To the Point: Reflections on Reading
The first book about West Point that I ever read was probably the Landmark series book that I got from my elementary school library: The West Point Story by COL “Red” Reeder (USMA ‘26). (To show you what a nerd I was, I probably read EVERY book in the Landmark series that our school library had, along with every single Young Biography book.) The next book I read about West Point was an old, dog-eared paperback copy of West Point Plebe – also by the prolific COL “Red” Reeder. It is a G-rated kids book written in the 1950s. I actually found this book in my younger son’s room recently; I think he may have been reading it. The only thing I remember learning from West Point Plebe (aside from the fact that the protagonist, Clint Lane, was a gorgeous hunk) is that it is not a good idea to put grapefruit juice in a metal canteen!
THE classic novel on West Point is, of course, Dress Gray by Lucian Truscott, IV (USMA ’69). It was published in the late 70s right before I went to West Point myself but dealt with a West Point of the late 1960s, when Truscott himself had been a cadet. I read that book, of course, as well as the just-published Lords of Discipline by Pat Conroy. While the latter was about the Citadel (a place where people pay to get hazed!), I figured it probably wouldn’t be too far off from West Point. I remember going to R Day thinking that I would have to “Drop those bags!” and “Pick up those bags!” just like in Dress Gray, and I was rather disappointed when no one ever asked me to do that. I won’t say I actually practiced doing it for real, but I certainly imagined myself doing it until I was, I thought, pretty fast on the draw.
Over the past several years, there has been a small slew of non-fiction books about West Point and what life at West Point is “really” like. Both Absolutely American (2003) by David Lipsky and Duty First (2001) by Ed Ruggero are worth reading and have their pluses and minuses. Lipsky, a reporter for the magazine Rolling Stone got approval from the Academy’s administration to follow a group of cadets through all four years at West Point. On the other end of the spectrum, Ed Ruggero (USMA ’80), former infantry officer, West Point P, and leadership speaker/writer, portrayed a year in the lives of several cadets at West Point in an attempt to give a glimpse inside the mysterious “leadership lab.” It is really hard to write about West Point if you have never gone there and experienced it yourself, but Lipsky did an admirable job. Of course, it is really hard to write about West Point if you HAVE gone there and experienced it for yourself, as Ruggero did. West Point is a different world, a different universe, with a different language and different rules; everyone going through it with you understands exactly what you are saying when you talk about West Point, but no one else really ever does. Or so you think.
If you have an interest in reading about West Point, there are three books I would recommend:
The first is a novel. Honor and Duty (1994), by Gus Lee, an Asian-American writer, is phenomenal. You may have read or heard of his first novel, China Boy, about growing up as a first generation Chinese American in San Francisco. Lee went to West Point in the ‘60s but didn’t graduate, failing out because of “Juice” (electrical engineering) his cow (junior) year, and this book is in many ways, I think, a roman a clef. It is very hard to capture West Point and what it is really like to go there, but Lee is a wonderful writer and does an amazing job. There are two things I remember most from this book, which was set during the Vietnam War: one was how as an Asian cadet, he was hazed for being Vietnamese (even though he was actually Chinese) and the other was a mentor character, a junior officer, who was a thinly disguised young Norman Schwartzkopf. I highly recommend this novel, especially if you prefer fiction.
The second book is a non-fiction book that will break your heart. I wrote about it a few months ago on this same blog. In a Time of War: The Proud and Perilous Journey of West Point’s Class of 2002 (2008) by Bill Murphy, Jr. The Class of 2002 was the “Bicentennial Class” as West Point was founded in 1802. They were already cadets when 9/11 occurred, Firsties, in fact, and they did not know what they would be getting into after graduation. Almost immediately, as brand new second lieutenants, many of them found themselves in Iraq or Afghanistan, and then Iraq or Afghanistan again. If they didn’t get killed first, that is. This is a very hard book to read. I cried through most of it. I don’t want to ruin the story, but if you have loved ones deployed to either Iraq or Afghanistan right now, you might not want to read this book at this time. This is a very powerful, very moving book that talks about duty and honor and service and the realities of serving during wartime.
