The best books that show a man is no more, or less, than the sum of his choices

James Jones's brilliant debut novel must have had a great effect on me because I admit, in many ways, my book covers the same ground – how does a man maintain honor and dignity when constrained to live his life by the choices of other, and much more powerful men? I suppose the difference between our two themes is that the question in my book is about those same choices but wrapped in the question of race. Jones’s characters, while in the military, were dealing with personal issues. My Corporal Buck is dealing with an issue about which all of America is on fire.

From Here to Eternity is 70 years old. I read it in 1969, an eternity ago and it has lasted with me from there to here.  When I was in the Marine Corps I knew everything that was happening to me. But I didn’t know what it meant. It has taken me most of a lifetime to come to understand. If my novel helps one man come to understand his own demons of struggling to match his morals against the demands of his world, then I will have given a worthwhile gift. But if he merely enjoys watching someone else play it out, that will be enough.

I think, in truth, that while I love the translation, it is really Homer and the understanding he has given me of the society that came to create all we think of as “Western Thought.” Odysseus was a man from whom I have learned much about being a man. Alone, cut off from all his companions he struggled for ten years and against obstacles thrown at him by the gods – ok, one god – armed with only his wit, cunning, and courage. And no matter what was thrown at him, he struggled and never gave up. And in the end his perseverance led him to be wrapped in the arms of all his loved and held dear.

As a teenager Alexander, to become The Great, is given to one of his father’s warriors – Telamon – to go on a life-threatening winter wolf hunt. A risk of building character and spirit his father is willing to take.  Later in life, during Alexander’s conquest, Telemon never wishes to rise above a colonel’s rank. He wants to remain in the midst of the fighting.  

When Alexander finally departs India to end his conquests Telamon leaves him to go off with a group of monks. When Alexander asks why that choice Telamon responds, “I schooled you as a boy Alexander, to be superior to fear and anger. You vanquished hardship and hunger and cold and fatigue. But you have not learned to master your victories. These hold you. You are their slave.” What more can a man learn from a book?

As for my liking this book, Pressfield is one of my favorite authors and this one of my favorites among his books. Why? How does any man who states that what defines a man is his choices not like a book where one of the lead characters is transformed, transformed from a man who is transformed from one who wishes to conquer other men to one who wishes to conquer himself.

Valdez is a humble and quiet Hispanic living in a Texas border town in the 1870s. When a hand riding with the most powerful rancher in the valley inadvertently kills a man, Valdez assumes responsibility of asking the rancher to pay a remittance to the widow. For his trouble he’s beaten almost to death. When he recovers Valdez becomes again the man he was in his youth, a US Army scout and sets out to destroy the rancher.  He kills one of the ranches thugs with a shot at 1,000 yards.  

Valdez is finally captured by the rancher’s hands. The foreman looks at Valdez’s rifle and, knowing what he’s seeing, asks, “Buffalo hunter?” Valdez responds, “No, Apache.” The foreman asks, “When?” Valdez’s response marks him as a man who has learned and earned wisdom. “Before I knew better.”

If you wonder why this book has stayed with me for so many years, read my opening statement and Jordon Peterson’s comment. Valdez is a man who was of violence but has come to conquer his own emotions and become a man of quiet stillness. But that does not mean he does not know how to fight. He does that as well as knowing when.

James Clavell’s first book, King Rat, is the story of allied servicemen trapped by the Japanese in Singapore at the beginning of World War II and held captive for the duration in the infamous Changi prison. The captured consisted of some 10,000 men made up of a British regiment, a few Australian companies, and one small American platoon. After three years of brutal, virtually starvation conditions even the British Commanding General was reduced to a uniform of nothing more than rags. Only one prisoner, an American Corporal, had lost no weight, wore a freshly pressed uniform and spit-shined shoes every day. With physical courage and an understanding of human weaknesses and breaking points he dominated all the other prisoners and many of the guards as well. When the camp was liberated he was the only man among the survivors who left without one friend. Why? The key to both his dominant position and his complete human isolation was the same. His choices.

Watching two men who come from very different worlds – a patrician Englishman and a man who grew up tough in Brooklyn, make choices that not only bring them together but keep them alive in some of the harshest circumstances a man is called on to bare – what could be a more exciting adventure than that.