Letter from Joseph Stalin to George Orwell

September 1949

Dear Comrade Orwell,

First, I would like to congratulate you on the impressive success of your novel, 1984. I obtained a copy of the book from one of my secret agents, who informed me that it is supremely popular in Europe right now. The young man managed to translate it into Russian for me, before I, unfortunately, had to have him executed. You see, the ideas in this book were too strong and corruptive to have them floating about in his young head. It will be necessary to eliminate anyone who currently resides in the Soviet Union who has been exposed to the book. I cannot risk a bold competitor using the ideas in this novel to overthrow me.
I must say, I love your invention, “Newspeak.” I have tried something like that in Soviet Russia but Russian is a much more beautiful and complex language than English. The three slogans you chose for the Party that decorate the face of the Ministry of Truth, however, I thought were wonderful and I am planning on stealing them and placing them all over the Soviet Union. “War is Peace” (page 4) will go far in helping my propaganda ministers in convincing the people that peace can only be achieved through the ruthless crushing of our enemies, and the deliberate and quiet infiltration of the West; and through hardship the proletarians suffer as our country works tirelessly to become a great industrial nation.
“Freedom Is Slavery” also pleased me greatly, for most of humanity is too stupid to rule itself. Only in blind allegiance to me, their Fearless Leader, can people be “free” to be entirely stupid. Which goes hand in hand with the concept of “Ignorance is Strength!”
I had Trotsky, that traitorous scum, erased from all photographs (as well as anyone else who offended my sensibilities), but it never occurred to me to show anti-Trotsky films. The way you described the People’s Enemy, Goldstein, was simply brilliant (Page 13). A few moments of good, solid Hating! That is what the people need. I have tried something like that in my show trials (it was much easier than you would assume, getting those idiots to confess to crimes they could not possibly have committed!); but I never considered using an actor to impersonate Trotsky committing violent crimes against society. “The dull rhythmic tramp of the soldiers’ boots formed the background to Goldstein’s bleating voice.” (page 13) Absolutely brilliant!
It had also never occurred to me to use video to terrify people, besides the obvious propaganda films, so that it becomes impossible for them to start a rebellion against me. I always went the way of phone-taps because it is untraceable, and much harder to start an uprising if people cannot speak to each other without the fear that their conversation is being heard and recorded. A closed circuit TV that has the ability to film the area in front of it while showing pro-Stalinist commercials and videos would be revolutionary. I must credit you with the idea, because without your “telescreens” it would have been hard to imagine. Although I must say, I would not allow anyone to turn them off, even if they were members of the “inner party” of the Soviet Union. I feel that is a flaw in your plotline. No sensible ruler of a country would risk having the people closest to him starting revolutions or attempting to take over his government, so allowing them the tiniest bit of freedom would be a cause for suspicion. If the person were truly a member of the inner party, what could he possibly have to hide? They should have no reason to turn off the telescreens, and if they did I would immediately have them sent away (in my case to Siberia to die in the work camps).
I do imagine devices resembling your telescreens would be more effective than wire-tapping. I plan on recruiting the best minds, like Albert Einstein, to come work for me in the near future. That will make manufacturing these telescreens much easier.
Unfortunately I have also yet to perfect the NKVD’s ability to infiltrate people’s minds and penetrate their deepest thoughts and secrets. My ultimate goal is to have a brainwashing center, similar to that of the Ministry of Love and Room 101. The cage containing the rats — Winston’s worst fear (Page 285) is something I will have to adapt to my peoples’ needs, because, come to think of it, Russians have grown so used to rats that they barely fear them at all. Nevertheless, when I have control and insight in to their minds, I will be able to present them with their greatest fear, until they break like twigs. I have tried psychics as a means of reading people’s minds, though this did not turn out to be effective. Psychics, I’m sorry to say, have no credibility as weapons of mass destruction either, though we were hoping to make strides in that area. They are much more effective as charlatans, or as workers in my Siberian camps. There were a few that seemed to have some sort of talent, but some of the things they said were too exact, so I sent them to Siberia too. I couldn’t have them reading my thoughts now, could I?
Lastly, I have an offer to make you. I’m sure you would be honored to come to work for me, as anyone would, and I have decided to offer you a job. If you come to the Soviet Union you could help me enforce and improve on the ideas that came to me because of your novel. I would make you Supreme Vice-President of Foreign and Internal Affairs, pertaining to your uncanny ability to understand the need to control the Soviet people and restrict their freedom. If you would kindly meet me in front of the Lubyanka building (it is a large yellow building, very hard to miss, on Dzerzhinksy Square) we could discuss your future in Russia. I have appointed various NKVD agents to post themselves around your home, in order to properly escort you to Russia. They will bring you to the Lubyanka, so there is no need to fret about directions.

