Starvation and Lunacy" — which have a clear meaning in its title, but to describe most of what is in the volume is simply impossible. It’s also hard to say it is only about a certain region of China. It is also not just about China, for it is relevant to anybody who lives in the West — from Europe to North America to Australia. It is about life in our hyper-consumer culture, the loss of common sense, the loss of meaning and of human fellowship. I suspect that the author had some sort of breakdown. On the other hand, why should you break down because your country and the world is going crazy? He has seen enough and has enough brains not to waste his days in the dark dungeons of nihilistic solipsism. He has seen enough to realize that the world cannot be saved by the governments and the religions. "The first rule of politics is you can’t save people from anything," he says. He has seen enough to know that it is not only the West that has lost its mind, but China as well. "China is just as bad as the West," he says, "worse in some ways." He has seen enough and has found enough of his own sense of humor in enough of this nonsense to try to make something that we can all laugh at — if not yet laugh about. Perhaps, if I have done him an injustice, he would agree that my only sin is that he is so much smarter and funnier than I am. He certainly makes me look sillier in comparison. But since so much silliness is out there in the blogosphere, I am just one among many. I am just one among many who is trying to find my way. "It was the season for the big war in South Vietnam, but I was not inclined to pay any attention to the latest round of reports that the Viet Cong was massing for something big." (p. 14) This comment is in no way an endorsement of the policy of the U.S. military command, which saw Vietnam as an "emergency" situation that required the dispatch of large numbers of American troops for the express purpose of protecting American commercial interests in Southeast Asia. My point here is that the narrator (unlike many Americans) took the position that it was up to the Vietnamese to resolve their own problems and problems that were not necessarily caused by the actions of Americans. [T]he narrator’s father had given up his medical practice when his son was a child because the State Farm Association offered more compensation. "That was not in itself an unusual occurrence, as people who chose to quit or were compelled to quit were in great supply in the medical profession at that time. It was a time of great affluence, so it was natural for the profession to be in a bad way. It would not take more than one or two good years to bring about the turnaround, though, so I was not unduly worried. I just felt lucky that my father, who had started out a poor immigrant from Hungary, with barely a dollar to his name, had managed to set up a clinic. He had worked harder than anybody I ever saw, and I knew he loved it. To be honest, I hated it, but he loved it and it had worked for him." (pp. 18-19) Narrator A sees his father as both the victim and as the symbol of all that was good and right and just. Not one of the heroes of American imperialism — no matter how bad a hand the U.S. military might have been dealt by the Vietnamese and by history. It is only natural that he should have an ambiguous attitude about the Vietnam War. He was, perhaps, more interested in the problems of the world than those of Vietnam. The son has no love for the father. He wants to see the father break. He was not happy with the son, but that is another matter. The father made him what he was. There is no doubt about that. But it was his own sense of integrity and self-reliance that kept him in Vietnam. He did not want to be a hero, but he had to see what was happening there. (p. 20) What exactly was the young man’s "sense of integrity and self-reliance"? If I have to read the name of the book to understand the book, then, whatever that book is about, the title does not even deserve to be taken seriously. I have mentioned earlier in these posts about how this narrator had something of a breakdown at the end of his long tour of duty in Vietnam. That was a time when he started looking at things in an entirely different way, when he even started to take action by becoming an independent consultant. "When I returned from Vietnam I decided I was done with the army and I wanted to do something else. I could not get through graduate school, and I decided I didn’t want to. All those people out there who wanted a graduate degree and didn’t have one? They had no heart. I did not want any part of that. Some people went on to law school or into medicine, which was good for them because they didn’t need to do anything else, but I had a different destiny. So I got out. I went into consulting and made a lot of money. I was married by that time and I had kids, so I could do it. I was the one who made the sacrifice. I did it for the kids, really. When you come home from Vietnam you are ready for anything. You have no idea what you want to do. It may be the worst thing in the world, but that is what you have to do. You don’t know what your fate is until you have a little time to think about it. I was in no hurry. I figured I would figure things out. I knew from Vietnam that the war was not going to be over. I knew the Vietnamese were not going to surrender. I knew a lot of other people were not going to surrender. I knew this was not an emergency, but I knew it would go on for a long time. I figured I would figure it out later, because the real business of my life was not war. It was family, and money, and having a life." (p. 23) The narrator clearly does not want to continue to be associated with his fellow Americans who sent him to Vietnam. So he goes to work for the enemy — which he regards as a kind of necessary evil. "If you want to find out who your enemies are you have to do your best to look for them. If you don’t know who they are you can be led around by the nose like a baby by the strings of destiny that lead you back to your home." (p. 29) So when he gets out of Vietnam he is not going to go back to anything that looks like the normal life he knew before he went to Vietnam. He is going to try to find out what his destiny is and whether it is the same as the destiny of the people in Vietnam. So he is more interested in the world and his fate than in some of the things the country might have to offer him. "I did not miss the war," he says, "but there was no denying that it had changed my life." (p. 29) You are one of many whose "war experience" was a total waste of time and money. You may be even one of many who went to Vietnam and who came back to the U.S. who was so disgusted with the situation that you had no real purpose or direction in your life. Or you may be one of those who is still wandering about, looking for your identity. Not sure which one you are, or if you are even sure you have read enough of my books to know exactly what kind of a response I want from you. Maybe you are one of those who wants to have their cake and eat it too. "At the start of my life I was too young to be concerned about my future, and then it happened and I never felt comfortable with it." (p. 41) You see, we’re all a little bit crazy when we’re young. Or we might have lost something somewhere. Or we might have taken an "ethic course" like a course in philosophy which is supposed to help you find out what is going on in the world and in human history. You might have been the same age that I was. So I know about it. I know about your kind of crazy. The same sort of crazy that you’ve come across over and over again. You were looking for your identity and you were not sure how to go about it. "I guess I was lucky in that nobody picked me up on any street corner and said ‘you are an innocent kid.’ Maybe my lack of innocence was exactly why I ended up in that world. At any rate I had nothing to complain about and nothing to be ashamed of. I was able to understand myself from an early age, and that included being born in the United States. I never felt that my life was a mistake. In fact, it was rather extraordinary and that is why it got me involved in what was happening. But that does not mean it was a good thing." (p. 42) "At the start of my life I was too