Too Many Heroes

I’ve ranted lately about the overuse of certain words to avoid directly stating the truth, obscure intentions or obfuscate agendas. Another pernicious form of word abuse is to use a word so often or out of context that it loses its meaning or renders ordinary an exalted concept.

Such abuse has been the fate of heroes. The word used to be reserved for those people who went so far beyond the normal expectations of courage and selfless action that no other appellation seemed adequate. Heroes were rare. But the hero bar has been lowered again and again over the decades, mostly by politicians eager to be solicitous of certain professions or groups, to the point where simply holding a particular job can qualify you for hero status.

Audie Murphy was probably the first Hero I remember my parents talking about. My father and uncles and other World War II vets told me about him anytime one of his movies came on Sunday afternoon TV. His combat exploits earned him a Medal of Honor, a Distinguished Service Cross, two Silver Stars and Purple Hearts by the basket. Here is a description of the fight that won him the Medal of Honor:

The next day, January 26 (the temperature was 14° F with 24 inches of snow on the ground), the battle at Holtzwihr, (France) began with Murphy's unit at an effective strength of 19 out of 128. Murphy sent all of his men to the rear while he took pot-shots at the Germans until out of ammunition. He then proceeded to use an abandoned, burning tank destroyer's .50 caliber machine gun to cut into the German infantry at a distance, including one full squad of German infantry that had crawled in a ditch to within 100 feet of his position. Wounded in the leg during heavy fire, he continued this nearly single-handed battle for almost an hour. His focus on the battle before him stopped only when his telephone line to the artillery fire direction center was cut by either U.S. or German artillery. As his remaining men came forward, he quickly organized them to conduct a counter attack, which ultimately drove the enemy away from Holtzwihr.

Now, all a soldier has to do is don the uniform and show up to be a hero. Not that soldiers don’t deserve credit for their service, but calling a soldier a hero because he’s in theater would have qualified millions of men in World War II for hero status. Nearly all of them would have rejected the notion outright, saying they were only doing their jobs. And they would be right.

Again and again I hear fire fighters and police officers called “American heroes” simply because that is their job. I agree that it is possible, given the situations in which their jobs can place them, that they have the opportunity to earn the accolade. But to call both the rookie who so far has done nothing but wash fire engines and a ten year veteran who has pulled a family out of a fiery house collapse heroes is to diminish the courage and dedication of the veteran. When everyone who slaps on a badge or drags out heavy fire hose is a hero, does the word say anything in particular about the person so described?

The speed of modern communications, social networking sites, 24/7 cable news and the monkey-see-monkey-do stenographers that have replaced real journalists, all contribute to the degradation of the language, diminishing the power and usefulness of words at a rapid pace. I suppose someday very soon a politician will need to flatter bloggers and news media in his own interest, glossing them as “heroes of the information age.” At that point, we can officially retire the word as having any meaning other than someone who does something.

Dark Days, Battle and Joy

I have started several posts in the last few days, too much time having gone by between posts, but ultimately, I trashed them all. My three readers are no doubt disappointed when I don’t get some new bit of “wisdom” up in a timely fashion. But all of those pieces came from a black place and had no business seeing the light.

The long and hard work of writing a novel has few moments of happiness. There are lonely days of work piled one upon another. Add to those the short, gray days of winter passing at a gloomy trudge, the ceaseless toil of farm life and a void my love life used to fill, and you have a prescription for melancholy. If allowed to bleed into my writing, the product is self-absorbed, depressing and unreadable.

The antidote for me is to find joy in the battle. You cannot know at the outset whether you will succeed or fail, so you must enjoy the fight. When I was an athlete, it was the competition that drove me. I would sometimes win, sometimes lose, but I always loved the struggle. I reveled in being pushed by my competition and in pushing back. We drove each other to improve, to perform at our best, win or lose. I do not remember individual wins and losses from decades of athletic competition, I remember moments of extending myself to my limit, one play, one movement at a time. It is the battle that stands out in my memory, not the outcome.