Respectfully Yours,

Josef Stalin

I hate the way people look at me like I’m some sort of eye-candy, existing simply for their own pleasure. The worst was when I spent a summer in Mexico. Spain was almost as bad. Even in New York, they have no issue with whistling or making comments. I hate it. I don’t even understand why I get looks. I don’t find myself remotely attractive.

I kept this in mind as I swiped my student MetroCard as fast as possible to get through the subway turnstile. I hated the subway, the number of times I’d already gotten lost and scared out of my wits was too many to count, and I was still in my first month at a new school.

“Miss, come over here please.” My head snapped to the left, where two police officers were beckoning me over. The one calling to me was short, balding, blond, and close to forty. His partner was younger, tall and thin and Hispanic.

“Let me see your MetroCard, please,” the older one said. I gave him a questioning look, but removed my MetroCard form my wallet nonetheless.

“This is a student MetroCard.” It felt like an accusation, not a question.

“Sure.” I hoped my short, terse answer was enough of a hint. I couldn’t start yelling at a cop, “Stop checking me out, you old ugly fat pervert, just leave me alone.” I am incredibly sick of dealing with this, isn’t there enough going on?

“Are you a student?” His tone was laced with skepticism.

I don’t need your skepticism, and why the hell are you talking to me like I did something wrong? And my eyes are up here, idiot. I nodded at the policeman.

“What school do you go to?”

“Stuyvesant.”

“I need to see your ID.”

“Here.” I had to use all my self-control not to shove my ID in his face. He took a couple moments studying it, before handing it back to me.

“Oh. It is you,” he said.

I wanted to shout at him. Of course, you moron, it’s me. Who else would it be? I’m a freaking thirteen-year-old girl, for god’s sake. Because I’m a person with self-control, I decided that verbally attacking the police officer and his partner would not be the best thing to do. I would probably end up in a whole lot of trouble. So instead, I gave him a questioning look.

“It’s because you don’t look like you’re in high school,” the police officer’s partner said, his eyes roaming where they shouldn’t since he was, after all, a police officer.

I nodded, I mumbled a good-bye, grabbed my MetroCard, and walked toward the train. The Four or Five is usually relatively empty when I get on, seeing as this is one of the first stops in downtown Manhattan.

I got a seat in the corner of the train, one of the two person seats, as far away from everyone else as I could possibly get. I took out my book, Unbearable Lightness, by Portia de Rossi, Ellen DeGeneres’ eating disordered girlfriend, and started reading.

Two minutes later a man came and sat next to me. I have this problem with being close to strangers. It makes me incredibly uncomfortable and I attempt to shy away, but when there is no room I start getting frustrated and panicking. This is how I felt just then. I had no room to breathe. I attempted to re-focus on my book.

“Is that a Christian book?” he asked. Why do people talk to me?

“No.” I attempted a smile, and turned back to my book.

“Oh I was just thinking because of the title of the book, you know, it sounds Christian.”

I forced an awkward laugh. “Yeah.”

“Actually, there is this really good Christian book you should read, it’s called God’s Smuggler.” It took a lot of self-control to not stare at his prominent chin. This must be how people feel about my breasts.

“Thank you very much for the suggestion, but I’m not religious.”

