Oh, Johnny

I have been a PBS fan of "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer" and have enjoyed several of his novels. This latest: Oh, Johnny: A Novel, I enjoyed best. The story is very "true-to-life". In fact, so "real" did it seem, I was ready to look up the main character, Johnny Wrigley, on Google. The vividness of the details of "what happens" and the thoughts and emotions of the characters keep me going from the first page to the Epilogue. This was/is definitely a "worthwhile read". Congratulations, Mr. Lehrer.

Jim Lehrer -- has done it again! This is a very engaging story of a young Marine during WW-II. The reader will become so attached to Oh Johnny that the ending paragraphs of this book will bring tears to your eyes. Especially meaningful to Marines and others in our Armed Services and their families.

If there's one word that could be employed to define both Johnny Wrigley, the central character of Jim Lehrer's nineteenth novel "Oh, Johnny," and the post WWII "Greatest Generation" milieu in which he came of age it would have to be "possibilities" for this time in American history offered the chance to live, to die, and to be loved, all in one fell swoop. Johnny, like so many others of his era, found himself and lost himself and then spent the remainder of his time, "On The Road," trying to regain and redefine the country he was fighting for and the "possibilities" that he had created for himself. Kris Kristofferson wrote that "Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose," except in Johnny's case freedom and life in search of definition can prove to be a onerous personal burden. Moving swiftly as a newly minted United States marine through America on his way to fight in the Pacific Theater he encounters love, death, and loss seemingly in the time it takes for the sun to lazily cross the plains hoping not to find out whether it's true that "There are no happy dead virgins." "Truth may be the first casualty of war," but between the beer, the broads, and the baseball, Johnny discovers that truth may be your last, best, companion be it on a cot in Wichita, in a cave on Okinawa, or tracking a fly ball after your return stateside. Truth isn't necessarily the best bedfellow a guy could desire but she is the byproduct of all of those golden pursued possibilities. Lehrer's novel presents us with a character that resembles a poor man's Jay Gatsby compelled to live out Blake's dictum that the "fool that continues in his folly grows wise." Did Johnny and America grow wise? Or was it a life wasted? Did Johnny and America fulfill their promise or was it all a myth?