[MGSA-L] William V. Spanos's book, In the Neighborhood of Zero, A World War II Memoir.

[Artemis S Leontis 1]

I wanted to bring attention to William V. Spanos's new book, In the  
Neighborhood of Zero, A World War II Memoir (U-Nebraska 2010).

The book bears witness to Spanos' experience of living through the  
"Battle of the Bulge" (Spanos was part of the inexperienced 106th  
division at the center of the bulge that bore the weight of the Nazi  
attack), prison camp in Dresden, the British and American fire-bombing  
of Dresden, and the chaos of the end of the war on the German-Czech  
border.  Although he narrates the experience chronologically, he tries  
not to reduce it to another story of the "greatest generation.

Motto:  "Did you ever return to Dresden, Professor Spanos?" "I never  
left there."

The first words of the first chapter, entitled "Departure and Border  
Crossings," are: "I am a Greek American" (1).

Spanos writes that the experience of American's destructive power in  
the world "foregrounds the silent hyphen between my Greek and American  
selves which, in a more recent language, has rendered me a hybrid."  
(pg 3)

William V. Spanos is Distinguished Professor of English and  
comparative literature at the State University of New York at  
Binghamton. He is the author of many books, including America?s  
Shadow: An Anatomy of Empire and American Exceptionalism in the Age of  
Globalization: The Specter of Vietnam.