“Oh, well you should read it anyway, or come to my church. Just to look around. It’s a great place. You don’t have to believe in God to come, just walk through and listen. It’s really great, there are granola bars and drinks handed out.”

“Thank you for the offer, but I don’t believe in organized religion. I think many religions take advantage of people and their weaknesses, and their need to believe in something. In my opinion people just invented God and Religion to make them feel better about themselves. People strive to understand the unknown and inventing religious pieces of work and saying God wrote it, gives them a purpose for their lives.”

He looks at me with curiosity. “But God is here for you. If you have faith He can help you so much.”

“If there is a God I highly doubt that he would waste his time helping me. He should be focusing on the millions of people around the world dying of starvation, or trying to stop wars that He started. The number of wars throughout history that have been fought over religion in the name of God is ridiculous. Do you really think that God would be up there in Heaven going, ‘Yeah, Hitler, you go, way to annihilate the Jews!’ What’s really ridiculous is how similar these religions are, they all stem from the same source, one of the oldest religions known to man is—“

“Christianity, right?”

“No, actually, lots of Sumerian legends were adopted by other civilizations throughout time. For example, the story of Noah’s Ark is found in The Epic of Gilgamesh. People read them and then some feel they should start their own religions, using the stories they have read but altering them slightly. For example, the Old Testament is largely the Torah. Then people have the nerve to say their religion is better than others!”

He kept nodding as if he was seriously listening to me, but I wasn’t so sure, because he still had that weird, happy smile on his face. “Yes, but that is no reason not to believe in God,” he said.

“Well, personally I have never experienced anything to make me believe there is a God. If you get me one hundred people from all different religions that have all seen God and they describe him the same way, I will believe you. But I have never seen any proof of there being a God, and people can’t seem to agree on what God is, so I don’t think he exists.”

“But you also don’t have any proof that He doesn’t exist.”

“Yes, but in my opinion that’s like you saying, ‘I am a millionaire,’ and me saying, ‘Do you have a million dollars?’ And you responding,‘Well I do not have any proof that I am a millionaire, but I could be a millionaire if I just believe.’ In this case I don’t think the thought process of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ works, it’s more like ‘false until proven true.’”

“I see where you are coming from, but I know I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for God—”

“THIS IS FORTY SECOND STREET GRAND CENTRAL STATION. THE NEXT STOP IS FIFTY NINTH STREET,” the monotone digital voice blasted through the train.

“I’m really sorry, but this is my stop, I have to go. It was very nice meeting you. I hope you achieve all you want in life, good-bye,” I said, smiling, grabbing my bag and heading toward the door while trying not to hit people in the crowded train.

“Good-bye, maybe I’ll see you in the future. I’ll pray for you.”

I barely heard him respond as the doors closed behind me, and the train got ready to speed down the tracks. I stopped and watched the train disappear into the darkness.

As I came up out of the subway station I passed a parked police car. The one in the passenger seat had his hand hanging out the window and pointed me out to his partner. He said, “No, that ain’t no Catholic schoolgirl outfit.”

No kidding, dude, do I look like a Catholic schoolgirl to you?

