 This is a very special video because it's not every day you get to review your own book Well, it's not my book. It's more the work of the editors Roy Scranton and Mac Gallagher who did a who did a wonderful job I'm very thankful to them, but it has one of my stories This is a collection of military short fiction from our Recent or current wars, and I'm really proud to be a part of it It was published last month in February, and I received it in the mail a couple weeks ago and And read through it again. I had read the electronic version So this is probably going to be an absurdly long video because there's a lot I want to talk about I made a list to help me keep track I want to talk about the beliefs about the military and about soldiering that I have very slowly and Reluctantly arrived at I want to talk about soldiers in American culture Hero and victim. I want to talk about how a lot of veterans myself included are becoming Encaps a Little bit about maybe the kind of shrill anti-war left And I want to talk about some of these wonderful stories in this book Maybe a little bit about my own experiences And my own story and and then about publishing in general because this book has has really put a lot on my mind in that regard with future projects All right, so the anarcho capitalist case against war. Oh, and I'm going to put a ton of links in the Down below so so check them out. Okay, so The anarcho capitalist case against war you can make it a lot of ways. I like to to get people thinking this way Most people have to have two beliefs first of all the belief that the a Monopoly will cause High prices and low quality That's the first belief the second belief people have when you ask them. What is a state? Their definition will inevitably either describe or overly include a monopoly a state is a monopoly on Justice and on security Certainly there can be other institutions of justice and security, but they exist in pronounced in pronounced They're supervised by the state a Subservience that's the word. I was looking for okay, so you believe that monopolies cause High high prices low quality And you believe that the state is a monopoly on security and justice should we be so surprised then that the price and The the quality of security is not what we would like it to be That's that's the case against Against war it's not the case against security not the case of Against guns or anything like that. That's the case against the government's Military so what I've come to believe very slowly and reluctantly about soldiers is that their primary purpose is not security? Their primary purpose is propaganda the soldiers are never presented as Them the soldiers are us the soldiers are the best of us the best of our society This is a very important early on in a war Where does the the image of the soldier and their suffering has to be put up on a pedestal? Like look what these fine young men and women who are the best of us look what they're Sacrificing you need to at least give up some of your liberty you need to at least give up some more of your taxes We can hardly remember that in the first couple years of the war of the Iraq war There was this mantra and all the headlines that we're sending our troops to war ill equipped They didn't have the right equipment Maybe that was true. Maybe it wasn't some but it that mantra That arrived just so universally and so strongly that I suspect military industries may have been behind it Though I am a little bit of conspiratorial. I have gone down the rabbit hole and I'm not coming back so Soldiers in American culture. Oh a little bit more So the soldiers suffering is necessary to get people to accept the war to get people to give up their liberty and taxes for the war To get people to support it or at least not oppose it That's almost almost universal slander against anti-war people as you need to support the troops that line's gotten a little tire You don't hear it that much anymore, but but that's that's one of the best known ways to to Stop anti-war anti-war movements and The Nuremberg diaries were that American psychologists interviewed a bunch of top Nazis I believe it was in the interview with goring or maybe it was gobbles that that goring or gobbles said It's very easy to start a war just Tell people who oppose it that they're putting you in danger that they're putting society in danger So even he he acknowledges that tactic So early on the soldiers suffering is necessary To establish the war to get people to support it or at least not oppose it, but as a war drags on One year two year five years ten years as a war drags on the soldiers suffering becomes a burden The state is increasingly asked to justify its action Soldiers make YouTube videos. They they Take pictures and those pictures show up in places that are embarrassing to the state So while I welcome the removal of conventional forces from Iraq I personally also consider it a switch From conventional forces to more clandestine forces Namely to the types of soldiers that are more conducive to the state's aims ones that that can still do the violence But they don't complain. They don't make YouTube videos One illustration of how the soldiers Main purpose is propaganda is how the soldier is received versus the mercenary Even if they do the same job even if their wages are comparable I know in actuality mercenaries today or more But even if they're sold if their wages were comparable, you couldn't imagine parades being held in celebration of mercenaries You couldn't imagine big monuments being built, you know And people delivering flowers to those monuments and putting little flags or whatever in the ground Even though the mercenaries job of the soldiers are extremely similar There was one incident in in Afghanistan on my last