Having read nary a word of Michigan history since the required 5th grade study of our great state (well, perhaps I am exaggerating just a tad), I decided it was high time I stepped over to the fantastic Michigan section of the Library to bone up. Yet as I stared at our long and quite overly stuffed Michigan shelf, the myriad spines began to look and feel a bit overwhelming. So I did what any wise reader would do and asked a librarian for help.
Specifically I was looking for a history that did not get bogged down in dates and details, an overview if you will and as a lover of literature, I wanted it to read like a story as well. Within a mere ten seconds of my query, I had the late Bruce Catton's "Michigan: A History" in my hand. Now I was a trifle skeptical at first as the book is a mere 196 pages and has an awful photo on the cover to boot but, knowing that it was penned by a fellow Petsokey-ite who had also happened to win the Pulitzer Prize, I cracked the cover anyways. And I was instantly hooked.
Just as I had hoped for, "Michigan: A History" does not dawdle too greatly on the details but instead traces the state's overarching themes and it does so in style. Catton is both a romantic and a great writer and these traits lead to a history that reads a bit like a ballet that utilizes one specific melody to tie together diverse movements. By this I mean that Catton, rather than simply describing the inhabitants and industry of each of the state's periods instead, posits the notion that the history of our state, and indeed our nation is based on a cycle of wholesale exploitation of apparently boundless resources, the inevitable let down when the resource of the time dries up, and the ingenuity that springs forth.
It is with this refrain that Catton is able to tie together the fur trade, logging, mining, the railroads, and the auto industry as well as all of the other economic, social, political, and environmental twists and turns of our beloved home. It is the cycle of boom and bust Catton claims, that ties us together as people and ties us to this state.
Altogether it is a fantastic and sometimes fanciful take on this wonderful place and it is for that very reason, that this was the perfect history for me.
The dawn of 2013 marked the twelfth consecutive year that our nation has been involved in violent conflict with another country. That is terribly depressing.
Even more depressing though, is the fact that like an endless monologue, this continuing violence has sometimes for me, I will admit, occasionally slipped into meaninglessness. And as terrible as violence of this magnitude is, that is not okay. Thus when something comes along and jars me out of the reverie that is everyday life and reminds me that there are those that have not, are not, nor never will enjoy such reverie again, I am thankful if always a little shaken. Kevin Powers book "The Yellow Birds" was exactly one of those things.
A veteran of the Iraq war, Power's "The Yellow Birds" has evoked a lot of praise and rightly so. The book tells the story of Pvt. Bartle, 21 years old, a true soldier, well trained and numb to the horrors he must accomplish. But it is also the story of Murph, a sensitive 18 year-old that Bartle has promised to keep alive, a promise that is broken. This death and death in general is not the focus of "The Yellow Birds" though. Instead, it is how Murph's death comes to be and how meaningless and meaningful death can be, that the story revolves around.
Yet the route to understanding is anything but straight as Powers jumps in time and place from the past to present, from Iraq to Virginia to Germany to New Jersey, and from deserts to deserted buildings to rooftops to dreamscapes to places we, as readers, do not want to go. And while this narrative style of pulling together fractured pieces sounds frustrating, it isn't. Instead, not only does it oh-so-perfectly match both the state of war and the state of our narrators head, but it serves to make the reader an active participant in both a story and a war that we might otherwise shy away from. All told, "The Yellow Birds" is a necessary jarring but is a jolt that is both lyrical and tragic like a
nightmare that is so vivid it is at once haunting and beautiful.
