An Old Robert Parker Book that Asks Question We Should Ask about School Shootings

 

 

 SCHOOL DAYS (2005)

By Robert B. Parker

Putnam, 295 pages

★★★★

 

Here we go again. I did a capsule review of School Days by the late Robert Parker a while ago. It’s a 2005 book about two kids who shot up their school. I decided to re-read it this week based on the news that 16-year-old Colt Gray was given life in prison with no possibility of parole for killing two students and two teachers at Apalachee High School in Georgia.

 

I’m not about to excuse such behavior or argue for leniency. Gray did it, admitted it, and seems to bear little remorse for his deed. Maybe the kid’s a punk, maybe he’s a neo-Nazi, maybe he’s mentally ill. I’ve no idea, but Parker’s novel made me think. In the fictional Boston ‘burb of Dowling, Massachusetts, Wendell Grant and Jared Clark took high-powered rifles into their private school and opened fire. They left seven kids dead and numerous others wounded. The did it and, like Gray, were caught and admitted the deed. Case closed, lock the doors, and throw away the key. It was an inexcusable massacre by two monsters. Close the books, heal the community, and try to forget about it.

 

Not so fast. Lily Ellsworth shows up in Spenser’s office and wants him to investigate the incident. She is willing to pay Spenser handsomely to investigate Jared’s involvement in the crime and she can afford however much his fee might be. She is Jared’s grandmother, a pillar of Dowling society, and so upright that she fails to find any humor in any of Spenser’s wisecracks. Spenser’s first instinct is to reject her offer. He tells her that the case against Jared is airtight, but she wants him to make certain and is willing to pay him even if he ultimately concludes Jared is guilty.

 

It would be disappointing if Spenser had pulled a rabbit out of his hat and exonerated Jared. He knows the kid is guilty and is going to jail for a long, long stay. Jared knows it too and tells Spenser to leave him the f*** alone. But Spenser wants to know why it happened. That’s something we seldom ask and maybe that’s why school shootings have become as commonplace as crabgrass and as boring reading a privacy policy update. Fans of Parker’s Spenser series know that Spenser is bonded with psychologist Sarah Silverman, but Parker wisely sends her off to a conference, leaving Spenser to dog sit Pearl and spend a lot of time investigating.  

 

This also made me think. The stock answer, at least from conservatives, is that the shooters were either terrorists, human garbage, or mentally ill. Does anyone stop to ask what happened to a 16-year-old that transformed a child into a teenage devil? How much external harm was done and, more importantly, who was responsible for it? On a tangible level, how does a loner like Jared acquire high-powered guns and learn to shoot them? His parents never had guns, nor did they give Jared several thousand dollars to buy them. That sort of dosh certainly didn’t come from Wendell Grant, even if (as Spenser suspects) he was the mastermind of the attack. Why were Jared and Wendell together in the first place? Wendell was an aggressive football player, came from a non-nurturing family, and was known to be a jerk, whereas Jared was a meek loner. He wasn’t unpopular among other students; he was more like a blank that no one saw. Spenser suspects that something is missing, his affect perhaps. Spenser will call in several favors and dodge dangers to find answers.

 

Spenser’s questions begin to bug President Garner and school psychologist Beth Ann Blair. Pretty good ones, yes? If you’ve never read Parker, this book comes with the warning that Spenser novels are shot through with testosterone, gunplay, the male gaze, and female libido. I will say, though, that School Days reminded me a lot of a quite different scandal. See if you can name it.

 

Rob Weir

 

Lies and Wasted Lives in North Korea

 

 

 

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea (2010)

By Barbara Demick

Spiegel & Grau, 316 pages.

★★★

 

The above book is now 16 years old, but my one-line review is: If there a country in the world more pathetic than North Korea, I don’t want to know about it. Nothing to Envy was a National Book Award finalist when Barbara Demick published it, but a quick check shows that its current population has barely grown since 1990. That’s due to famine and outward flight of those who have illegally emigrated from their homeland for better lives in Russia or China. That alone tells you something.

 

A pocket recap of mid-20^th century history reveals more. During World War II, Japan occupied the entire Korean Peninsula. The Soviet Union joined the War in Pacific just weeks before atomic bombs ended the war, but their troops occupied the northern part of Korea. In 1945, the U.S. and Soviet Union could not agree upon a unification plan, hence, as in Germany, Korea bifurcated. North Korea drifted toward communism under its ideological premier Kim II Sung, and South Korea into kleptocracy under Syngman Rhee, a Catholic in a Buddhist land who gave economic favors to relatives and friends. The South was, however, a far richer land agriculturally.  In 1950, North Koreans and Chinese communist troops crossed the 38^th parallel of latitude, invaded the South, nearly conquered it, and precipitated the Korean War.  

 

Only General Douglas MacArthur’s risky flanking maneuver at Inchon stopped the advance. MacArthur drove the invaders back north and spoke of using atomic weapons against China. He was dismissed by President Harry Truman, who feared atomic war with the Soviet Union. The war stalemated and, in 1953, an armistice (no peace treaty) restored the status quo. Some three million Koreans died in the conflict. Since then, the DMZ (demilitarized zone) has been one of the most heavily guarded places on earth. Sung essentially locked in North Koreans and anyone caught trying to cross the DMZ was executed. Kim II established a cult of personality and a propaganda campaign teaching that “American bastards” were their enemy, that the North Korean system was pure, and that devotion to it was the highest duty. Citizens were told to spy on each other and report all suspicious behavior. Religion was banned and owning a Bible or demeaning the Kim family were serious crimes.

 

Before Demick did her research in the 21^st century, North Korean propaganda had done its job. Industries provided jobs, per capita income, and its educational, health care, social services rivaled that of the South. Juche (devotion to the system) worked–as long as rice bowls were full.  In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed. When Kim II Sung died in 1994, North Koreans mourned as if a savior had died. His son, Kim Jong II took over at the beginning of famine and economic collapse. No one knows how many died of starvation–numbers vary from 420,000 to several million–but Demick, who collected stories from those who fled, tells of people eating corn husks, bark, grass, saw dust, pets, and anything that looked edible. Industries collapsed, illegal black markets emerged, and those who something (including their bodies) to sell, paid smugglers to take them across the Tumen River into Russia or China in hope of getting to South Korea; the successful were called Kotjebi (homeless).  But even soldiers stationed in Pyongyang, the capital where things appeared better, began to question Juche.

 

Demick interviewed refugees of all sorts, including a once-patriotic mother, a woman who left first her boyfriend and then a husband and child behind, a twice-arrested orphan, a teacher who watched students die of hunger, and women who became Chinese wives. Most were from the city of Chongjin. Some who left miss their old neighborhoods, but nearly all felt they were betrayed by their government and were staggered by the wealth of South Korea.

 

Demick’s book is a walk through hell and one of the cruelest set of human rights violations imaginable. Imagine learning that Western aid saved North Korea! Kim Jong II died in 2011, and his youngest son Kim Jong Un took over. Donald Trump has both courted him and called him “Little Rocket Man.” He’s right about the second; North Korea survives because of money that went to weapons instead of food and the Western belief that he’s crazy enough to use them.

 

Rob Weir