Remember John Walker Lindh? He was the California guy captured fighting for the Taliban when the US invaded Afghanistan after 9/11. I remember not caring much about his story when it came out. A privileged white boy from California going off to fight with the Taliban? I didn’t care about his reasons or his outcome. After reading Godsend, based on Lindh’s story, and then doing a quick internet search, I realized there was much I didn’t know and much worth knowing about the case besides what I heard in the perfunctory news.
Look at the Newsweek cover above. What a photo. It captures the fear broiling in the hearts of Americans after 9/11. Islam, born in the devil’s womb that is anything outside America, turned its sulfurous attention to our Christian nation. The only recognizable thing about Lindh on the Newsweek cover is that he’s white. The style of his long hair and beard, the war-grime on his face, and that knowing, insidious look that gives proof to the invisible menace birthed only to destroy our way of life: all of these are firmly outside the American experience, and thus something we fear. The moniker “American Taliban” is telling. Two disparate things. Two enmities. One phrase. What cannot be joined together, is. John Walker Lindh is everything we as Americans fear. That our way of life can be joined to an evil one. That the city on a hill can be tarnished by all that it looks down upon. 9/11, Osama bin Laden, the Middle East, Islam: these things caused comfortable America to quake on its perch. We didn’t understand who we were, and who we thought we were turned out to be self-created myths. Therefore we succumbed to our fears. Even today, we still view 9/11 and its aftermath through our fear. There’s no reason to expect anything different from our novelists either.
But John Wray does deliver something different. Not taking the bait on any of the interpretations of 9/11 and its aftermath that would be justified based on the overwhelming support of a fear-based reaction, Wray tells a different story. A subtle story. Wray is quickly becoming my favorite living author, but he isn’t popular. While he should be, it’s this approach to his subjects that define his skill. Wray delivers much more than he could have had he taken the conventional critical tack on Lindh. And yet you won’t walk away from this book with any shining light of insight into Lindh himself. What Wray does with is, well, subtle.
So much bullshit falls away with Wray’s approach. It’s clear, focused thinking that is sorely needed in our knee-jerk, fear-based world. A legitimate question, though, may need to be answered. What can we learn from Lindh’s situation? The answer to that question leads us down one of two paths. One is Wray’s, which I’m getting to, and the other is a lizard-brain response, one in which our lack of understanding and binary perspective forces us to categorize Lindh and those he fought with as less than. It’s a tricky balance because the Taliban and their ilk aren’t up for any peace prizes. But they are humans operating in a human world which means, right or wrong, they have reasons for their actions. They are a point along some continuum. If only someone in power had had the following thought when deciding how to respond to 9/11: What do I need to know about my enemy before I can defeat them? Sadly we thought bombs decide this sort of thing.
I’m going to resist the temptation to summarize the entire book. I’m no fan of summary, but this book almost requires it. The other side of Wray’s subtlety is that it takes a while to build up to it. That Aden is a female is interwoven so deeply and effectively throughout the whole book that it takes on deeper and deeper meanings as the story progresses. Something as simple and yet somehow silly in terms of “serious” fiction as how Aden would use the bathroom in this type of environment is made an antonym of itself. It becomes complex and important. When Aden is discovered squatting instead of standing, she has to lie, which provides a warning to her that she now has to live the lie instead of living her own life, something Decker warned her about, and something she ignores as she pursues her goal. Aden being female is a metaphor for Lindh’s American-ness; it’s something off that others can see but not name. In this world of fundamental Islam, political strife, and a host of other issues, Aden/Lindh/America is the other.
I want to tell you everything! I want to continue that train of thought above. I want to sit with you as you read the book and exclaim and jump around and scream “Did you see that??!!”
Go read John Wray.
Bellicose Blatherings 
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