The final book, also non-fiction, is Soldier’s Heart: Reading Literature through Peace and War at West Point (2007) by Elizabeth Samet, a civilian English P at West Point. I found this book to be extremely moving, thoughtful, and well-written. When I first read it, I wanted to write the author, who is still an English professor at West Point, but I was too shy and embarrassed. I wanted to tell her what an amazing book I thought she had written. She was an insider who was really an outsider, or an outsider who was really an insider, depending on how you want to look at it. She brings a different perspective to West Point and the Army and the cadet experience, and she captures a lot of the spirit of what it means to be a cadet. My only qualms were that the cadets she wrote about seemed so much smarter and well read than any of us ever were! I think West Point is one of those places where the more things change, the more they stay the same, and cadets are basically the same kinds of young people they have always been: motivated, gung ho, naïve, innocent, overachieving, patriotic, and determined to do their best. (Which, at times, can produce a few who are cynical, jaded, and/or proudly underachieving.)
I really loved the way Samet could talk about literature and poetry and why they are important for soldiers. And how her cadets showed her how important literature really was in their lives, especially as they headed off for Iraq and Afghanistan. We don’t really think of soldiers as being thoughtful or thinkers or contemplative. We think of them as being readily obedient, doers, active, following orders, accomplishing the mission. Samet and her cadets show how it is possible to be both.
THE classic novel on West Point is, of course, Dress Gray by Lucian Truscott, IV (USMA ’69). It was published in the late 70s right before I went to West Point myself but dealt with a West Point of the late 1960s, when Truscott himself had been a cadet. I read that book, of course, as well as the just-published Lords of Discipline by Pat Conroy. While the latter was about the Citadel (a place where people pay to get hazed!), I figured it probably wouldn’t be too far off from West Point. I remember going to R Day thinking that I would have to “Drop those bags!” and “Pick up those bags!” just like in Dress Gray, and I was rather disappointed when no one ever asked me to do that. I won’t say I actually practiced doing it for real, but I certainly imagined myself doing it until I was, I thought, pretty fast on the draw.
Over the past several years, there has been a small slew of non-fiction books about West Point and what life at West Point is “really” like. Both Absolutely American (2003) by David Lipsky and Duty First (2001) by Ed Ruggero are worth reading and have their pluses and minuses. Lipsky, a reporter for the magazine Rolling Stone got approval from the Academy’s administration to follow a group of cadets through all four years at West Point. On the other end of the spectrum, Ed Ruggero (USMA ’80), former infantry officer, West Point P, and leadership speaker/writer, portrayed a year in the lives of several cadets at West Point in an attempt to give a glimpse inside the mysterious “leadership lab.” It is really hard to write about West Point if you have never gone there and experienced it yourself, but Lipsky did an admirable job. Of course, it is really hard to write about West Point if you HAVE gone there and experienced it for yourself, as Ruggero did. West Point is a different world, a different universe, with a different language and different rules; everyone going through it with you understands exactly what you are saying when you talk about West Point, but no one else really ever does. Or so you think.
If you have an interest in reading about West Point, there are three books I would recommend:
The first is a novel. Honor and Duty (1994), by Gus Lee, an Asian-American writer, is phenomenal. You may have read or heard of his first novel, China Boy, about growing up as a first generation Chinese American in San Francisco. Lee went to West Point in the ‘60s but didn’t graduate, failing out because of “Juice” (electrical engineering) his cow (junior) year, and this book is in many ways, I think, a roman a clef. It is very hard to capture West Point and what it is really like to go there, but Lee is a wonderful writer and does an amazing job. There are two things I remember most from this book, which was set during the Vietnam War: one was how as an Asian cadet, he was hazed for being Vietnamese (even though he was actually Chinese) and the other was a mentor character, a junior officer, who was a thinly disguised young Norman Schwartzkopf. I highly recommend this novel, especially if you prefer fiction.
