As a young
adult, I lived continuously subject to the possibility of military induction;
in fact, I had avoided being drafted only by enrolling in college and receiving
a student deferment. Deferment of my anxiety regarding life and war took a bit
longer.
The war in
Korea, what then-President Harry S Truman characterized as “a police action,”
had ended; nevertheless American involvement in Asia was pronounced as the
Chinese on the mainland harassed rebellious exiles by shelling the offshore
islands of Quemoy and Matsu in the Taiwan Strait (the fact that I retain the
names of two remote Asian islands suggests my anxious consciousness at that
time). And my nation at the time was led by a decorated war hero, former Gen.
Dwight David “Ike” Eisenhower.
At the
prospect of becoming a military man, as both of my older brothers had, I
steeped myself in popular literature about war. In a relatively brief period of
time, I read Audie Murphy’s heroic autobiography, To Hell and Back. In serial fashion, I read a handful of war
novels, most of which had been turned into films: From Here to Eternity, Battle Cry, Away All Boats, The Caine Mutiny,
The Young Lions, and, in a lighter vein but decidedly militaristic, Mister Roberts.
Most of my
reading was done as a commuter aboard the Sixth Avenue Independent Subway Line of
New York City, which probably accounts for my affinity for noisy reading
places. I rode the subway daily for more than an hour each way getting to and
from the Bronx campus of New York University, and later to a job near Columbus
Circle in Manhattan, and still later to another job in Long Island City in
Queens and simultaneously as an evening student at Pratt Institute in
Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill neighborhood.
This
passionate reading coincided with my evident identity crisis as a young man
suddenly introduced to the rigors of college, the demands of employment, the angst of independence from home, the fear
of war, and my quest for God—who met me about the same time via my inquisitive reading
of the New Testament.
Only on
much later reflection did I sense the reading of war novels and biographies
provided me with vicarious maturation of the kind that shows in veterans of war
who return to college and civilian responsibility from a harrowing battlefield.
Simply put,
I fought my personal wars while riding and reading aboard a New York City
subway, winning some, losing several, but always finding strange strength in
reading of others’ struggles with their enemies and demons.
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