deployment my third and last deployment where Some guy in the operations room Some poke which is the the disparaging term that combatants used for or That that that trigger pullers as it's another slang that you know The more combat focused soldiers used to disparage the support soldiers so some pole was Disparaging how the the guys we were fighting against the Afghan insurgents how all they're just doing it for money And I'm like Goddamn it, you know how many how many of us you think would be here? You know if we were if our paychecks stopped coming, you know and then you know It's like Interrupting a movie when you make those kind of complaints to people in uniform like some people will agree with you You know some people will just consider it an interruption and then everyone goes back to watching the movie So That is what I consider the role of the soldier propaganda. It's a very heterodox position, obviously But it's reflective in how the soldier is received in American culture. There is the The common portrayal of the soldier is hero Or victim that's what's sold. That's what's on television. That's what's in the movies By and large exceptions are few and far between and need lengthy explanations The the and as our war Reaches the 10-year mark passes the 10-year mark in Afghanistan The The hero narrative is kind of hard to sell because the war is so unpopular So I think the victim there narrative is held up much higher Like the naive victim like they went with unrealistic expectations to war And they saw all this stuff and now they're traumatized by them and I'm not saying the trauma isn't real I'm just saying that that's the image that's accepted. That's easy It's easy the images of soldiers that are much harder to accept are the bloodthirsty in vet him the bloodthirsty adventurer type image or the Like the fake victim Now let's talk about this. I'm not saying that that the suffering of many service of many soldiers and Veterans isn't real like this dirt. You can't fake the suicide rate. That's very real I know people who have PTSD all that's real But you know when the when the incentives are upside down, you know when there are are Financial and social benefits to being victimized by your experience. I Am sure that some some people are faking it in fact I kind of know some people who I think play it up a lot more than they deserve to Haven't been outside the wire whatever else the reality is that That whatever your faults were before you went to the military and And and we both we all know a lot of people join the military for self-destructive reasons Whatever the faults a guy or girl has they get out of the military and very often Very often they have all those same faults Maybe they have additional problems if they've seen some, you know some traumatic things and They have an excuse because however you behave it's all very easy to justify With four simple words. I've been to war Thomas Saul who I think is a greatly underappreciated economist was talking about intellectuals and welfare And he was he said something about that that I want to apply to the to the victimized soldier about Intellectuals and welfare. He said Intellectuals give people who have the handicap poverty the further handicap of a sense of victimhood I Think the same is true about the victim soldier narrative It gives people who have the handicap of this physical and emotional trauma the further handicap of a sense of victimhood And I'm trying to put this somewhat delicately because I know personal from personal friends just from you know from reading That that in a lot of in a lot of cases You know the the trauma and then the suffering is real. I'm not saying it's not so like a lot of veterans I I Became an arco capitalists, but I I'm starting to prefer Hapa Hans-Roman Hoppe's term, which is the advocate of a private law society Other ones include my good friend Drew Yellon We did an interview a radio interview for Radio Free Market one So we just talked about being veteran libertarians Adam Kokesh is probably the most famous one He runs a YouTube Show called Adam versus the man interestingly I Was in Fallujah probably just two or three months before he was there I was there with the 82nd Airborne Division and And we we were replaced by the Marines. I know others My pal Tim still works as a civilian for the military Even though he's a and cap, but I'm not gonna say his last name I don't know if it's if it's sensitive or not. He says it's not but I'm gonna be cautious anyway I think I think a lot of Anarco capitalists just because they start to hate the state so much and they hate all these stupid unnecessary wasteful destructive wars they kind of they kind of throw out the the whole institution of warrior culture Which I think is a mistake There's a lot there's a lot of good things in warrior culture. I think a lot of the things like Duty physical courage selflessness all of those have been virtues ever since Prehistoric men band together to hunt prey all those all those things have been virtues It's just now those all those virtues are put in the service of Something that's that's really bad that they've been co-opted by politicians But I still think you can find a lot of nobility in in warrior culture um, I Relate really strongly to the anti-war movement as you might imagine But a lot of what you get from the anti-war movement is this kind of shrill like It's just so emotional and shrill and a lot of those those things that the guys complain about I just view as horrible a Discipline problems to talk about massacres about shooting civilians and maybe this is just the officer in me speaking But I'm like Goddamn, where were your junior leaders? You know like that that stuff wouldn't would have never flown in my unit But I do think I was in a in