
          In Country, a novel by Bobbie Ann Mason. Harper &Row 247 pp. $15.95
          Reviewed by Egerton, JohnJohn Egerton
          Vol. 8, No.1, 1986, pp. 20-22
          
          The tumultuous decade of the 1960s still hovers over us like a
great gray cloud, a mighty shadow of lingering hope and despair and
wonder. We look back now with amazement bordering on disbelief at the
exhilarating and traumatic ascensions and plunges that our society
somehow survived in those years-black liberation and the movements it
spawned for women and other minorities, the war in Southeast Asia,
multiple assassinations, moon landings, urban and environmental
crises, the drug culture, and much more. It may be emotional
exhaustion as much as anything else that has slowed the runaway
roller-coaster since then; in any case, the rumble of revolutionary
thunder seems now to echo less frequently and more distantly.
          Trying to make sense of those times, to tote up the gains 

and
losses and chart new directions, is a complex and unending task. We
look to participants and eyewitnesses, to politicians and
commentators, to scholars and creative artists for a better
understanding of what went on and what the consequences will be. The
picture is not yet clear, though, and may not be for a long time to
come. Most historians regard the period as still too recent for
definitive interpretation and analysis (some would call it both
literally and figuratively too close for comfort). Novelists, on the
other hand, may feel no such constraints; armed with literary license,
they can probe selectively, explore at will, blend reality with
imagination, and finally give us sweeping or tightly focused visions
of our former selves.
          Bobbie Ann Mason's In Country, a novel, looks back
to Vietnam from the vantage point of a small town in western Kentucky
in 1984. Her characters are working-class white people living in the
present. On the surface, hers is a simple tale briefly told. But in
the spare and unadorned language we stumble upon some unexpected and
disturbing images: of Vietnam's continuing legacy, of mass culture
seeping into the pores of the society, of an out-of-the-way country
place that could be Anywhere USA, of ordinary people like us who seem
harmless and even at times humorous but also aimless and
immobilized.
          An eighteen-year-old girl named Samantha Hughes--Sam to
everyone--is the central figure. She lives with her thirty-five-year
old uncle, Emmett Smith, a Vietnam veteran whose only regular
activities are having breakfast at McDonald's with some of his old
army buddies and watching M*A*S*H reruns on TV. When his father asks
him why he doesn't get a job and "stop fooling around," Emmett
answers: "Ain't nothing worth doing. Most jobs are stupid."
          Sam's father was killed in Vietnam, and her mother has remarried
and moved away. Her grandparents live nearby, but she seldom sees
them. She has finished high school and is thinking about going to
college-either that or going back to her counter job at Burger
Boy. Her current boyfriend, Lonnie Malone, is a bag boy at Kroger, and
her closest friend is a girl named Dawn who has just discovered she is
pregnant.
          Emmett has health problems that Sam believes are caused by residual
poisoning from Agent Orange, the chemical defoliant we used so
extensively in Vietnam. She wants to know what really happened in the
war, to know how her father died and what Emmett and his companions
experienced there, but no one seems able to tell her anything: "She
knew very well that on TV, people always had the words to express
their feelings, while in real life hardly anyone ever did. On TV, they
had script writers." In Hopewell, Kentucky, a.k.a. Anywhere USA, no
one seems to grasp what is happening, let alone have the words to
explain it.
          Sam and Emmett and their friends seem utterly shackled by
contemporary culture. Their reference points are in television and
music videos, supermarkets and shopping malls, processed foods and
packaged entertainment. History to them reaches only as far back as
the sixties, "a much better time to be young than now." Far from being
dangerous or menacing, they are simply ineffectual, even impotent. If
they have jobs, the work is routinized and low-paying and dead-end; if
they have family ties, the connections are tenuous and habitual.
          Emmett and the other veterans, physically or mentally scarred by
their war experiences, seem destined never to recover; now in their
mid-thirties, they have been old men 

since they came home fifteen
years ago. But Sam and her friends also seem old before their time,
though they are still teenagers, and when the two generations come
together, they find common ground in stereo music and cable TV, in
Bruce Springsteen and Johnny Carson, in HBO, MTV, Cinemax. Whatever
can't be captured in a half-hour sitcom or a seven-minute music video
is not likely to be seen and heard, let alone remembered.
          The Southeast Asian experience, whether terrifying of thrilling, is
the only thing different in the lives of the older men. Those who were
"in country"--in Vietnam--know it is all that sets them apart; some of
them resent that, others take pride in it. Sam's concern for Emmett's
health and her curiosity about her father's death are the only
compelling interests she seems able to sustain.
          Set as it is in 1984 (the same year it apparently was written,
since it was published in 1985), In Country is full of
the most contemporary and immediate references--Reagan, Mondale,
Ferraro, and so forth. Even so, the book portrays characters who are
isolated and adrift, lost in inner space with no apparent hope of
rescue--or even a clear sense that they are lost. The bleakness of
their plight is all the more poignant because they seem so real, so
believable, so familiar.
          One of the marks of Bobbie Ann Mason's skill as a writer is her
ability to disguise intent. Is she telling us, like Jean Paul Sartre,
that our destiny as human beings is to wander aimlessly in a
meaningless universe? Is she describing reality as she sees it in one
little corner of the globe? Has she simply invented a few fictional
characters who can't "express their feelings" because they don't have
TV script writers to give them a voice? Is she poking fun at
lower-middle-class white people in the small-town South, or being
critical of them, or showing sympathy for them, or celebrating
them?
          Who's to say? You pay your $15.95 and you take your choice. Along
the way, you may encounter some people you'll think you've met
before--friends, neighbors, relatives--or even catch a glimpse of
yourself. Bobbie Ann Mason's strength is in fashioning familiar
characters out of plain, direct, straightforward language. I am moved
by her power to do that. I only wish her people were sometimes able to
rise above themselves and do something really wild -cancel the cable
subscription, sell the stereo, boycott the shopping malls, or even,
heaven help us, break the habit of dining daily under the golden
arches.
          
            John Egerton lives in Nashville. He is author of many
essays and books, including Generations (Univ. Press of
Kentucky) which won the Southern Regional Council's Lillian Smith
Award in 1984.
          
        