Meet Max Benjamin Gerber

Thank you so much for your congratulatory emails! I've been sharing them with Max (along with excerpts from The Great Gatsby, of course). For your viewing pleasure, please enjoy shots of my now two-week-old son, Max Benjamin Gerber.

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It was a love story (85)
Making up a few things to get at the real truth (85)
No vines or moss or white blossoms (85)
It’s about love and memory (85)
He was not a fighter (125)
All fidgety and tight (192)
She was seventeen years old (93)
Long white legs and blue eyes (93)
He never smiled (97)
She’ll learn (97)
This girl will most definitely learn (97)
Bad things start growing inside us (236)
[He’d] turned mean inside (200)
Even a little cruel at times (200)
Getting shot and yelling out (200)
Things must have been said, but it’s all gone now,
Except for a few last images (233)
A body without a name (225)
Laughed it off… made jokes (202)
Anger partly, but it was also a sense of pure and total loss (198)
There was a half second hesitation (234)
The bodies were animated (231)
She stared at him for a moment (151)
Her pretty blue eyes seemed to glow (96)
His voice seemed hollow and stuffed up (99)
Shoulders hunched (104)
“Sometimes I want to eat this place” (111)

a book that nobody reads

“There was no place in particular to go” (136).

“Foggy…hot…for the first few moments…lost” (132)

“Nothing” (93).

“There is no clarity” (82).

“Loop around the lake” (137).

“Loop around the lake” (137).

“Seven mile[s]…flat” (137).

“Just stop it” (146).

“Cavemen and dinosaurs”(183). “…smell rotten” (182).

“Sucked away into the mud” (185).

“Forfeit”? (194)

“Two smells” (109).

“…from [a] distance…” (104).

“innocent” (105) “…butterfly…spotted with freckles…” (127)

“smooth…delicate” (127).

“And yet at close range…” (104)

“…dizzy” (195) “butterfly…spotted with…shame” (127).

“Chaotic…unmusical” (108).

“Partly dead” ( 24).

“[but] they had to” (25).

“No ice, no heat” (203).

“…afterward it’s never the same” (114).

“…inside a book that nobody’s reading” (245).

“Easy, easy, easy” (209).

“Loop around the lake” (137).

“…but it wouldn’t get any easier” (209).

“No moon and no stars” (220).

“Chasing the phantoms” (221).

“Just stop it” (146).

“Ripping off the scabs…and scratching open sores” (221).

“the baby buffalo was silent…nothing moved except the eyes” (79).

“…Alive, though just barely” (79).

“Loop around the lake” (137).

“Loop around the lake” (137).

“He was alone” (149).

Sounds

For the most part he carried himself with poise, (19)
A kind of dignity. (19)
Bowing under the stir (37)
Of long elastic silences. (99)
The harmonies of sound and shape and proportion, (99)
Spinning off the edge of the Earth and beyond the sun, (99)
Beyond mortification and gravity, (99)
Through the fast silent vacuum (22)
If he screamed, how far would the sound carry? (11)

It was a pretty good show. (54)
The sunlight came around him, (71)
Far away sort of, but close up, too, (73)
And lifted him high up, (71)
Higher and higher until (22)
It was all lightness. (23)
The Earth was slow and he was patient. (36)
He listened to the ground beneath him, (36)
Imagining cobwebs and ghosts, whatever was down there. (10)
Not a single sound but he still heard it. (75)
He had crossed to the other side. (116)

The immense serenity flashed against his eyeballs, (36)
It was the burden of being alive, (36)
It was pure knowing. (23)
Nothing is ever absolutely (82)
Quiet. (73)

beast on their lips.

They carried the land itself, Vietnam. (15)
The soil, the whole atmosphere, the humidity, the monsoons (15)
The quarter moon rising over the nighttime paddies (37)
Those giant trees (70)
And a soft dripping sound somewhere beyond the trees (70)
Odd movements, odd shapes, the whole rain forest seemed to stare in at them (116)

The country rose up in thick walls of wilderness; triple canopied jungle, mountains unfolding into higher mountains (91)
Right out of the grave, (12)
Moving like shadows through the moonlight, filing in silently from the dark rain forests. (92)
There was no sound, no real substance either (105)
Not entirely, not all (105)
Something must have snapped (63)

