notes a "shower bath &&&; change of clothes." The Tenth, he records, is commended by General Hayes, the shelling continues, and, on the twenty-eighth, "Shelling during night with some landing uncomfortably close." That "uncomfortably" is the first acknowledgment of real danger. "Same" follows "Same," and then, on March third: "Push begins at 0700—heavy artillery fire through day and night We prepare to move forward—Infantry gains its objective," the artillery scout notes. On Sunday, March fourth, they advance and "Al Strilecky &&&; I spend night on top of Mt. Terminate—dead &&&; equipment around." He is there the next night and then he notes, "Left flank—400 yds from enemy." The next day they are "raked by mortar fire both crests &&&; drawer from top to halfway down." Howitzer shells land around them: "Heaviest shelling yet during the night—landing very close." In the late afternoon, their "arty [for artillery] fired leaflets &&&; addressed Hun lines by P.A. system": They were that close.
On March eighth, still at Iola, mortar shells land near their dugouts, "ruining equipment 20 ft. from mine." They move out of the range of the mortars on their flank, they are joined by some infantry, and their positions are "straightened &&&; consolidated," which means that their lines of fire are reorganized: They are within small-arms range of the Germans.
After receiving artillery fire early in the next week, they relocate to what he calls a "rest camp." He does not mention the radio, the calling in of the fire on the Germans, the scampering through or sheltering from the incessant deadly mortars and heavier artillery. They make it to Montecantini, the location of the rest camp of the Fifth Army. He rents a private room in a hotel for two dollars. On Friday, March sixteenth, he celebrates: "shower &&&; new clothes—Barbershop &&&; works.—Tour of town—vino &&&; plenty." The next night, another bar crawl, a "tour of town," and movies, and on Sunday, March eighteenth, after staying "up to 1:30," celebrating, he is sent "Back to front."
Their week begins at Brasa with scattered shelling, and then he hikes—his verb—to an observation post "within German observation." The next night, their patrol activity is visible by the light of the phosphorous tracer shells of the German machine-gun fire. They take artillery shelling. The next night, he is carried by jeep to patrol another area; he sees four men in an enemy patrol. There are "Frequent flares" and "Heavy enemy mortar shelling." They are moved to Pietra Colera, then Florence and a rest camp for several days, then back to Pietra Colera. They reconnoiter, they take mortar and artillery fire—sixty German rockets land near their observation post at Gualandi—and he notes, "Some close shelling—farm barn roof 20 yds from billet" and "Terrific barrage for one hour—": the closest he comes to what he won't directly express, the sense of death, the smell of fear, the hugeness of the force of the explosions, and the nakedness of flesh.
The following week is one of patrols, receiving barrages, and more patrols. There is a change of positions, a preparation for an attack. On Friday, April thirteenth, "H hour," he reports, "is delayed." On the fourteenth, with the Second of the Eighty-sixth, at 0830, after preparatory "Planes &&&; arty barrage—Advance with Col. Townsend—Up to Rocco di Roffino."
At home, after the war, he dreamed of himself tied to a tree. Snakes crawled toward him. They wore German helmets. He sought therapy in painting, and he had something of a hand. The two paintings he framed are of mountains. One is seen from below and is wintry, pretty, a convincing-enough, if conventional, peak. I wonder if it is the mountain his division scaled, at night, to engage the German ski troops. The other mountain he painted is seen from above, as a hawk might see; a bit of the hawk's wing frames the view, and the point of view suggests detachment. He read Freud, he told me when I was in college, because he wanted to work his way out of the nightmares. When he spoke of the war, my mother interrupted, always, to tell him that it was harmful for him to discuss what he so clearly needed to discuss. The Freud worked, he managed to convey to me; the dreams, he claimed, went away. There is evidence that the dreams continued, and that he spoke of them, and to someone other than my mother, someone who labored to relieve him of their burden. But he told us that they went away.
That rhythm of suppression and release, the tension between obedience to forms of gravity and the finding of a way to soar, the need to say the story and the requirements of silence—those are the man.
On April fifteenth, he was blown up by a booby trap on a mountain trail. The lieutenant he was with walked ahead of him and stepped on the spring release and was torn to pieces. My father was wounded in the foot, groin, and hand. This is the witness borne by the father to his son, an unusually intimate conversation of the early 1960s, an occasion rarely repeated. The privately public self, in the diary of 1945, has this to report, in a shaky hand that is the pictorial equivalent of gasping. For Sunday, April fifteenth: "After Midnight down to guide up Replacements—Wounded by Mine—15th Evac. Hosp." There is no reference to trauma or pain, to his wounds, to the men who carried him to safety, or to the officer ahead of him who was so terribly dissolved. The next day's entry: "15th Evac Hosp." I am astonished not only by the taciturnity of these entries but also by his ability to force himself to make them. He reports to himself, one bit of him intoning his noninformation to the other. Tuesday, April seventeenth: "70th Genl Hosp near Poistoia," and I cannot tell whether he was stabilized or worse or needed further surgery. There, he is "Given Purple Heart." The next day, he reports his mailing address, as if telling his wife how to find him, and as if it is also he himself who needs to know. He repeats, the total entry for each of the next eleven days, "70th G.H." Within a total of fifteen days, he is discharged and is back with the artillery battery for which he was a scout. On Wednesday, May second: "Armistice announced." By the fifth, he walks to Riva Ridge, gets a big batch of mail that followed him, and was "Given Good Conduct Medal."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A Dangerous Profession by Frederick Busch. Copyright © 1998 Frederick Busch. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Part One,
MY FATHER'S WAR,
THE CHILDREN IN THE WOODS,
FOR THE LOVE OF A PRINCESS OF MARS,
A RELATIVE LIE,
THE WRITER'S WIFE,
THE FLOATING CHRISTMAS TREE,
Part Two,
BAD,
MELVILLE'S MAIL,
THE RUB,
SUITORS BY BOZ,
THE LANGUAGE OF STARVATION,
TERRENCE DES PRES,
EVEN THE SMALLEST POSITION,
THE UNSCRUPULOUS PURITY OF GRAHAM GREENE,
THE DESERT IN THE BED,
HEMINGWAY'S SENTENCE,
Also by Frederick Busch,
ABOUT THE AUTHOR,
Notes,
Copyright Page,