Family Sail Day Aboard the USN Destroyer Antietam

I grew up surrounded by writers. Not rich writers, but struggling, makes-five-thousand-a-year writers. There were a few wealthy ones, and some good stories, like the time I was at Peter Matthiessen’s house and his wife Maria showed me the perfect miniature replica of The Beagle that Kurt Vonnegut brought over to give to Peter, because Kurt was getting old and deep down he knew that once he was gone, his wife would never let Peter have it. These stories are priceless to some, but not to me. If I could I would sell them for a million dollars; that way I could finally have the lavish lifestyle I deserve.
My mother grew up in a fancy house in Paris with her rich and famous father, James Jones (who was also a writer). The only class my mother excelled in was English. She was not one for the fancy lifestyle, however, and when she grew up, she decided to live the life of a struggling writer, who spends her time helping other struggling writers, out of the goodness of her heart. Not for money. This is one of my biggest grievances, seeing as she married my father who is also a writer. My home is small and money can be tight, especially when the economy fails. When I was younger my mother told me, “You can be whatever you want. Except for an actress. Or a singer. And definitely not a writer.” Of course, at the time I found this just the funniest thing, but my mother was only slightly joking.
To me writing is just the symbol of how my parents decided to “follow their dreams” and I ended up without the newest gadget or gismo, therefore making me less popular with my peers. I know exactly what I want to be when I get older, and it is not a writer. I want to be a Surface Warfare Officer in the Navy. It may not bring in that much more money than being a writer would, but at least I will have my financial situation figured out completely. Also, I don’t think adults care as much about material items as kids do, and since I am not planning on having children any time soon, that does not bother me.
I must say that in my opinion I am not a fantastic writer, like my mother or grandfather; I must not have inherited the writer-gene. I am an awful poet, which is one of my many character flaws. I am not terrible at writing memoir essays, though I generally don’t enjoy it because the only topics I can write about while still being original tend to be depressing and make me burst into tears. I do like writing essays if I am interested in the subject I must write about, especially if it’s a book I really enjoyed. Or when I have to argue my point through a paper, which is enthralling and easy because I enjoy being right.
One of the main problems I have with my writing is that people tend to take my words at face value. I write like I am speaking to the reader (unless it is a specific essay, which calls for an invisible narrator) and I am a very sarcastic person. The problem is that I am unable to stress certain words, or be certain that the person reading my writing will read the words the way they sound in my head.

Kevin in San Pedro, Belize, July 1993

This was the first vacation we took together. I wanted to scuba dive in Belize. Kevin had never gone scuba diving before. In San Pedro, it took him three days to pass the PADI course. His first open water dive as a certified diver was The Great Hole, a famous dive site thousands of feet underwater, where you weave between ancient stalactites at 135 feet of depth — the maximum allowed by the PADI rules. I took this photo of Kevin in the evening, the day before our Great Hole dive. He wasn’t even worried. The nest morning, just before we fell backwards off the dive boat, my stomach was doing flips, heart pounding inside my chest. But Kevin was completely calm. During the dive, Kevin kept sinking below the 135 ft limit, perhaps a little giddy from the nitrogen levels, which divers call “rapture of the deep”; I reached over and pumped air onto his BC to level him out.

We’d known each other six months and it was this vacation that made us realize we were getting serious. He was willing to learn to dive for me. Was he thinking ahead to future vacations? What I see in his youthful face here is a kind of fearless questioning: are you the one? I think you’re the one. I can also see the pain of loss in his eyes. He’d lost his father much too young, just as I had — but more recently, his grandfather, an immigrant from Denmark who became a union leader.

Eighteen years later, here he is on the beach in Stone Harbor, NJ. The next day we were going upstate to see our only daughter Eyrna at sleep-away camp. I wonder what he’s thinking here. Is he wondering did we pack all the right things to take to our daughter?

Kevin in Stone Harbor, NJ, July 2011

Gone is his look of youthful ease. He hadn’t been sleeping well the last few nights. Neither had I. We hadn’t heard from Eyrna except for a ten-minute phone call once a week. Is he worrying about how she’s doing? Perhaps he’s thinking, as I often do, that in the 18 years we’ve been together, the stakes just keep rising, and we have more and more to lose.

Part of our Second Dan promotion test is to write an essay on What Earning A Second Dan Means to Me. Here is my essay.

There were a few things my Taekwondo instructor Mr. Bill Canegata told me before he died. One, was, “You’re a thinker. Thinking is what you do. So think. Stop beating yourself up for not being able to stop your mind. That is your talent.” Two, was, “Don’t quit martial arts, no matter what happens.” He was plugged into something I still hardly understand, as if he could clearly see the future — he knew my ego and big mouth would get me into trouble, which they did. I got into a battle of wills with my instructor who’d replaced Mr. Bill, forgetting for a moment that Mr. Sevilla is not only much stronger than I am, but also that he is my instructor. Walking home from the school in a blind rage, I decided to quit, but then I remembered what Mr. Bill had said and I changed my mind. Quitting was a perfect example of cutting off your nose to spite your face. Next day, I went back an apologized to Mr. Sevilla for losing my temper.

