When You Adapt A Book, You Really

It All Meant Something. Until It Didn't.

When Anybody Starts Out With A Memoir, You Get The Impulse To Tell Your Own Story With Your Own Voice, And You Get All That Out In One Fell Swoop Sometimes.

You Treat A Kid With Respect And As An Adult You Talk To Them As If They're Smart People. But You Don't Throw At Them The Trappings Of Adulthood And You Know, The Darker Stuff.

Nonfiction Narratives Are Really Powerful And Valid In Themselves. But One Thing That You Don't Get Sometimes From The More Clinical Or Academic Books Or Nonfiction Books Is That You Don't Get To Hear The Person's Voice; You Don't Get Them As Individuals. You Get A Few Quotes And You Hear Them As Sort Of A Case Study: Numbers, Examples, Anecdotes, Maybe A Paragraph Here, And That's About It.

Maybe He Hadn't Thought The War Through. It Had Seemed Like Simple Fun When He Had First Pictured It, With A Glorious Beginning, A Difficult But Valor-filled Middle, And A Victorious End. He Hadn't Accounted For The Fact That There Might Not Be Much Of A Resolution To The Battle, And He Hadn't Imagined What It Would Feel Like When The War Just Sort Of Ended, Without Anyone Admitting Defeat And Congratulating Him For His Bravery.