Book Review: Soldier's Heart

Military Review

SOLDIER'S HEART: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point, Elizabeth Samet, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, New York, 2007, 259 pages, $15.00.

When I was a cadet at West Point over 30 years ago, there was much ado about the scholar-warrior. By the time I finished my tours teaching in the English Department, the scholar part dropped off and the phrase was shortened simply to warrior. Elizabeth Samet demonstrates why when she recounts the story of Colonel David Hackworth, whose contempt for "perfumed princes" (i.e., academics) oozed out onto the page whenever he exercised his pen. Hackworth unwittingly (irony is the soul of wit) was rippingoff Shakespeare when "steeling his soldiers' hearts." In contrast, Samet - unafraid of the virtues of learning - gives the Bard due credit for inspiring her title.

Instead of being literary, the American military is far too literal, missing the subtleties, nuances, and ambiguities of language - and the mind - that would enable us to more meaningfully and creatively relate to each other and the world. Samet's book is a story of one civilian professor's experience at West Point, teaching in the one department that attempts fundamentally to make cadets aware of their language, and, by doing so, help them to better interpret their own experiences. Her book importantly demonstrates how sorely we need an officer corps with a greater literary consciousness.

One wonders how much more enlightened our war-making practices could have been if only West Point had forged a philosophical, literary culture for our military institution rather than an engineering culture. Philosophical thought processes facilitate reflection, not just problem-solving. I still remember a former department head's entreaty to consider our experience in Vietnam as one in which we had solved all the technical problems through our vaunted engineering processes, yet we had failed overall there because none of the human challenges faced then, as now, can be engineered.

The military institution at large constantly talks of critical thought and creativity, but it is bereft of any literary or poetic or philosophical imagination that would enable true critical and creative thought. Aristotle says in his Poetics that poetry is more important than history. And his ancient view may be even more relevant today, as understanding a peoples' literature, poetry, and mythology may go further to explain why they act than the histories that pretend at objectivity and the sciences that reduce human action into behavioral constants and formulas.

Throughout the book, Samet relates her personal experiences at West Point to literary analogs. She presents an array of insights about the formation of moral ideas, especially the influence impressed on young people through the world's most popular literary works, taken by many millions to be sacred texts. But how does one, for example, reconcile an admiration for Grant through reading his memoirs with the questionable moral worthiness of Grant's legacy? Samet fails to address such questions, the answers to which would have been the valuable link to military reflection.

Soldier's Heart is a great book to read if one is looking for a reading list of important literary books. At times, it felt like an extended bibliographic essay, wandering through a labyrinth of ideas, encountering several authors and their works before turning every page. This labyrinthine quality may partially explain why the book does not have an index; it would have been too much. It reveals much about the author as a person, and makes one want to sit in on her classes. It gives one an appreciation for the value of having civilian professors who have first-rate academic minds teaching at the academy.

Samet's been dealt a stronger hand than she plays, folding too often with the humility card, admiring perhaps too much the bluff of those in power while lamenting too often her lack of military experience cards. She perhaps undervalues her outside perspective. Admirably, she admits of getting too closely cloistered within a military community that exists as a virtual reality, so it was refreshing to read about her moving to New York City, where she no doubt regains her independent perspective - which is her greatest asset as a teacher who is valued by her students. Her book would be the perfect addition to the CSA's reading list to re-introduce the warrior to the scholar.

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