Invasion

that.
        As I walked straight into the wind, shoulders hunched and head tucked down, I began to realize that what we were enduring would make the perfect subject matter for a book: my second book. The thought so surprised me that for a moment I stopped, stood quite still, oblivious of the wind and snow and of the possibility that some of the yellow-eyed creatures might be lurking in the drifts nearby.
        Another book?
        My first book had been published while I was a patient in a mental institution. It had not been a book so much as a diary, a war diary which I had kept from my first day of basic training until they brought me home from Asia as a mental basket case. Apparently, the diary helped satisfy the nation's need to see firsthand and fully grasp the horror of the last war, for it had placed high on all of the best seller lists across the country. It made a great deal of money for everyone concerned and was well reviewed. The sales were certainly not hurt by the fact that the author was a quasi-catatonic living in the equivalent of a padded cell. Indeed, that had probably helped sales more than all the publisher's advertising. Perhaps I was-in the eyes of my readers-a metaphor for the United States; perhaps they saw that the country had been driven as crazy as
        I had been by the war. And perhaps they thought they could learn some lessons from my ordeal that would be useful in getting them-in getting the entire country-back on sound footing.
        But there was no salvation in the diary. I'm certain that most of them were disappointed. How could they have looked to me for their salvation when I hadn't been able to save myself?
        I learned two things in the war:
        Death is real and final.
        The world is a madhouse.
        Perhaps that doesn't mean much to you.
        But it broke me.
        These two realizations, combined with my own deep sense of guilt and moral failure, drove me over the edge. And it was the eventual acceptance of these bitter lessons, finding a way to live with these two truths, which made it possible for me to regain a tolerable perspective and a semblance of sanity.
        The key is that I went through that hell, and it was by the flames that my wounds were cauterized. My readers-as well meaning as they might have been- were merely arm chair sufferers. They were anxious to pass through the flames vicariously-and that will never be enough to cauterize their psychic wounds.
        When I was released from the sanitarium-against all predictions, against all expectations-when it was clear I had a good chance of leading a relatively normal life (although the possibility of a relapse was never ruled out), I consented to be interviewed by a few reporters. I was asked this question more than any other: "Will you write another book?" And my reply was always the same: "No." I am not a writer. Oh, I suppose I have some facility with prose, but I'm surely no master of it. Now and again I have an original insight, a thing or two that I want to say. And I'm not excessively clumsy at characterization nor too free with flowery metaphors and overextended similes. I know my English grammar as well as the next college graduate. But I simply am not capable of the day-to-day, day-in-day-out, sustained effort of creation.
        That takes more sensitivity than I have-and a greater madness as well. I say madness, for even the worst godawful hack must believe-even if he denies it to everyone and to himself-that what he does makes a difference, however minuscule, in the course of human events. It really does not. I'm sorry, but that's true.
        The world is only a madhouse. And who can reason with madmen? Who can organize an asylum? To one degree or another, the majority of men (and women) are lunatics: religious fanatics, political fanatics, racial fanatics. You can't argue with them, for you can't educate them unless they want to be educated.
        And, my friends, they don't want. And if you write, instead, as a challenge not to the masses but to the ages, if you feel that you are flinging the gauntlet in the face of Time, then you don't understand the second thing that I learned in the last war:
        Death is real and final.
        Death is not a release from suffering.
        Death is not a blessing.
        Death is not a mystery.
        Death is not a solution.
        Death is not a trip to heaven.
        Or to