The second book is a non-fiction book that will break your heart. I wrote about it a few months ago on this same blog. In a Time of War: The Proud and Perilous Journey of West Point’s Class of 2002 (2008) by Bill Murphy, Jr. The Class of 2002 was the “Bicentennial Class” as West Point was founded in 1802. They were already cadets when 9/11 occurred, Firsties, in fact, and they did not know what they would be getting into after graduation. Almost immediately, as brand new second lieutenants, many of them found themselves in Iraq or Afghanistan, and then Iraq or Afghanistan again. If they didn’t get killed first, that is. This is a very hard book to read. I cried through most of it. I don’t want to ruin the story, but if you have loved ones deployed to either Iraq or Afghanistan right now, you might not want to read this book at this time. This is a very powerful, very moving book that talks about duty and honor and service and the realities of serving during wartime.
The final book, also non-fiction, is Soldier’s Heart: Reading Literature through Peace and War at West Point (2007) by Elizabeth Samet, a civilian English P at West Point. I found this book to be extremely moving, thoughtful, and well-written. When I first read it, I wanted to write the author, who is still an English professor at West Point, but I was too shy and embarrassed. I wanted to tell her what an amazing book I thought she had written. She was an insider who was really an outsider, or an outsider who was really an insider, depending on how you want to look at it. She brings a different perspective to West Point and the Army and the cadet experience, and she captures a lot of the spirit of what it means to be a cadet. My only qualms were that the cadets she wrote about seemed so much smarter and well read than any of us ever were! I think West Point is one of those places where the more things change, the more they stay the same, and cadets are basically the same kinds of young people they have always been: motivated, gung ho, naïve, innocent, overachieving, patriotic, and determined to do their best. (Which, at times, can produce a few who are cynical, jaded, and/or proudly underachieving.)
I really loved the way Samet could talk about literature and poetry and why they are important for soldiers. And how her cadets showed her how important literature really was in their lives, especially as they headed off for Iraq and Afghanistan. We don’t really think of soldiers as being thoughtful or thinkers or contemplative. We think of them as being readily obedient, doers, active, following orders, accomplishing the mission. Samet and her cadets show how it is possible to be both.
posted by delta at 9:38 PM
3 Comments:
I like your list of books about West Point. The ones I recommend most highly are: "Absolutely American" and Samet's book for a current profile of the place, and "Last in Their Class: Custer, Pickett and the Goats of West Point" by James S. Robbins for historical perspective.
Fred Bothwell
USMA '62
Thanks! I will have to check out "Last in their Class." I also like "The Long Gray Line" by Rick Atkinson (which takes a close look at the Class of '66) and "The Class of 1846: From West Point to Appaomattox - Stonewall Jackson, George McClellan, and their Brothers" by John Waugh. One of my favorite West Point writers is Pat Hoy (USMA '61); I love his book of essays, "Instinct for Survival." Although not specifically about West Point, it is a series of autobiographical essays that touches on growing up male in the South, West Point, soldiering, Vietnam, and masculinity.
This is a terrific post, whether for those with an interest in West Point in general or just in good fiction and non-fiction. I found Lipsky's book, "Absolutely American," riveting--in many ways it read like a novel--and recently read the Murphy book ("In a Time of War"). I found Lipsky to be a snappier writer with a great ear for dialogue, and I enjoyed the themes of transformation (not just of the cadets, but of he himself as a former skeptic of the military), but view Murphy's book as an important work. One cannot read it without gaining a better understanding of the toll the war in Iraq has taken on these young West Pointers -- Murphy does a nice job of showing their sacrifices and struggles without becoming pulled into a discussion of the wisdom of the war itself. I look forward to reading the Samet book, and thank you for the recommendation! A couple of additional books worth reading for those with an interest in the service academies are "A Sense of Honor" by James Webb, and "The Return of Philo T. McGiffin," by David Poyer -- both deal with the plebe year experience in the late 1960s at Annapolis, and both are well-written and engaging.
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