The paddies would seem to swirl and sway, (209)
The trees would take human form (209)
The field was boiling, it seemed to suck him under and everything was black and wet and swirling. (171)
It lifted him up and sucked him high into a tree full of moss and vines and white blossoms (70)
They made those mountains burn (75)

There was the feel of permanent twilight (164)
The trees are alive, the grass, the soil, everything (81)
It was inside him, in his lungs (149)
I was part of the night. I was the land itself (209)
I was jungle fire, I was jungle drums, I was the beast on their lips (209)

Poor Poor Boy

Poor, poor, boy (212).
He was just a kid at war, in love. (12)
crawling out of the tunnel, grinning, filthy but alive, laughing (12)
hoping, unwrapping the letters, holding them with the tips of his fingers, spending the last hour of light pretending, imagining romantic camping trips, tasting the envelope flaps. (1)

Poor, poor, boy (212).
carried his girlfriend’s pantyhose around his neck like a comforter. (28)
slept with the stockings up against his face, the way an infant sleeps with a flannel
blanket, secure, and peaceful.(118).
nineteen or twenty
clucked his tongue (31)
your basic fun-lover (211)
splashing (119)
playing checkers every evening before dark. (32)
whooping and leaping around barefoot(36)
singing, “A tisket, a tasket, a green and yellow basket.” (37)
teaching a rain dance (36)
He did funny jumps and spins. (136)
His wrists were the wrists of a child. (124)

Poor, poor, boy (212).
He had comic books (28)
He made up a rhyme that caught on, and we’d all be chanting it together.(33)
smiling (28)
He liked to roam around asking questions. (95)
Trick or treating on Halloween (239)
flipping his yo-yo, dancing it with short, tight little strokes of the wrist. (72)
buddies (217)
brothers (194)
Giggling and calling each other yellow mother and playing a silly game they’d invented.
there was a childlike exuberance to it all, lots of pranks and horseplay. (37)
Whoever chickened out was a yellow mother… they’d laugh and dance around and then do it again (70).

Poor, poor, boy (212).
Meat for the bugs. (223)
will most definitely learn (97)

Poor, poor, boy (212).
sat in the bow of the boat and cried (159)
“Lost” he kept whispering (105)
The boy seemed frantic. The young boy was trying hard not to cry. (171).


Poor, poor, boy (212).
Whimpered and waited (211)
coiled up, tightened his muscles and listened, knuckles hard, the pulse ticking in his head. (205)
thought about dark closets, madmen, murderers, trolls, and giants, all those childhood fears, blinked and shook his head. (205)
uncurl your fists and let your thoughts go. (34)

You hear the spooks laughing. No shit, laughing. (205)
Creepy (209)
He’d get jumpy (220)
He said, “I mean, Christ, I’m just a boy.” (37)

Poor, poor, boy (212).
Gonna alter your whole perspective. (231)

Poor, poor, boy (212).
Little kid without arms or legs (58)

Poor, poor, boy (212).
No way out. (205)
All you could do was scream. (214)
Hugging yourself, rocking (216)

Poor, poor, boy (212).
all young and innocent, but learned pretty damn quick (97)
The bubbliness was gone. The nervous giggling too. (99)
The body seemed foreign somehow-too stiff in places.(99)
Eyes were utterly flat and indifferent. (110)
He kicked the baby buffalo. (79)
He hit him hard. And he didn’t stop. (62)
Was Dangerous. Ready for the Kill. (116)
One more animal-end of story. (107)

Poor, poor, boy (212).
Wasn’t even the same person no more (107).
Sank down into the sewage. In deep shit (156).
A lost ball. (167)
A lost sensation. (221)

Poor, poor, boy (212).
How crazy it was that people who were so incredibly alive could get so incredibly dead. (223)
Burn away to nothing (111).
Simply vanish altogether (115).

The human life is all one thing, like a blade tracing loops on ice: a little kid, a twenty-three-year-old infantry sergeant, a middle-aged writer knowing guilt and sorrow. (236)
Simply vanish altogether (115).

