FP: In his review of your novel in Pajamas Media, Mike Finch notes that the decade you are discussing “transcends time.” Your novel is very much about that. Kindly enlighten us as to your perspective and intended meaning here.
Barager: If indeed the era I have written about in the novel seems to transcend time, I think it is due not to anything particularly unique about the era in the grand scope of human history, but rather because the motivations of human beings throughout all of history have changed very little. Equality and liberty, honor and shame, and tragedy and redemption are universal concerns, and can be used in a dramatic way to illuminate timeless issues and timeless truths. As Charles Hill has written in his book Grand Strategies: Literature, Statecraft, and World Order, “Literature’s freedom to explore endless or exquisite details, portray the thoughts of imaginary characters, and dramatize large themes through intricate plots brings it closest to the reality of ‘how the world really works.’” In other words, sometimes only fiction can reveal the truth—of any era.
FP: What did the Sixties mean to you personally and what is the legacy of the 1960s in your view? David Horowitz and Peter Collier have called it, in the title of their seminal book: a Destructive Generation. In what ways do you see it that way—or not see it that way?
Barager: The Sixties for me were bipolar: I loved the music and fashion and movies and liberalization of sexual constraints, but was profoundly disturbed by the assassinations, race riots, and antiwar demonstrations—and by the creeping suspicion that the America I had been born into was under assault and might not survive.
The legacies of the Sixties are many: The Voting Rights Act of 1965 and Civil Rights Movement; Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and its no-strings-attached welfare benefits that created a permanent underclass; The Generation Gap between the Baby Boom generation and their parents of the Greatest Generation; lasting changes in American pop music and pop culture; Vietnam—a disaster for all concerned; the Sexual Revolution and the Pill, which paved the way for women to enter the workforce in large numbers and irrevocably altered traditional family life; landing a man on the moon; and finally, political activism—on the Left and the Right, as dramatized in my novel, with the activists of the New Left going on to dominate academia, the arts, and media, and the activists of the New Right giving rise to the Reagan Revolution, talk radio, and the Tea Party.
I see the New Left of the late Sixties much as described in Destructive Generation, as harmful nihilists, but the majority of Baby Boomers were not part of the New Left, and many of them went on to create and do wonderful things—and many of them honorably sacrificed for their country by serving in Vietnam. So I would not tar my entire generation as destructive.
FP: The antiwar movement was responsible for the communist victory in Vietnam and it paved the road for the subsequent mass genocide in Indochina. And the leftists who pretended they cared about the Vietnamese and Indochinese people stayed silent while the boat people died in shark-infested waters in the South Pacific and in the re-education camps that the communists set up. They remained indifferent and apathetic while Pol Pot massacred millions of Cambodians, a genocide that would never have occurred if America could have saved Vietnam from communism. What do you think of the Left’s role and behavior in all of this looking back?
Barager: I have a patient who came in to see me not long ago for care of his kidney transplant. He is Vietnamese and was tortured in one of the re-education camps you mentioned before escaping to America as one of the boat people. He came with nothing, put himself through college, and is now a well-paid engineer for a software company and a loyal American citizen. After concluding our medical visit, I told him I had written a novel about America in the late 1960s and proceeded to haul out a copy to show him. He looked at the cover, which as you know is an image of a peace sign with a pair of dog tags interlaced throughout it, and jabbed his finger over and over at the peace symbol.
“That why we lost the war! Right there! I hate that!”
North Vietnam could never have prevailed, he said, if America had remained engaged, as we did in Korea in confronting communism there.
My novel, of course, deals directly with this, as pointed out by Booklist magazine, the official review journal of the American Library Association, in its book review of Altamont Augie: “…And while his praise of the conservative movement may strike some as being to rosy, the portrayal of the hypocrisy, privilege, and bloodlust that drove many leftist movements of the time is striking…”
FP: Can you share with us a bit about your own personal journey while writing Altamont Augie? Was it easy, hard? Was there a catharsis or closure of any kind? A re-inspiration? Perhaps a changing of mind or heart…or a beginning of something new? Were there any surprises you did not expect? Did the characters follow your direction—or disobediently take on a life of their own?
Barager: In choosing to explore the Sixties, I felt a special obligation to give voice to the anguish felt by tens of thousands of GIs upon their return home to America. This snippet from the Midwest Book Review’s take on my story tells me I succeeded:
“Altamont Augie is a fascinating read of the harsher conflict of words on the home front and what they meant to the soldier.”
Writing this story was deeply emotional for me, so I am not surprised when it is described as “passion-filled,” “moving,” “intense,” or “gripping.” One of the things I did to prepare myself to write David’s story was to review hours of audio interviews of veterans who fought at Khe Sanh, the battle featured in my novel. Listening to their unassuming, modest voices was a profoundly humbling experience for me, and an uplifting one. I also conducted a series of face-to-face interviews with Khe Sanh veterans, including the company commander of the rifle platoon David was inserted into and a staff sergeant who not only fought at Khe Sanh, but was also a drill instructor at Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego at the time my lead character would have gone through boot camp there. By the time David got into the thick of things at Khe Sanh, I had thoroughly bonded—in my mind and in my heart—with the men of 1/26 Bravo Company. And remain so: they invited me to this year’s Khe Sanh Veterans Association annual reunion.
But this is more than just a soldier’s story; it is about those who protested the war, too. It was through Jackie that I came to emotionally understand the antiwar movement David found so incomprehensible. And it was her character that surprised me the most. The more I got to know her and inhabit her the more naturally her scenes developed, until the things she did and said seemed to be the only possible things she could have done or said at that particular juncture. I had a great sense of purpose in writing David’s scenes, but I had great fun in writing Jackie’s. David loved her because he couldn’t help but love her, and neither could I. The second half of the book is Jackie’s story as much as David’s and she matches him scene for scene.
FP: Are you proud of and satisfied with the outcome? Your reaction to the responses you are receiving?
Barager: With the possible exception of Madame Bovary, there is no such thing as a perfect novel, so I am mindful of how hard I will need to work to improve my craft.
But that aside, I am very proud of Altamont Augie and gratified by the emotional impact it has had on readers and by the critical success it has enjoyed with reviewers. The feeling I get when readers email me to tell me how much the book affected them is not unlike the feeling I get from caring for patients with kidney failure: the incomparable high of having impacted a human life in a positive way. It is a feeling one can become addicted to.
FP: Richard Barager, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview. And thank you for writing this masterpiece that means so much to so many.
