‘The B.A.R. Man’ by Richard Yates

The B.A.R. Man by Richard Yates, 1957

The magic trick:

Clashing values

“The B.A.R. Man” gets at a conflict central to all of Yates’s work. Yates is very sensitive to those moments in life when someone’s sense of self is diminished when the values on which that self-image is based collide with another portion of society that doesn’t hold the same values. There’s probably an easier way to say that, but that’s the way I said it and hopefully it makes sense.

Here, it’s a World War II veteran. His experiences serving in the Army get mocked by some Navy vets at a bar. As you might imagine, their tomfoolery does not please him.

The story spills out from there. It’s a pretty simple setup, really, but one that gets to the core of what makes living in a society so difficult.

And that’s quite a trick on Yates’s part.

The selection:

Fallon’s eyes were angry slits as he crammed the pencil and envelope back into his coat. “Try it sometime,” he said. “Try walkin’ twenty miles on an empty stomach with that B.A.R. and a full ammo belt on your back, and then lay down in some swamp with the water up over your ass, and you’re pinned down by machine-gun and mortar fire and your squad leader starts yellin’, ‘Get that B.A.R. up!’ and you gotta cover the withdrawal of the whole platoon or the whole damn company. Try it sometime, Mac – you’ll find out whatcha gotta have.” And he took too deep a drink of his beer, which made him cough and sputter into his big freckled fist.

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