"A true war story is never moral," Vietnam vet Tim O'Brien writes in The Things They Carried (RW Winter '93). If we feel uplifted by a war story, he tells us, we have been duped. But he continues to write them, and we to read them.

In this issue we have featured a section on books which depict war. They present some of the most horrifying aspects of war in unsparing detail. Why do they make such compelling reading? Are they like the accident that galvanizes our attention as we pass it on the freeway, incapable of not looking? Do they contain some key to survival, or some detail that assures none of these things could happen to us? Perhaps our lives are so mundane and monotonous that we are simply starved for the drama always present in stories of war.

Certainly the good stories, the ones that tell the truth, expose the motivations that lead to war-the ego- driven agendas so clearly depicted in Corelli's Mandolin, for example-and they offer clues to preventing it.

Mostly, though, war simply provides all the elements of a good story, and the extreme circumstances showcase human character in a way nothing else can. We see the wide range of human responses to adversity , and we ask ourselves what we would do in the same situation.

Calamity sends us scrambling for solid ground, looking for equilibrium; it forces us to acknowledge the fleeting and undependable nature of the material world (not to mention its part in causing war as Virginia Woolf so ably points out). Some, like the unfortunate Mandras of Corelli's Mandolin, find refuge in corrupt ideology; his humanity numbed by the ravages of war, he becomes capable of atrocity. Others, like Agnes Keith and Nicholas Gage, cite love as the sustaining force, stronger than loss, stronger than brutality. Even though Tim O'Brien says that courage, suffering and heroism performed on war's evil stage is only wasted, that not even "some small bit of rectitude" can be salvaged, these stories of loss and survival seem to inspire and fascinate us. Whatever the reason, there is something about the reality of war that we need to know. And so we read.

Since writing the above piece, I've read Letters at 3 AM by Michael Ventura. Among these essays, gleaned from his L.A. Weekly column, appear a number of reflections on war, specifically the Gulf War. In one essay, Ventura suggests there is a limit to the benefits of reading about war. We only have to read a few books that expose the realities and evil of war (he mentions All Quiet on the Western Front, War and Peace, The Naked and the Dead, among others) to get it. He wonders "at what point the repetition of the story becomes a way of ignoring its truth" and become "just another way to participate."

I hadn't thought of that. It certainly gives me pause. Perhaps it was guilt about enjoying Corelli's Mandolin that prompted me to question and justify the use of the suffering and drama of war as entertainment or diversion. Still, something keeps me from apologizing for being drawn into a well-written story about lovable, or at least sympathetic, characters; that makes me laugh and cry, and creates both awe for the human capacity for love and survival, and fear of what seems to be a commensurate capacity for despair and atrocity.

Okay. I've read Corelli's Mandolin, and The Things They Carried and Fortunate Son and Johnny Got His Gun. So have many others. We get it. We believe these depictions of war. We don't want to ever participate, directly or indirectly, in war again.

I'm only left with more questions, as well as my original one:

Why do books about war make such compelling reading?

How do we, especially indirectly, not participate in war?

Will it really help to stop writing and reading war stories?

Presumably, acts of war preceded stories of war; but do stories of war encourage and perpetuate acts of war?

Any thoughts on these questions? Please email them to me.

Chris Wiencke, Editor