Month: August 2024

Authors, Book Reviews

“Hillbilly Elegy” by J D Vance

To be honest, I had never ever heard of J D Vance until recently. Only when Donald Trump chose him to be his running mate did I hear his name. The focus of many stories I read here in India were more about his wife Usha. That was because her parents were immigrants from India.

I then found his book, ” Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis” (Harper, 2016). You must remember he wrote this long before he became a Senator from Ohio. In 2016, no one would have imagined that Vance would become a candidate for Vice President of the United States! This happened only in July 2024. We should keep this in mind as we read Vance’s book.

This is Vance’s personal account of what it was like to have a deeply troubled family life. I admired his honesty in sketching out the principal characters in his life. These include his drug -addicted much-married mother; his sister, who was his biggest support; and his maternal grandparents. They influenced him deeply as he grew up. Indeed, it was his grandmother who played a huge role in shaping his thinking . She helped him escape out of the poverty- stricken, addiction- oriented life he would otherwise have led.

Many people, especially those outside the US, believe that all white people in the US are very well off. Vance’s book describes the difficulties faced by most poor white families in small towns and mining communities. These were compounded when blue collared jobs became scarce. Manufacturing and mining took a steep dive in profitability. Unemployment grew in leaps and bounds. This phenomenon made large parts of the northeast of the United States being called the Rust Belt. As a consequence of economic downfall, social and family ties were adversely affected. The number of broken marriages, broken homes and domestic turbulence increased substantially. Vance lived through all this as a kid. It was naturally his ambition to break out of the chains of poverty.

Vance explains how his four year spell in the US Marine Corps was a turning point in his life. He then attended Ohio State University -not surprisingly the first from his family to do so. He worked hard to achieve his dream of getting admitted into and graduating from the prestigious Yale Law School.

And no, though his wife Usha is mentioned in the book, not much is written about her. Of course, Vance describes how much she helped him at Yale Law School. That apart readers in India looking for stories about her family would be disappointed. I don’t think he even mentioned that her parents migrated from India!

The book underlines how adversity is a tough teacher. You learn a lot when you are dealt with many knocks in your life. Especially when you face many hardships- financial and emotional- at an early and impressionable age.

On Writing: Resources for Writers

Jetpack Beta: Write Brief With AI – Free Tool for WordPress Users

Here’s something which bloggers on WordPress will love. The folks at Jetpack have a beta version of “Write Brief With AI.” which looks incredibly interesting!

Apparently they started this project with the internal monicker of “Breve” which means “brief” in Latin. During the beta stage, this is available for free for all WordPress. com users.

Indeed it is built into the WordPress editor, so there is nothing extra one has to do. All you need to do is to click on the Jetpack logo. You will find this on the top right of your screen.

Just what does this tool do to help you write better?

  1. To start with, it measures readability. As you write, it measures your readability score. As I key in this my score is 4.39. But hey! Is that good? Is that bad? I am confused. The accompanying article says’ ” Our research shows you should aim for a score of 8-12 for the highest readability. (The lower the number, the better.) The tool calculates your score as you type.”

If lower the number is better, then why specify 8-12? Not clear at all, to me! Is 6 better than 8? Then why 8-12?? Hope the folks dealing with this can clarify.

2. It helps you find and reduce Long Winded Sentences. This is a good feature. I tried it out and it works. The best part is that it offers suggestions for improvement too.

3. It identifies weak words like, ” possibly”, “might” and “could” which it called unconfident words. You should aim at minimising the use of such words to make your writing more confident and direct.

4. It simplifies your vocabulary, helping you choose simpler words to replace bombastic and complex words.

It helps you improve the title of your blog post and offers suggestions too!

Last but not the least it gives you an AI generated featured image for your post. Like this!!

Overall, I found this interesting!

There is a big debate brewing on AI and writing. A school of thought- supported by the Author’s Guild– says AI generated technologies are a threat to authors. The blatant copying of original work- without any attribution whatsoever is wrong, in my view. Yet, tools like Write Brief with AI do bring value to someone aiming to improve his/her writing style.

What do you folks think?

Authors, Book Reviews

“Exit Wounds” by Lanny Hunter

Growing up in India in the 1960s and 1970s, for me the Vietnam War was far away. It was distant from our every day lives. Yet it did loom large over the decades and occupied a lot of mind space. To my mind, there were two types of people in those days. A large number of Americans seemed to believe they were true patriots. They believed they were fighting for their country’s values and objectives of defending democracies anywhere in the world. As the war dragged on and the number of dead and wounded increased by the day. A powerful anti war sentiment grew in the US. Books have been written in plenty exhorting both sides of this spectrum. I have read many of them over the decades.

A recent book, published in October 2023 by Blackstone caught my attention. It is titled ” Exit Wounds: A Vietnam Elegy” and is by R Lanny Hunter. Serving with the Special Forces in Vietnam, Dr Hunter is well placed to write about the horrors of war. He saw this for himself as a medical doctor on the battlefield. He distinctly remembers the six-day siege at Plei Me in October 1965. Here, the US Forces directly encountered the Army of North Vietnam for the first time. Dr Hunter then a Captain (Medical Corps) in the Special Forces has described this battle in gory detail. He writes about the men – whom he came to know intimately-who fought that battle. Hunter had to make quick decisions on the battlefield. These decisions saved the lives of many soldiers. Sadly, all were not saved as he worked on the age old principle of triage.

Dr Hunter returned to the United States after his two year tour of duty. He was one of the most decorated medical officers to serve in Vietnam. Amongst other awards, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross

Given the financial resources and military might of the United States, no one imagined at that time, that this war that would end the way it did. Over time, the North Vietnam Army occupied large tracts of South Vietnam. One picture remains framed to this day in our minds. It is of men desperately scrambling to hang on to the last helicopter to leave the US Embassy in Saigon. The United States exited Vietnam in 1973 when Richard Nixon was the President – after losing over 58,000 men. The long drawn war finally ended in 1975 with a comprehensive victory for North Viet Nam.

Hunter writes that during the Vietnam war – 1965 to 1975- the United States and its allies dropped more than 7.5 million tonnes of bombs in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. This was more than double the amount of bombs dropped in Europe and Asia in the Second World War! Still they lost the War – which has many insights to students of modern day warfare and geopolitics.

What sets Hunter’s book apart from most others is not just the description of his meritorious war time duties. It is the story of his return to Vietnam in 1997. He returned -three decades after he left Vietnam -answering a plea for help from Y-Kre Mlo. This was his former Montagnard interpreter of bygone days. All through the book, we see the war through Hunter’s eyes as also through those of Y-Kre. We see how he was treated both during and after the war. As is obvious, he was made to suffer a lot after the war for having helped the Americans.

There are some charming vignettes in the book. One is of Hunter taking time off his battlefield duties to answer letters from a kid back in the US. His observations of Vietnam in the ’90s are also interesting. He notices how some things had changed but many others had remained pretty much the same.

I am sure this book will interest readers keen on war and human interest stories. Highly recommended.