An American Requiem : God, My Father, and the War That Came Between Us

Amazon.com
If the Civil War pitted brother against brother, the Vietnam War is best understood as pitting father against son. Some of Vietnam's longest lasting battles were fought in heavy rages and even heavier silences across the dinner table. James Carroll is a veteran of many such skirmishes. A novelist now, this book is his story of what it was like to be an anti-war priest in the '60s while his father was an Air Force general deeply involved in Pentagon planning. What makes the book particularly moving is that Carroll comes to realize that his father is no mono-dimensional saber-rattler (indeed, he suspects that his father's military career came to its sudden end because of the stances he took inside the corridors of power against expanding and intensifying the war). But the terrible truth was that neither the father nor the son ever managed to transcend the boundaries of their particular roles to meet each other in a candid, reciprocal relationship. And Carroll is honest--he tells us this, painfully. A very fine book, which along the way reports interestingly on some nearly forgotten '60s episodes.


From Publishers Weekly
Carroll, a novelist (Family Trade), poet and former priest, has written a moving memoir of the effect of the Vietnam War on his family that is at once personal and the story of a generation. His father was an Air Force general who won his stars by being one of the bright lights of the FBI-and a favorite of J. Edgar Hoover-rather than by working his way up through the military. One of Carroll's four brothers dodged the draft in Canada, another was an FBI agent ferreting out draft dodgers and he himself-a former ROTC Cadet of the Year at Georgetown-became an "antiwar" chaplain at Boston University who demonstrated in the streets but ducked the cameras for fear his father might recognize him. Carroll was earmarked from birth to be a priest (his father had trained for the priesthood but dropped out just before ordination) and received personal encouragement from Pope John XXIII and Cardinal Spellman, a family friend. Carroll's heroes evolved from Elvis to Pope John to Martin Luther King, rebel theologian Hans Kung, poet Allen Tate (his mentor) and Eugene McCarthy-most of whom his father considered enemies. After much personal struggle, Carroll left the priesthood, married and became a father, but the break with his own father was never repaired. At once heartbreaking and heroic, this is autobiography at its best. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Carroll, a novelist (City Below, LJ 4/15/94) and Boston Globe columnist, presents an absorbing account of his youth and early adulthood in a family dominated by a strong-willed father, a country embroiled in a war in Vietnam, and a Roman Catholic faith caught up in the stress of reinventing itself through the Vatican II reforms. The tense relationship between father and son sets the stage for young James's equally difficult attempts to define himself as an American and as a Catholic priest. Carroll's description of his conflicts over Vietnam with his father (an FBI agent who subsequently became the founder of the Defense Intelligence Agency) will stand as an accurate reflection of family turmoil for countless readers who grew to maturity in the 1960s. Carroll offers a fascinating perspective on generational differences and the enormous challenges each young person faces when choosing a world view at odds with that of his or her parents. An exceptionally well-written work that is effective on many levels; highly recommended for academic and public libraries.-?John R. Vallely, Siena Coll. Lib., Loudonville, Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Washington Post, Stephen S. Rosenfeld
I cannot recall being more touched by a book about a real family since John Gunther's Death Be Not Proud.


The New York Times Book Review, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt
In the more straightforward sense of the subtitle's meaning, the book is about how Vietnam came between the author and God on the one hand and between the author and his father on the other. . . . [I]n writing this bleak, tortured confession Mr. Carroll finally achieves a degree of reconciliation. And in telling the story of the sundering he cuts to the bone of our troubled times.


From Booklist
In this stunning memoir, the author attempts to determine how his daddy, his worshiped "Abba," became simply "dad." Both father and son were former priests who left the seminary to inhabit very different worlds. James grew up in the heady world of Washington's military and political elite while his father was a commissioned air force general and founding director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, which determined bombing targets in Vietnam. James became a Paulist priest and war protester whose idols included Martin Luther King Jr., Hans Kung, Eugene McCarthy, and the Berrigan brothers. His father was enraged when James referred to napalm during the homily of his first Mass. The wedge between them would never dislodge, but the general later felt the failure of Vietnam as a personal one. James eventually abandoned his vocation, married, and accepted writing as his saving grace. When his broken father descended into senility, James accepted that the next best thing to reconciliation was his dad's inability to recognize him. Victory had become meaningless; both had lost the war between them. This is a magnificent portrayal of two noble men who broke each other's hearts. Patricia Hassler


From Kirkus Reviews
An ex-priest's confessional attempt to make peace with his dead father. For nearly 20 years, novelist Carroll (The City Below, 1994; Memorial Bridge, 1991; etc.) barely talked to his father, the late lieutenant general Joseph F. Carroll, founding director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. They fell out over the war in Vietnam; over the way the younger Carroll conducted himself as a priest; and over the son's finally opting out of the priesthood, just as his father had done. Carroll confronts the demons left by his troubled relationship with his father and his church by telling his family's story, focusing especially on the political and religious turmoil that tore them apart in the 1960s. The book is sometimes embarrassingly heartfelt in a '60s bare-your-soul style that seemed fresh then but now sounds like the everyday kitsch of touchy-feely, tell-all television. Also, Carroll's lack of communication with his father, always a man of few words, forces him to speculate about the older man's emotions, just as he must speculate about what advice his father gave presidents on the war in Vietnam. But Carroll's honesty and sincerity, and the fascination of his story, triumph over any temptation to mock him as waxing too sentimental about his glory days as a radical campus priest counseling war resisters. Carroll argues persuasively that he is still that priest, albeit in a different role, and with a wife and children. And despite his falling out with both his father and his church, he thanks them for giving him the courage of his convictions and for making him a priest, even as they broke his heart. A fresh retelling of old stories about a son's struggles with his father and his God, and a memoir that may help put more demons to rest for others of the '60s generation. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Review
"A tragic, moving book about a family torn apart by the Vietnam War, a young man looking for God, a writer finding his voice." -- Boston Magazine


Review
"Autobiography at its best."


Review
"Autobiography at its best."


Book Description
Joe Carroll was an Air Force lieutenant general who chose Vietnamese targets for American bombs. Joe's son James began adulthood by fulfilling his father's abandoned dream of joining the priesthood. But soon a father's hopes for his son--and a son's peace with his father--were ruined, yet another casualty of a war that tore apart so many families along generational lines.


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