Working out doesn’t get easier as I get older. I turned 50 this year. One of the most important things I learned in preparing for this Second Dan test was that I had to stop beating myself up for not being able to compete physically against students who are half my age. Or for not being as flexible or in shape as Anna, my partner, whom I love and admire and who has been on this journey with me from the start. Anna had a moment herself where she wanted to back out of taking the Second Dan test. She was having trouble with the form, one of the only areas I wasn’t struggling. I talked her out of it and we worked on the form together for months and months, until we had it down tight.

My first impulse when I look at the video and photos of myself during the test is to only see what is not perfect, what is not right. I should have done better, I think. I forget, of course, that we were already 90 minutes into a grueling endurance workout by the time we got to the form. Notice the gentleman guiding us and judging our performance — Mr. Eric Anthamatten — a Fifth Dan Black Belt in Taekwondo, a brilliant mixed martial artist as well, and a PhD student in Philosophy. He teaches Philosophy in the prisons. If you look carefully you can see the five red stripes on his belt.

If you ever saw him practicing forms, you would think he can fly. I am barely able to get off the ground in my tornado kick. But, hey, at least I am able to do a tornado kick!

I was looking on line for a tailor or martial arts equipment store that could embroider two gold stripes for Anna and me onto the ends of our belts. Right now we have two strips of masking tape. Many of the internet forums stated that it was ridiculous to have stripes on one’s belt — if you need to prove you have a Second, Third, or Fourth Degree, then you probably don’t deserve it. Real experts can tell from watching you. Well, I’m 50, and I’ll never look like I deserve a Second Degree Belt. But I physically worked harder for this honor than I ever have on anything in my life. Those strips mean something profound and everlasting to me. They are a symbol of the fact that Anna and I didn’t let Mr. Bill down; they are a symbol that Mr. Luis Sevilla and Mr. Eric Anthamatten thought we deserved to be promoted.

When they get angry at us in class, they yell, “Pull yourselves together! You look like a bunch of 40 year olds!”

“Thank you, Sir!” we shout back.

The fear of failure, of being laughed at, of being a fool for having the hubris to even consider attempting this — all these feelings I had to wrestle with right up to the moment I started the test. Then, a strange calm overtook me. I prayed constantly, and I didn’t look at the clock once. (Mr. Sevilla, naturally, shouted things like, “Only two hours and forty three minutes left!”) But here’s what getting through this test gave me: the courage to face other fears, like my fear of heights. Two days after the test, I rode almost all the roller coasters at Six Flags, terrified the whole time.

My daughter Eyrna received her Second Degree Belt a year before I did. Well, she’s 13, and not plagued with bouts of paralyzing bronchitis (from 20 years of smoking) and aching bones and joints. Next summer, she and I are going to China for a month to study Kung Fu with the Shaolin monks. How many kids can say their moms did that with them?

It sounds like a cliche to say that martial arts have changed my life. I’m sorry, but martial arts have changed my life. I don’t for a second think I could get out of, say, a knife attack or a violent rape, but I think I would not give in easily. I think my only chance would be the element of surprise. Hopefully I would be able to hurt the bastard enough to make him think twice before he did it to someone else.

Kevin and I, good parents that we are, went on the 8th grade class trip to Six Flags amusement park. There is a girl in the class who hates my daughter. HATES her. This girl told Eyrna she’d stab her in the jugular with a knife if she could get away with it. I don’t know what makes children this angry in life, but I doubt Eyrna is the only cause of this girl’s anger. It doesn’t matter — my child is suffering at school. Since February, every day has been hell. She doesn’t want to go to school in the morning. She can’t sleep at night. Her closest friend opted out of this class trip to Six Flags, so Eyrna was pretty much on her own. We decided that we didn’t want her confronted by this situation in a theme park, with so few parents watching. So we decided to make ourselves available to join the small group of parent chaperones.