a really special unit I was in in the main effort battalion of the 82nd in our born division and I'm pretty proud of the discipline that we kept. I know I know for a fact that other units did not One of my friends from the fourth ID said that they would anyone out with a shovel at night They would shoot onsite at least for a while. I don't know if that was he said it came from pretty high I don't know if it was battalion brigade division level, but like that kind of stuff never happened At least not during my deployment, which was 2003 2004 stuff got a whole lot crazier in 2005 2006 I also think that for us and caps our the Austrian economic knowledge of time preference Helps us understand these massacres in a in a different way You no longer have to say that the army turned me into a monster I mean, it's it's kind of true judging that judging a lot of those things from from the perspective of civilized society but You just you can also understand that just in terms of soldiers have really low time preference You know, especially soldiers who've been in combat, especially soldiers who've seen their buddies Hurt or killed they have really really low time preference You know and a lot makes sense once you apply that idea why so many soldiers Smoke or drink or start smoking and drinking it even if they hadn't before Why they after soldiers return home they engage in reckless thrills Because their time preference hasn't I said really low time preference what I meant is Soldiers have really short or very high time preference meaning they want gratification now instead of later You know if there is a kid in the gun turret, he's always making the decision Should I take the risk and not shoot these people and then have a better relationship with the local populace or Should I shoot them? You know, maybe that'll create problems in the future, but I'm going to live to see tomorrow and and that They just puts military occupation under so much so much pressure So I had that idea. I wanted to share but Let's get to the book Most of the stories in here are stories about home Perhaps you can say all stories about war are stories also about home because you know You need some home gives you the basis of kind of understanding and and seeing war. It's the place you came from But but most of these stories are about soldiers who've returned and are having a hard time adjusting One of my favorite war stories of all time is also about that JD salingers a perfect day for a banana fish You should check it out Also, one of the first short stories. I've ever published was on this theme I think it was called something worth fighting for and I wonder if it's I wonder if it's still up online. I'll link to it if it is So Yeah, this is one of the stories in here was written by a military spouse Subhan Fallon when Colin got back from his first tour four years ago As opposed to second or third he came home to a wife in a thong and high heels frying up pork chops And that was all the healing he needed now the worrying doesn't end when the deployment does I'm happy to say that I can relate to that scene So this story By Fallon, which is called tips for a smooth transition It kind of takes excerpts from a military publication about how to How to adjust to the return of your soldier and I've always been impressed of how good the military was at Articulating its problems not always at solving them, but it's always good at articulating them Except of course the big problem of central planning in the provision of security But uh, you know he so the story is interlaced with excerpts from that publication Be aware that many soldiers return home with a feeling of post-combat invincibility One consequence of combat exposure may be an increased propensity for risk-taking and unsafe behavior Really accurate. Let's do I got here Philip clay story redeployment um no I Guess I'll talk a little bit about my experiences because most people are curious Like I never saw any big sustained fighting Even though we went looking for it quite often, but it was all like hit-and-run stuff on all three of my deployments So certainly a lot of people a lot of people saw less than me but a lot seen up a lot more I never felt traumatized by my experiences But I like like pretty much my whole battalion when we came back from any one of our deployments like Like you you get this alertness. You're just so used to always being alert Like you hear just a little car backfiring or a door slamming or just a Sound and like boom you get this you get this alertness I hear that if you've been more traumatized It's a fear and even more is panic, but for us This was almost universal and the whole battalion. It was just this alertness and Contrary to what you might expect. I kind of liked it. It was kind of fun. It was just this kind of echo from this primordial Lizard brain, you know back when Back when you know When when we lived in a world of predator and prey I'm reading. I'm rereading hop was the great fiction and He he cites some archaeological evidence that say it says In Neolithic times up to one third of men One third of men died violent deaths so So we're humans are pretty well suited Towards Towards dealing with violence and dealing with this kind of trauma and moving into and out of it Granted in Neolithic times. It didn't occur on the scale that it does today And again, I'm not saying that a lot of people don't have don't struggle with their experiences, but a lot of them don't There's a lot of people who don't struggle with their experiences There's is a story that never gets told, you know You rarely hear about how soldiers towards the end of a deployment start volunteering for combat missions You know, you never hear about guys who go back because they enjoyed it you rarely hear about