Guilt

“The man I killed” (128)
“‘No choice, Tim. What else could you do?’” (37)
“His one eye was shut and the other was a star-shaped hole” (126)
“A slim, dead dainty young man of about twenty” (37)
“He would place the blame where it belonged…My own fault he would say” (169)

“Kept hitting him on the nose…used it to break his own nose (62-63)
“[A] pact…stump…‘Don’t kill me’…Strunk died…relieve Dave Jensen” (65-66)

“When a man died, there had to be blame” (177)
“Lavender was dead. You couldn’t burn the blame” (23)
“First Lieutenant Jimmy cross crouched at the bottom of the foxhole and burned…” (23)

“I feel guilty sometimes…still writing war stories” (34)
“All I could do was cry” (51)
“The embarrassment must’ve turned a screw in his head…pain…all smiles” (88)
“I couldn’t risk the embarrassment” (59)

“‘The truth…is I let the guy go’” (153)
“Like murder, the boy thought. The flashlight…as a result his friend…was dead” (170)
“That part of the story is my own” (161)
“He would place the blame where it belonged…My own fault he would say” (169)
“‘The truth…is I let the guy go’” (153)
“‘I felt sort of guilty almost, like if I’d kept my mouth shut none of it would’ve ever happened. Like it was my fault’” (175-176)

Burden

They carried everything they could (9)
Wiring, detonators, and battery powered clackers (10)
They carried the land itself (15)
The humidity, the monsoons, the stink of fungus and decay (15)

It was something that would never go away (27)
It was the purest black you could imagine (220)
You'd swear you were walking through some kind of
soft black protoplasm, Vietnam, the blood and the flesh (221)

I was part of the night. I was the land itself (209)
Eyes closed, I seemed to rise up out of my own body (208)
Just clouds and fog...everything's all sucked up inside the fog (75)
Just feeling the cold spray against my face (55)

It commands you (81)
Like a killer forest fire, like cancer under a microscope (81)
The grief took him by the throat and squeezed and would not let go (105)
You try to block it out, but you can't (205)

But this too is true: stories can save us. (225)

The Truth of Vietnam

...the thing about remembering is that you don't forget (34).
Rain and slop and shrapnel, no where to run, and all they could do was worm down into slime and cover up and wait (148).
Grief, terror, love, longing...they had tangible weight (21).
They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die (21).
His jaw was in his throat...
his one eye was shut, his other eye was a star-shaped hole...
the skin of his left cheek was peeled back in three ragged strips...(124)

War makes you a man; war makes you dead (80).
Nobody listens. Nobody hears nothin' (76).
[People] did not know shit about shit, and did not care to know (143).
You don't know Nam (97).

Stories are for joining the past to the future. (38)
…Where things came together but also separated. (8)
…where it seemed weightless… (8)
…the illusion of safety (9)
…and there was the stillness that precedes rain. (17)

Imagination was a killer. (11)

A mere matter of falling yet no one ever fell. (22)
It was the burden of being alive. (19)
It was something that would never go away… (27)
…all the fine lines and technicalities did not matter. (24)
But the thing about remembering is that you don’t forget. (34)
Once people are dead, you can’t make them undead. (41)

…they held hands as if afraid to let go. (104)
…words were insufficient. (51)
[But] still there was so much to say. (147)

…[He] imagined the feel of his tongue against the truth. (142)
…[It] seemed too abstract, too distant, with nothing real or tangible… (155)
For a time the morning seemed to brighten, the sky going to a lighter shade of silver, but then the rains came back hard and steady. (164)
…and what they wanted now was to… forget what had happened. (166)
…it was always the same, a desire to get it over with quickly… (166)

There was the feel of permanent twilight. (164)
Like the night had its own voice—that hum in your ears… (221)
…That’s the last thing I’ll ever see… (191)
I want you to feel what I felt. (179)
…You can’t ever forget it. (183)
…nothing to do but stare into the big black hole at the center of your own sorry soul. (205)
No moon and no stars. It was the purest black you could imagine… (220)
…and how crazy it was that people who were so incredibly alive
could get so incredibly dead. (223)

Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased,
When there is nothing to remember except the story. (38)
...there was something ageless in her eyes…
just a bright ongoing everness… (238)
We kept the dead alive with stories… (239)
I’ll never die. (246)

Grief, terror, love, longing (21)
Irony mixed with tragedy (20)

A weight pushing [you] toward (51)
Over the tight blue flame (23)
[Held by] the tips of his fingers (23)
The bluish gray color of a razor blade (49)
Almost painful, a cutting sensation (48)

The immense serenity flashes against your eyeballs (36)
All lightness, bright, and fast (22)
The whole world gets rearranged (36)
Weird opium dream (105)
A sinking sensation, ears all plugged up (189)

The darkness squeezes...inside yourself (204)
Coldness inside [you] (207)
Imagination takes over (204)
Ghosts behind you...in front of you...inside you (205)