The kids had a half-day of school so they only had 3 hours in the park. We let Eyrna go off on her own, but I was anxious. After about an hour, she called me. I could hear the misery in her voice. Her one friend on the trip, P., did not like rollercoasters and P. kept getting phone calls from Eyrna’s enemy, urging P. to leave Eyrna and join her group. P. was about to leave Eyrna on her own. Eyrna had not gone on any roller coasters, though she wanted to. We’d bought her a FlashPass so she wouldn’t have to wait in the long lines, and now one of us would have to go with her. Kevin and I are both afraid of heights. But, hey, I passed my Second Degree Black Belt test last Saturday, I could do this. And Kevin is the kind of man who would suffer the rack for his child.

The first ride she wanted to go on, naturally, was the brand new Green Lantern. Just looking at the neon-green tracks soaring into large loops up into the white-hot sky made me want to barf. With the 2-person FlashPass, Eyrna and I were at the front of the line in less than five minutes. As we were standing behind the metal barriers waiting to board, a dark-haired boy standing next to us started up a conversation. He’d been waiting in the regular line for almost an hour. He was alone. His sister didn’t like rollercoasters. They were from Colorado, visiting his aunt. Would we mind if he joined us on the ride? Each row had four slots, where you were strapped in vertically, like a person about to get launched into outer space. Join us, I said, we’d be delighted. Eyrna blushed, slightly embarrassed. The ride practically gave me a coronary. Flipped upside down, side to side, loops, drops, everything you can imagine they would do to an astronaut in training. As we staggered off, I pulled out the FlashPass; I’m not stupid, I know what counts in an amusement park.

“Oh, wow, you guys got a FlashPass, you are so lucky!” the boy said. He had a handsome, open face, a charming smile. I could tell Eyrna thought so, too.

“Hey,” I said to the boy, “how about the two of you ride the next one without me? I don’t love these rides, I have to tell you.”

“Mom!” Eyrna said, laughing, “We don’t know him and he doesn’t know us!”

“What do you need to know? My name is S., I’m from Colorado Springs, I’m sixteen, I’m in ROTC, I have a sister. I’m going to join the Navy.”

“I’m going to join the Navy too,” Eyrna said. “I’m going to do NROTC in college.” He wanted to know what she intended to do in the Navy and she gave him some long, complicated explanation about Tomahawk missile defense. I stepped a little away, giving them room.

“Have you been on Nitro yet?” he asked her.

No, she had not. She looked at me. “Go,” I said, “Daddy and I will wait for you at the exit.”

Off they went, running, with the FlashPass in Eyrna’s hand. At the exit to The Green Lantern, Kevin was waiting, holding my bag and my bottled water. He wondered where Eyrna was off to in such a hurry. I told him we’d met a boy from Colorado on the ride and he was going to go with her on the next one — the dread Nitro.

“Thank God,” Kevin muttered. “I’d pay him to go with her so I wouldn’t have to.”

We followed at a distance and waited for them at the Nitro exit. With the FlashPass, they were out in less than ten minutes. A group of boys from her class passed by. “Eyrna! Hey, Eyrna! Who’s your friend?”

“A friend,” she replied lightly.

Their last ride before he had to go meet his aunt and sister was El Toro, an old-fashioned roller-coaster on a high wooden scaffolding that soared into the sky. Kevin and I waited down below and listened to the passengers scream on their plummeting descent.

When Eyrna and S appeared a few minutes later, her face was bright red and she was smiling.

The boy shook our hands and thanked us. He gave Eyrna a hug.

As the boy ran off to meet his family in the parking lot, Eyrna whispered to me, “Thank you, Mommy. This was one of the best days of my life.”

Sometimes we can’t help them, but sometimes we can.

There is yelling and screaming and fighting upstairs, but that’s a given. I’m seven, in my mother’s old bedroom from when she was a teenager. I can hear my grandmother screaming at my mother, reprimanding, lecturing, as if my mother is sixteen again. My grandmother is offended that my parents think she can’t run her house anymore. “Get out of my house and never come back,” my grandmother shouts. “We’re finished.”