them There's one story in here that references that and I'll get to it But anyway, I've gone on a tangent In Philip Clay's story, this is this is probably the best description of that of that alertness that that I've ever read In Wilmington, you don't have a squad. You don't have a battle buddy You don't even have a weapon you start all ten times Checking for it and it's not there. You're safe So your alertness should be at white, but it's not instead. You're stuck in an American Eagle Outfitters Your wife gives you some clothes to try on and you walk into the tiny dressing room You close the door and you don't want to open it again Outside there's people walking around by the window like it's no big deal By the window like it's no big deal People who have no idea where Fallujah is where three members of your platoon died people who've spent their whole lives at white They'll never get even close to orange You can't until the first time you're in a firefight where the first time an IED goes off that you missed and you Realize that everybody's life everybody's life depends on you not fucking up and you depend on them Some guys go straight to red. They stay like that for a while, and then they crash They go down past white down to whatever is lower. I don't fucking care if I die Most everybody else stays orange all the time Here's what orange is you don't see you or hear like you used to your brain chemistry changes You take in every piece of the environment Everything I could spot a dime in the street 20 yards away. I had antenna out that stretched down the block I had antenna out that stretched down the block It's hard to even remember exactly what that felt like I think you take in too much information to store So you just forget free up brain space to take in everything about the next moment that might keep you alive And then you forget that moment and focus on the next and the next and the next for seven months So that's orange and then you go shopping in Wilmington unarmed and you think you can get back down a white It'll be a long fucking time before you get down to white By the end of it. I was amped up Cheryl didn't let me drive home. I would have gone a hundred miles per hour That's a Philip clay story redeployment so Lately in my personal life. I'm making a I've become an entrepreneur of Of sorts and just having having become obsessed with the economics as a lot of libertarians are I'm very very cognizant of what what what's his name? I wrote to surf them what FA Hayek called the coercive economy versus the voluntary economy So I noticed right away when two of the stories in here had soldiers who've made the transition From the coercive economy meaning they get paid by taxes which are collected coercively to the voluntary economy Whereas they have to please directly or into their directly voluntary customers In Colby Bazelle's story play the game The character he portrays It's a really crappy worker and I can understand it because you know after doing something that has so much Gravity so much life and death You know you get this job holding a sign to get people to go to a store and he's The character in this story is really condescending towards that that work However the character in Andrew Slater's story knew me He's a stud. I would love to have someone like this working for me His concern is not that the job has no meaning. I think it's this paragraph So I'll read it out loud after the first few weeks. It became apparent that there was not much greeting for me to do It's a guy who works as a greeter at some truck store or Farm supply store. I spent half of the day Half of the workday at doctor's appointments So I asked what the previous store greeter did with his time Gerald admitted that I was the first greeter they had hired He could see I was uncomfortable with the lack of work So I started to make delivery runs with a young guy named Raymond down in the store to the county mall It was only a small inventory tools and outdoor gear But customers would place orders for larger items and we would move the orders from our warehouse Down to the mall before it opened Oh, and there was that he kind of got this job because the employer wanted to support the troops And there's a later part where he's bored. So he just He just starts reading about the equipment that he's selling and trying to learn I kept the store catalog in front of me and studied it when no one was talking to me Which was just about all the time And I don't think it's a coincidence that Andrew Slater who is special forces soldier Writes about a character who just like so diligent and hard-working That's what I that's what I got from the SF types that I used to work with Or my friends who went in that direction. Oh, by the way Andrew Slater recently gave a great interview I think it was on NPR and and I'll link to it if you want to get a sense of what life is like today in Iraq listen to that interview He he returned there to teach as an English To teach English up in in the Kurd region in northern Iraq And I hope he writes about that because that sounds pretty doggone interesting. Let's keep going I'm not I'm not gonna talk about every one of the stories, but My favorite story in here is One of three that has a well-developed Arab characters And my favorite one is called one of the three is mine Another one is this one, which is my favorite story by Ted Janus So, you know, most of the stories tell that tell the you know soldier as victim point of view A soldier returns is having a hard time as adjusting as I said It's like JD Salinger perfect day for banana fish great story one of my first stories was about that However, for reasons I cited earlier. That's just That's not the image that I'm Most interested I'm more I'm more interested in the