THENEWYORKER,NOVEMBER29, 2021 89
to every tragedy,” Samet writes. “We
find no solace in the inconclusive.” The
writings we have so far from the post-
9/11 era do not, in truth, appear to be
particularly redemptive or sentimental;
they are, in the main, pitiless. We’ve
been offered a painful roster of bureau-
cratic stasis and missed warnings, while
the narratives of how the United States
waged the war reveal a nation that be-
trayed its values in a conflict allegedly
waged in their defense. The centerpieces
of the fight against terrorism were the
unnecessary war in Iraq and the failed
one in Afghanistan, with little vindica-
tion to be found in either. These initial
interpretations reflect a refusal to let
the defining conflict of this early twenty-
first century fade into the safety of nos-
talgia, or be twisted too soon, or too
long, by remembrance.
If the cumulative frustrations of
Vietnam and the post-9/11 wars pro-
duced a nation more reluctant to go
abroad in search of monsters to slay,
would that mean that the Good War
myth was finally losing its authority?
Samet is doubtful. She fears that the
Second World War will go the way of
the American Civil War, “an epic past
that we can no longer retrieve,” national
remembrances of which have amounted
to a “theme park” of mendacity and
nostalgia only partially redressed by the
recent push to dismantle Confederate
statuary. It may be only a matter of
time, she thinks, before “we transform
utterly those who fought it into sym-
bols of an erstwhile greatness bought
by blood.”
Samet could take heart from the cur-
rent renderings of our 9/11 wars, yet she
remains vigilant. “In a climate in which
the pressures to sentimentalize are so
strong and victory and defeat are so dif-
ficult to measure,” she writes, “it seems
a moral imperative to discover another
way to read and write about a war.” Her
retrospective on the Good War is an-
other such way, and a worthwhile one.
Time can indeed sand down the jag-
ged edges of a war, and sentiment can
reshape it into something unrecogniz-
able. Still, sentiment always distorts,
whether it comes late or early, and time
enables every new generation to rethink
and redefine a conflict with a more dis-
passionate and informed gaze—as this
book itself proves.
BRIEFLY NOTED
Conquering the Pacific, by Andrés Reséndez (Mariner). In the
middle of the sixteenth century, Spain and Portugal were
competing for access to the Asian silk and spice trades. Resén-
dez’s taut reconstruction of the first recorded west-to-east
crossing of the Pacific traces a Spanish fleet from the Amer-
icas to Asia and back, focussing on the Afro-Portuguese pilot
Lope Martín. His vessel, the San Lucas, navigated the ca-
pricious Pacific gyre, linking the world’s major landmasses,
despite the lack of a common standard for measuring lon-
gitude. Martín’s nautical talent was not rewarded. After being
accused of absconding from the mission fleet for self-enrich-
ment, he was ultimately left deserted on a Pacific island.The Vanishing, by Janine di Giovanni (PublicAffairs). These
dispatches, by a longtime war reporter, document the ero-
sion of Christianity in the Middle East. A pair of Orthodox
Christian sisters in Gaza refuse to leave a world shrinking
around them; the religious leaders of a town in Syria swear,
futilely, that it will never be touched by sectarian upheaval.
The book illustrates the fine balance in which many of these
communities now hang, examining how violence, economic
instability, persecution, and emigration are leading to the dis-
solution of cultures forged both by land and by religion. “This
is a book about dying communities,” di Giovanni acknowl-
edges. “But it is also about faith.” Even after Mosul’s churches
were razed, its people continued to worship.The Making of Incarnation, by Tom McCarthy (Knopf ). The
legacy of time-and-motion studies animates this propul-
sive, thought-provoking novel, which centers on a quest
across London, Indiana, and Latvia for a missing entry from
the archives of Lillian Gilbreth, a pioneer in the automa-
tion of labor. Set in the anonymous conference rooms, hotel
lobbies, and archives where scientific breakthroughs are dis-
seminated, the book wields technical jargon to both comi-
cal and chilling effect. Framing multiple plotlines around
the story of “Incarnation,” a baroque space opera employ-
ing legions of C.G.I. experts and consultants, McCarthy
interrogates the disinterested manner by which scientific
progress bypasses public comprehension and the pervasive
systems that render human activity as raw data.My Monticello, by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson (Henry Holt). This
formally experimental début story collection addresses the
shadow of slavery in America. In one story, a Black college
professor writes to his son, whose life he has made into a
case study to measure the privileges of white American men.
The title novella, set in an apocalyptic near-future, is nar-
rated by a young Black woman descended from Thomas
Jefferson and Sally Hemings. After fleeing a white-suprem-
acist attack, she and her neighbors take shelter on Jeffer-
son’s abandoned plantation. As they prepare to defend them-
selves against their pursuers, she reckons with her legacy at
Monticello, and also with her relationship with her white
boyfriend: “Why is it we love what we love?”