Silhouettes move...without moving (105)
The whole dark countryside c[o]mes alive (221)
Tiny sounds get heightened and distorted (205)
The night ha[s] its own voice (221)

You coil up...knuckles hard...pulse ticking in your head (205)
Too much (220)

“He loved her” (pg. 96)
“Mary Anne Bell and Mark Fossie…
[They] had been sweethearts since grammar school” (pg. 94)
“He [brought] in a girl” (pg. 93)
“This is Mary Anne…she smiled” (pg. 94)

“He loved her” (pg. 96)
“D-cup guts and trainer bra brains… she’ll learn” (pg. 97)
“A good sharp mind…she’ll learn” (pg.97)
“[He] can’t find her. None of it seemed to be serving him well” (pg. 100)

“We got a problem” (pg. 101)
“She carried the standard…assault rifle” (pg. 102)
“[He] can’t find her” (pg. 100)
“What happened between them, nobody knew for sure” (pg. 103)
“Officially engaged (pg. 103), [but] [he] can’t find her” (pg. 100)

“Lost… grief took him by the throat” (pg. 106)
“He loved her” (pg. 96)
“A necklace of human tongues” (pg. 110)
“You’re in a place where you don’t belong” (pg. 111)
“You just don’t know” (pg. 111)
“She’s already gone” (pg. 112)
“He loved her” (pg. 96)

…[H]e would have explained… (153)
…[H]e would have tried anyway. (149)
…[H]e would have told the exact truth. (148).
[But] the town could not talk (143)
It was a brisk, polite town (143)
…[B]ut would not listen. (143)

[P]eople…never listen. (85)
So [the soldiers] lie there in the fog and keep their mouths shut. (73)
Can’t even talk to each other… (73)
Absolute silence… (72)
…[They]whispered (112)
…[B]ut that did not help much with the pain. (105)

…[E]verything’s really quiet… (122)
Not a single sound… (75)
[Except] this strange gook music that comes right out of the rocks. (73)
Can’t even talk to each other except in whispers… (73)
So they lie there in the fog and keep their mouths shut. (73)
All they do is listen. (73)

The sound. (107)
There was no sound. (105)
The town could not talk, and would not listen. (143).
…[It] could only blink and shrug. (143)
So they lie there in the fog and keep their mouths shut. (73)
All they do is listen. (73)

For a few moments [he] watched the sky, (227)
The big white moon added resonance, (210)
[But] there was no wind, (210)
You could blame the field, the mud, the climate (177)

[There were] tree frogs, maybe, or snakes or flying squirrels or who-knew-what, (221)
[but no] big crow looking at you from a boulder along the river, (56)
There was no wind, (210)
The night was absolute (210)

The country rose up in thick walls of wilderness,
Triple-canopied jungle, mountains unfolding into higher mountains,
ravines and gorges and fast-moving rivers and waterfalls, (91-92)
[But] there was no wind (210)

…Isolated and vulnerable, (92)
Knocked (…) against the pagoda wall, (189)
Surrounded on all sides by flat paddy land, (…)
And rolls of razor-tipped barbed wire, (192)

“Eight months in fantasyland,(…),” (204)
(…) unattached from the natural world, (208)
Swarms of bugs, billions of them, (221)
[But] there was no wind (210)
to carry them home

Just holes to be dug

Salvation

Ghosts behind you and in front of you and inside you (205)
No safe ground: enemies everywhere (63)
There was no sound at all- none that I could remember (132)
None of it ever seemed real (54)
Honest to God, I sometimes can’t remember what real is (204)
There was again that sense of recognition (186)
Everywhere, it seemed … a great worldwide sadness came pressing down on me (57)
A crushing sorrow, sorrow like I had never felt it before (57)
The result was a kind of numbness (203)

[I] … imagined the feel of [my] tongue against the truth (142)
I won’t say it but I’ll think it (84)
You can’t extract the meaning without unraveling the deeper meaning (77)
Beyond the sun and through the vast, silent vacuum where there were no burdens (23)
Where everything weighed exactly nothing (23)
The weights fell off; there was nothing to bear (22)
Just go wherever the spirit takes you (126)
The magic doesn’t go away (118)

Absolute silence, then the wind, then sunlight, then voices (19)
It was the burden of being alive (19)
Which was dangerous but which helped ease the strain (15)

The Things They Carried

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