image of soldiers that more like That run against the grain a little bit more So I like this soldier this story because people were tough as I remember them to be and they were strong There's huge cock cognitive dissonance For people who are in tough units because the whole time it's be strong be strong be strong Ignore pain, you know, don't show pain if you have it or ignore it embrace it and then you get home and Like I said, there's both financial and social benefits to to being crippled Being traumatized huge cognitive dissonance. Anyway, I like I like a Ted Janus's story raid. Oh, and it's it says in the bio that it's his debut This is the first thing he ever published. I hope he writes more So he was in Ranger Regiment, which is pretty high up on the food chain and Here's a conversation that that one of the Rangers has with his Afghan interpreter How's my favorite Afghan I asked ready to go murder some of your countrymen or what, you know Really insulting, you know, but this is like how people talk when they have that really high time preference Of course the the Afghan Translator he's not victimized by this at all. He comes back. That's funny Doc, you know, Afghanistan is not really a country, right? It's just a hole where other countries send their retards to die And and doc replies whatever you got to tell whatever you tell yourself to get to sleep Rockstar and I thought this observation was really true. It comes in a bit of dialogue You got to understand Omar in our country. No one ever thinks about death It's completely removed from our lives at worst It only registers as a slight speed bump before an even more perfect after life But then we come over here and it's in our faces over here death is life So you see these big motherfuckers like Sergeant deck coming over seven eight nine times You better believe they dig it. They love it. They worship it Those are the kinds of people That you don't hear written about very often and what you said about death Being more I you know reading that again. I wasn't even sure if it wasn't his intention, but you know in Afghanistan and Iraq Like people are just a lot more used to seeing people killed and stuff Andrew Slater in his interview on NPR He says that in in Kurdistan and this might this might hurt the ego of our Neocon chicken hawks, but in incurred in the Kurdish region of Iraq Our our invasion isn't the most important event of their lives They remember much more strongly the oppression under Saddam that that was a much bigger crime, you know and just like in in Afghanistan like There's always people getting killed and People die at home instead of in hospitals in any rock Yes, I Want to say this in terms of my unit having good discipline in terms of handling civilian casualties But like any rock we killed a number of farmers. I think it was around 12 But in most of them they were farmers that came out onto their porch or outside their little house And they just shot their AKs Towards our soldiers and the soldiers did what they were trained to do and kill them because in Iraq That's what you do or that's what you did prior to the invasion You know your your videos are getting too long when you run out of space on the SD card All right, so I was saying that this this passage in Ted Janus's story talks about how How death is is much more a part of life for For Afghans than it is for us although he says it mostly in terms of the war going on But I think it's true in general and one example that I remember from Iraq is that that it was a problem With like, you know our soldiers being out on a mission And some farmer would come out of his house with his AK-47 and just sprayed towards the bushes because he heard a noise there The thing to do in Iraq prior to the invasion apparently when you heard a prowler or suspected problem It's just to go out and start shooting. So, you know these were much more violent societies than then we're used to and here like Like the West seems very sterile, you know Sick and dead people that's something for the hospital. That's not something from the for the home So I like his illusion of that He also just talks about the excitement like part of part of being a soldier in an elite unit is just like It's just feeling like a superhero Tightly packed in on the floor of the Chinook. We looked at each other energy passing from man to man This moment was our one release together. I got the togetherness here. That's typical ranger humor Once we got back things changed, but here I got it the mission The only chance to leave the bullshit behind without women or alcohol without cars or drugs We had only this He talks about once they set up their perimeter Lasers danced on the walls of the compound coming to rest on the doorways and windows. I Remember something like that. It was almost easier to do missions at night because because of all the lasers I was in 2002 when I went to Afghanistan in 2003 2004 eventually conventional forces even the the 82nd Airborne Division, which is a Which I think is the best conventional force the army has Stop doing from what I understand stop doing these types of missions that he describes just because there was too many discipline problems But but early in the war I was doing these types of missions. Oh Here's another example of a So I'm gonna I'm gonna have a spoiler here the in the story There's a ranger named doc and his buddy gets killed on this mission And then the interpreter says they're still there. They're still out there on the mission You know like that like it this just happened and the interpreter And And and doc just tells the interpreter that his buddy died and he says all right doc He was a ranger and then Omar stands up, but you know, what's funny though? I Looked up at him thinking what it would