Required Reading A Moral Book

Professor emeritus Neal Oxenhandler is a brave man, and his Looking for Heroes in Postwar France (University Press of New England, 1996; now in paperback) is a brave book. It is the story of how one man in the late twentieth century came to a fundamental spiritual insight through reading and teaching French literature.

Oxenhandler examines the impact of Camus Jacob, and Weil on his own evolution as a writer, scholar, and human being. The operative word throughout the book is awakening, as both an experience and a mission.

The emotional power of the book derives from the energy spent in baring his soul. But power also comes through the elegance of economy. Oxenhandler reveals the horrors of war, for example, by focusing on the face of a teenage German soldier he killed. He is on guard duty and challenges what seems a fleeting shadow, a vision. The vision becomes real as it approaches. Again, he challenges it. Nothing. Oxenhandler empties a clip into the night. He hears a "dark bundle" sag against a nearby

fence. None of his buddies respond. The following morning they find the young German: "His face was chalky, his teeth veined in blood." That single phrase captures the waste, the silence, the loneliness, and ironic selectivity of death more poignantly than those stock paragraphs that

count bodies blown to pieces. Oxenhandler brings to life events we all witnessed in varying degrees, examining them through the prism of a major intellect that sensitively summarizes a tumultuous period. Oxenhandler's method is akin to instruction at its highest level: no one can claim authenticity without an uncompromising assessment of one's strengths and weaknesses. He forces us to examine our life's trajectory. Although severe on himself, he refuses to condemn others. He is a very moral man. And this is also a very moral book that deserves a vast audience.