Splicetoday

Politics & Media
Jan 04, 2010, 04:33AM

Losing the War

Deconstructing the Hollywood cliches of WWII.

My father owned a gorgeous porcelain tiger about half the size of a house cat. He kept it on a shelf in our family den, where for years when I was a kid it roared down at us -- unappeasably furious (or so I always thought) at being trapped up there on its high perch, with no company except some painted beer mugs and a set of purple glass swizzle sticks. Then one day it got broken; I don't remember how. Probably my brother and I were having a skirmish and a shot went wild. I thought my father would be furious, but he didn't say a word. Carefully, almost reverently, he wrapped up the tiger and the shards of its shattered leg and put them away in a box in the basement.

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