feel like to have his neck clenched in my hands And then he says what's funny and the the translator says this place was a dry hole We're gonna need to come back and do this mission again And and in his story raid you just get a sense of like this stop and go like they're just Sitting and they're smart. I'm really curious if soldiers in these type of units Aren't just like I'd be really curious what an IQ test looked like I think they're higher in in the Rangers and and even they be in the 82nd Airborne Division Because that's a self-selecting unit to meaning a soldiers at least need to volunteer to jump out of airplanes And in the Rangers they need to Volunteer for that and a whole bunch of really tough training. It's a really tough vetting process But anyway, the stop and go feeling I really kind of remembered where you're just sitting and Having like sometimes really clever smart funny conversations But like just this feeling of relax and all of a sudden like boom helicopters are here time to go like go go go And then just stop and that that woody banter. So I love that story. I was gonna say Um, I was gonna say In Iraq prior to the war the thing to do when you heard a prowler was just spray your gun And we had a problem because you know these farmers would just go out thinking that they're shooting at prowlers and our soldiers would react the way they were changing they would kill the farmers and I guess this is kind of a Just brutal to to describe this as as a good as something that I'm proud of but I'm proud of how my battalion We always kept contact with the families and did what little we could bought them some goats paid for the funeral Whatever whatever we thought was appropriate And I know a lot of other units didn't didn't go that far, but but whenever we had those type codes of unfortunate incidents We did that and and for some reason I was really good at establishing rapport with the locals I learned quite a bit of Arabic. I would listen to I would listen to a Recording of an Arabic listen what lesson while working out in the gym, and I got pretty good and And I just had such good rapport. I'm not sure why but I was like freaky good at just interacting with the locals And so it became my job like whenever there was this incident type of incident Not in the whole the time, but in my company like I would be the one handling it I would be meeting meeting the spouse of some civilian that was killed or you know families or whatever Freakin horrible. I hated the job, but I was really good at it and my my story is about such an incident my story called television It's right here And the only other thing I'll say about my story This is almost this is true for almost everything I've published no matter how many times I proofread it No matter how many opportunities editors and like the wonderful Roy Scranton and Matt Gallagher who also have stories in here No matter how many chances they give me I still find typos after it goes to print Nothing like grammatically wrong but little an apostrophe that changes the meaning of a word isn't it's in the wrong place from plural to singular I Just can't do it right and of course a bunch of stylistic edits I actually made them there with pen But I mean there's no end to those no matter how many times you keep rereading your work They'll go always be little things you want to change Yeah, so so check it out If you're curious Fire and forget the title of this collection is a is a reference to the To the javelin missile which replaced the dragon the both shoulder fired anti-tank missiles But the dragon was wire guided So so it actually lets out a kilometers long spool of wire and the the soldier shooting It has to stay there for a few seconds and steer the missile towards the tank where the javelin missile Sees the tank and you fire it and then you run because that's when it's dangerous because when you shoot it You let out a big signature So you just shoot and run and the missile is going to see the tank and continue seeing it through its whole flight So it's that's where the phrase fire and forget comes from and I think it's a good metaphor for this collection and and these wars because they are kind of forgotten that they they They're not like the focus of society as Vietnam seems to have been or our world war one or two That's understandable those wars had drafts So publishing so I'm working on other stuff I'm writing a memoir about my third tour to Afghanistan in 2008 My second to Afghanistan third overall And and I'm working on a little science fiction book, which is a lot of fun And I've been listening to a lot of Jeffrey Tucker Lez a fair book self-publishing Down with the gatekeepers. I'm all about that But man The the publicist at the capo press Like shoes. She I don't know what maybe it was her. Maybe it was luck Maybe it was these great writers. Maybe it was all that together. That's probably what it was But but this book has just generated so much publicity on on their Facebook page almost every day There's a new review of this book Yeah, there were little events all over the place where the authors were reading part parts of their stories So I don't for for writers, you know, if you have comments, I'm curious to hear them But but for the writers the choice is not clear at all, you know, I know other writers They got thirty forty thousand dollar advances. These are first-time novelists So the benefits of going to a publicist are very real You know, you you do get something in exchange for giving up your rights to the book So it's kind of something I've been thinking a lot about Well, that was a pretty long video If you've reached this point You're awesome Stay tuned. There'll be a next one. Hopefully pretty soon Albert Jay Knox Memoirs of a superfluous man. Good night