My mother is yelling back, while my dad attempts to calm her down. I know they love me, they all do. But it doesn’t help. My parents rush in, both disconcerted. I can’t tell if my mother is about to break down in tears, or throw something. I’ve never really seen my father upset, or ever cry. But he has a look of sorrow on his face. He gets our bags and starts to pack. I’m nervous.

“We have to go,” my mother says, bending down in front of me. “She said we have to leave.”

“No.” I don’t want to leave.

“Yes. Now.”

“No, no, no, no! She’s joking. She’s just kidding. Please, Mommy.” What I’m really scared of is that if we go, if my Grammy throws us out this time, I will never see her again.

“She isn’t joking.” My mother turns away. Going to her bag, shoving her clothes in, as well as mine, frantically.

“I’ll go start the car,” my father says, walking out the door, bags in hand.

“No, Daddy, she’d never make us leave. Daddy, stop. We’re staying.” It’s my last desperate plea for us to stay. By now I have tears streaming down my face. My grandmother walks in, glares at my mother, then takes me by the hand into the vast living room. There are wine bottles littering the pulpit bar.

“You are the best child in the world! Much better than your mother ever was. I have never loved another child as much as I love you,” she says to me. I inhale the strong smell of alcohol and cigarettes on her breath. “You don’t have to leave. I want you to stay. Your parents are who I’m kicking out. I love you. Stay with me.”

My mother is suddenly standing behind me. “Mom, you can’t do that. You cannot put her in a position to choose. She’s seven. And you can’t put me in that position either. It’s not your place, I’m her mother, I decide what’s best for her.”

My mother takes me by the hand, walks me through the enormous house, through the yard, and out to the car. The two-hour drive from the Hamptons to New York City passes in a blur of tears.

My relationship with my grandmother was a complicated one. When I try to remember what our relationship was like, nothing comes to mind. I remember the places, like the dark bar where she used to take me for lunch; or sitting in the front seat with her at Carvel’s, eating a vanilla cone with sprinkles; or the Bratz and Barbie aisle at the toy store. I see it like a story in my head, from above. I see the fat little kid and the faceless, silver-haired grandmother. I don’t remember her, or the things that she would say, or the way she would treat me. She’s like a character, mingled with the views of what other people’s opinions of her were, misshapen and contorted. The only problem is I can’t go back and reread the book to form my own version of it.

This incident when my grandmother threw my parents out of her house was the first time my parents realized she was no longer sober. She spent the next few years in various hospitals, until she finally died, two years later. But at that moment she was alive, and healthy. Well, as healthy as an old raging alcoholic could possibly be, while also being blind drunk. Turns out that wasn’t the first time my parents had been thrown out of her house. She threw them out the day after their wedding, too.

Read the rest on The Huffington Post’s Books Page.

By the way, Gina Misiroglu of Red Room put me in touch with the AOL people, which is one of the great ways she’s bringing traffic to Red Room and getting attention for Red Room’s authors.

Our father was 24 years old in 1943, when he decided he wasn’t going to fight anymore. He was disgusted and enraged by the army’s red-tape bureaucracy, by the fact that when the wounded soldiers came home from the war, they were treated badly and without respect. He went AWOL several times, until they threw him in the stockade. When asked by an army psychiatrist why he was acting this way, he said he’d killed an emaciated Japanese soldier in hand-to-hand combat on Guadalcanal and he never intended to kill anyone ever again. If that made him crazy, then so be it. The army finally discharged him as unfit for duty in 1944, and gave him a pension. When FROM HERE TO ETERNITY was published in 1951, the army took his pension away, because they decided that anyone who could write a book couldn’t be all that crazy.

