An American Requiem

by James Carroll

  The earth had opened under me, my personal abyss. I was staring in. Yes, I saw the bombs. Yes, I saw the war-induced end of the world. Yes, I saw the doom of history. I saw it all in the death of my father. War had come down to war between us. I saw the lesson of it clear: we both lost. Every ounce of abstraction has been purged from what war means to me, what war does, what it is. No one wins. Victory is impossible. Victory is meaningless. Victory is a lie. Victory is another name for murder. And that is why, as a citizen of a nation still hell-bent on achieving victory, I am and always will be nervous, afraid—a desperate father, a permanent pacifist. The broadly political is always personal for me. And always religious. Doubt is at the heart of my faith, as objection is at the heart of my loyalty. Such is the structure of my patrimony, my curse and blessing both. But it is a patrimony I wish I could have given him: a father and a son at war—but at last this way to see us not at war. I have this story to tell about the two of us, and he never did. The story is a victory over the need to be victorious. These have been my words, but it was his life that gave me mine. At last I have this belief from him: in despair is the beginning of hope, not the end, which is why this particular war was holy, and why this story is sacred.

  My father was dead. A fallible man. A noble man. I loved him. And because I was so much like him, though appearing not to be, I had broken his heart. And the final truth was—oh, how the skill of ending with uplift yet eludes me—he had broken mine.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I want to acknowledge editors who have helped bring this story into focus. I first wrote of my history with the FBI for Padraig O'Malley of The New England Journal of Public Policy, and of my childhood connection to the Pentagon for Steve Pearlstein of The Boston Observer. I wrote of my first sermon for David Rosenberg, editor of Communion, published by Anchor/Doubleday. A version of that essay is reprinted here with permission. Some aspects of this story inspired my novel Memorial Bridge, which Joseph Kanon edited. Jack Beatty of The Atlantic Monthly expertly drew segments of this book together for excerpting in that magazine. Over nearly four years I have told small parts of this story in my weekly column for the Boston Globe, where my editors have been Kirk Scharfenberg, Loretta McLaughlin, H.D.S. Greenway, and Marjorie Pritchard. My friend and agent Don Cutler, as always, gave me crucial support. The manuscript editor Larry Cooper helped improve the text. Friends who read early drafts were Tom Kennedy, Bernard Avishai, Tom Winship, Howard Zinn, David Killian, Paul Lannan, John Kirvan, Sissela Bok, and Bob Baer. My brothers Joe, Brian, Dennis, and Kevin were the first to read this book, and the first to affirm it. My editor Wendy Strothman made my work possible at the beginning and at the end. My wife, Lexa Marshall, enabled me to write this book, and our children, Lizzy and Pat, gave me a compelling reason to do so. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you all.