{"id":6984,"date":"2008-08-04T22:40:14","date_gmt":"2008-08-04T22:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/04\/in-bad-decline\/"},"modified":"2008-08-04T22:40:14","modified_gmt":"2008-08-04T22:40:14","slug":"in-bad-decline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/04\/in-bad-decline\/","title":{"rendered":"In Bad Decline"},"content":{"rendered":"\u23f3 Approximate reading time: <\/span> 3<\/span> mins<\/span><\/span>

If you bumped into me on the sidewalk or in the hallway, I might have
\nmentioned that the visit—<\/font>now one month ago—<\/font>to
\nGettysburg on the Fourth of July was, um, thought-provoking in all sorts of
\nunanticipated ways.  The places—<\/font>war
\nmemorials, battlefields, and the famous cemetery—<\/font>struck
\na chord with me. I was intrigued by being there<\/i>.  But I thought some
\nof the re-enactment stuff was odd—<\/font>odd dialed
\nbeyond historical fetishism and into a new range of fantastical dress-up geekery.  I
\nrecovered and was more or less
\ngranted amnesty, I think, for what was a glaring foot-in-mouth moment during which I
\ncompared the degree of geekery between Civil War re-enactors and the Lucas-heads
\nwho attend Star Wars conventions dressed as Chewy and C3PO.  <\/p>\n

In one of those subsequent, casual, "we went to Gettysburg" hallway conversations, I
\nmentioned how the re-enactments left me with a lingering uneasiness about what
\nwas happening at those sites now<\/em>. Re-enacting war is a strange brew: a half-and-half
\nconcoction blending parts of the worst of Hollywood spectacle and adult
\nplay-acting (no matter how seriously) in the grim, horrific, and atrocious
\nwar-deeds perpetrated on those now-hallowed grounds. Chilling, but hard to pin
\ndown because I didn’t openly object to it (the geekery comment was never meant
\nto disparage anyone), and I don’t have any problem with gestures of tribute,
\nrespect, and commemoration.<\/p>\n

Eventually, in that hallway conversation, the person I was talking with asked
\nme if I’d read George Saunders’ short story
\n"CivilWarLand in Bad Decline."<\/a> 
\nI hadn’t read it; hadn’t read anything by Saunders, even though his name is the
\nfirst one that pops up when I mention Writing Program and Syracuse U. to anyone
\nwho has lived in Central N.Y. for a few years (and then I have to explain how
\nSaunders is in the creative<\/i> writing program, which hangs its colorful hat in
\nEnglish and Textual Studies, and ‘no I’ve never met him or studied with him’,
\nand so on, until the perplexed looks give way to a change of topic).  "CivilWarLand
\nin Bad Decline," if you haven’t read it, is a dystopian romp through a
\ngang-plagued, run-down, underfunded Civil War park.  At breakneck pace,
\nSaunders writes of a great range of escapades as the ethic of historical
\npreservation gives way to a relentless assault by modern forces.  Reading
\nit did not make me feel better about the re-enactments; neither did it make me
\nfeel worse.  But I laughed, and I also thought more carefully about that
\nprofoundly difficult balance between celebrating war and properly reckoning with
\nthe horrible mess it always (and to this day) makes of lives.<\/p>\n

Here’s Saunders, a point where the new gun-loving employee joins the staff at
\nCivilWarLand:<\/p>\n

Just after lunch next day a guy shows up at Personnel looking so
\n\tcompletely Civil War they immediately hire him and send him out to sit on
\n\tthe porch of the old Kriegal place with a butter churn. His name’s Samuel
\n\tand he doesn’t say a word going through Costuming and at the end of the day
\n\tleaves on a bike. I do the normal clandestine New Employee Observation from
\n\tthe O’Toole gazebo and I like what I see. He seems to have a passable
\n\tknowledge of how to pretend to churn butter. At one point he makes the
\n\tmistake of departing from the list of Then-Current Events to discuss the
\n\tWorld Series with a Visitor, but my feeling is, we can work with that. All
\n\tin all he presents a positive and convincing appearance, and I say so in my
\n\treview. (14)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u23f3 Approximate reading time: <\/span> 3<\/span> mins<\/span><\/span>If you bumped into me on the sidewalk or in the hallway, I might have mentioned that the visit—now one month ago—to Gettysburg on the Fourth of July was, um, thought-provoking in all sorts of unanticipated ways.  The places—war memorials, battlefields, and the famous cemetery—struck a chord with me. I was intrigued by being there. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[167],"tags":[1945,754,878,824,1946,1947,1948,383,1949,1944,548],"class_list":["post-6984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading_notes","tag-attrocity","tag-celebration","tag-dystopia","tag-fiction","tag-gettysburg","tag-grim","tag-holiday","tag-memory","tag-reenactment","tag-saunders","tag-war"],"yoast_head":"\nIn Bad Decline - Earth Wide Moth<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/04\/in-bad-decline\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"In Bad Decline - Earth Wide Moth\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u23f3 Approximate reading time: 3 minsIf you bumped into me on the sidewalk or in the hallway, I might have mentioned that the visit—now one month ago—to Gettysburg on the Fourth of July was, um, thought-provoking in all sorts of unanticipated ways.  The places—war memorials, battlefields, and the famous cemetery—struck a chord with me. 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