We have the letters he wrote to his editor at Scribner, Burroughs Mitchell, fighting and arguing to keep every f-word and c-word; every reference to homosexual sex; every scene of masturbation, in FROM HERE TO ETERNITY – and more often than not, he was overruled. What he cared about was depicting the reality of life in the pre-war army. The US Postal Service would not ship the book if it contained “prurient” language or scenes. His response to his editor was: “The things we change in this book for propriety’s sake will in five years, or ten years, come in someone else’s book anyway, that may not be as good as this one, and then we will kick ourselves for not having done it, and we will not have been first with this … and we will wonder why we thought we couldn’t do it. Writing has to keep evolving into deeper honesty, like everything else, and you cannot stand on past precedent or theory, and still evolve … You know there is nothing salacious in this book as well as I do. therefore, whatever changes you want made along that line will be made for propriety, and propriety is a very inconstant thing.”

My brother and I have wanted to publish an uncensored, unexpurgated version of the original manuscript for a long time, and Open Road Media‘s enthusiasm and energy for the project matched ours. Over the last few days this new edition has gotten a good deal of attention in the press — in The New York Times; on BBC News; and Perez Hilton‘s site.

My father believed that there has been and will be homosexual sex in the armed forces since armies have existed, which means, pretty much since men figured out how to band together and club each other on the head. He didn’t think it was a big deal and wanted people to be open and honest about it. He also believed that who a person likes to sleep with is hardly the point when you are lying in a foxhole with the enemy advancing upon you; what matters is if the person will stay cool and focused under fire. He didn’t see much progress in this area in his life time.

There are also sections of a novel of his that never was published, a first attempt, that we are going to release to the world. It is called TO THE END OF THE WAR. His scenes of the home front in 1943 are unlike anything else I’ve ever read. The soldiers, recovering from their wounds in a Memphis army hospital, are steeling themselves to be shipped back out overseas. They all know they’re being sent to England to prepare for the invasion of Normandy. They also know they don’t stand a chance of surviving this time. Some of their wounds are very serious, but the army doesn’t give them a break. And they are changed, psychically broken in some fundamental way. They can’t sleep at night, and would rather be back in the jungle with their old outfits, but their old outfits don’t exist anymore. They’ve kept track of everyone, and everyone is KIA, MIA, or transferred. The civilian population likes its heroes, just as long the heroes don’t act out, or talk too much, or need too much attention. So the soldiers learn to put on fronts, to wear the mask the world wants them to wear. My dad understood so much about human nature at such an early age, I can hardly believe it. There is only one writer I can think of who got this and took it a step further – Tim O’Brien, in THE THINGS THEY CARRIED. In his book, it’s the narrator who puts on the fronts, who lies, who tricks us, the readers, all in order to show us that there is no way in hell we, as civilians, will ever understand war.

I clicked on the image of my father, and began to listen to him talk. It was such a shock to see my parents so young, beautiful, rich, at the prime of their lives. I started wondering if I’m who I think I am, or some twisted projection of who I really was meant to be. After a few minutes I had to turn it off. I was afraid. I was afraid of discovering things I didn’t know about my dad. He died when I was so young (16) that we never discussed many of the topics he brings up here.

After sleeping like a person in a coma last night, I went back to the documentary this morning and watched it the whole way through. By the end of the third part, it’s late at night and my parents are at a dinner party and they’re both completely drunk. My dad is talking about his childhood, of being alone. About his Puritanical grandfather, a tea-totaler who was half Cherokee and raised his sons with iron-fisted harshness. “He destroyed his sons,” he’s telling his great friend, Jessie Wood, so beautiful, so young here. Then, my dad starts yelling at the poor editor of TIME Magazine, who looks perfectly baffled and stunned, and not nearly drunk enough for this onslaught. What my dad is saying is true, though. But what finally comes out is this pure, unadulterated rage at the injustices of the world. My God, through the whole documentary he is building to this — this explosion of rage. Again, I had to turn it off. And my mom in the background yelling, “You tell ‘em, Jim!” Now, I recognize her. I recognize that unfocused look, that turn of the head. She’s so drunk she’s slurring. But … what he’s saying is true. The US always backs fascist dictatorships when they ‘help’ with a coup. True. And he thinks TIME Magazine defends the government’s choices. I feel sorry for the poor TIME guy. Oh, no worries, he’ll get my dad back with the next horrible review. I can see it in his face.