So I sit at the keyboard today prepared to engage my most feared opponent, a blank page. The contest will last an hour, perhaps two. Even at the end, I will not know if I have succeeded or failed. But I will know I have been in a fight. I will come out bloodied, but I will be able to stand up straight and say I fought with all I had. Win or lose, I will have that, always. And I will be better for it.

Happy Endings

I just finished reading Bernard Malamud’s novel The Natural. I saw the film adaptation starring Robert Redford some time ago and loved it, but I had never read the novel. The movie ends nothing at all like Malamud’s novel and the protagonist, Roy Hobbs, was changed dramatically for the movie. I liked the movie better.

Don’t get me wrong, Malamud’s writing is every bit as good as his reputation would suggest. He was worthy of all the accolades he received. And novels like The Natural have their place. The novel version of Roy Hobbs is obsessed with fulfilling later in life the destiny he believes was his due, that in his youth he was cheated out of by forces he didn’t understand. In the end the hero is felled by his own unquenchable ambition, bad choices, hard luck and harder acquaintances. By the end of the book he is broken, bitter and despised as a failure.

I don’t need stories like that. Some people do. I’m not one of them. The movie version allows Roy Hobbs to make up for his past arrogance and bad decisions. He gets one last chance to remake his life with a single swing of the bat. And he does. He still has to quit baseball, but he gets the winning homer, the adoration of the fans and, this time, the right girl. He gets redemption and a happy ending.

Malamud’s novel gives Roy Hobbs a fate much closer to what such a character would suffer in real life. Think Barry Bonds without the long career. But I get enough real life every day that I don’t need a great writer to emphasize the bad for me. Yes, in the real world, in almost all cases, once an asshole, always an asshole. (Again, see Barry Bonds) But there are those rare cases where people do change for the better. Against all odds and base human selfishness, someone does the right thing. We cling to stories like these for a reason. We need to be reminded that it can happen, that people can be good. We need to be reminded that we can change for the better.

One of my favorite movies is an adaptation of a Richard Russo novel, Nobody’s Fool. The protagonist is Donald “Sully” Sullivan, a ne’er-do-well, self-defeating carpenter who seems never to learn from his mistakes. In Russo’s novel, the character has under his crusty and cynical exterior a deep humanity that is finally allowed to surface. He renews a relationship with his estranged son and grandson. He is allowed to change just a little, enough to have hope. The novel’s end drags out far too long. After Sully’s story-long flirtations with a younger employer’s wife, his naïve notions of romance are revealed when he is shocked to find that his son has been sleeping with the woman. He is once again the fool, but now a fool with a family. An altogether mixed bag of an ending. And not all that happy.

Once more I like the movie better. The screenwriter crafts a dramatic ending that allows Sully a rough dignity, honor and one more chance to choose his better angels. He does. He chooses love without possessing, chooses friendship and loyalty over his own needs long unfulfilled. Sully gets to be a hero, albeit with a small ‘h.’ And I get to believe a little longer that I have that kind of small ‘h’ hero inside me. In the movie, Sully gets the happy ending he deserves.

Yeah, they are Hollywood endings. Perhaps it is naïve to believe that people can change, that redemption is possible. Maybe it’s even corny to want stories that perpetuate what are arguably myths. But I need these stories. I need to know, somewhere deep inside, that it is possible for me to change, that I can learn from my mistakes and someday overcome them. I need to think I can redeem myself. I need a happy ending.

The climactic scene in Second Hand Lions is one I will never forget. It inspires me to know that writers can create scenes like this one. A boy confronts his uncle, demanding to know if his uncle’s stories of high adventure are true. The uncle tells him it doesn’t matter. “Just because something isn’t true, that’s no reason a man can’t believe in it,” the uncle says. “Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most. That people are basically good. That honor, courage and virtue mean everything. That power and money, money and power mean nothing. That good always triumphs over evil. And I want you to remember this, that love, true love, never dies. . . . Doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. A man should believe in those things because those are the things worth believing in.”

And I believe in happy endings. Doesn’t matter if they happen in real life or not. It is a thing worth believing in.