A Good War Is Hard to Find: The Art of Violence in America

by David Griffith

In the wake of Abu Ghraib, Americans have struggled to understand what happened in the notorious prison and why. In this elegant series of essays, inflected with a radical Catholic philosophy, David Griffith contends that society's shift from language to image has changed the way people think about violence and cruelty, and that a disconnect exists between images and reality. Griffith meditates on images and literature, finding potent insight into what went wrong at the prison in the works of Susan Sontag, Anthony Burgess, and especially Flannery O�Connor, who often explored the gulf between proclamations of faith and the capacity for evil. Accompanying the essays are illustrated facts about torture, lists of torture methods and their long-term effects, and graphics such as the schematics of the �pain pathways� in the human body. Together, the images and essays endow the human being with the complexity images alone deny.

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction

192 pages, Paperback

First published August 4, 2006

About the author

Dave Griffith is the author of A Good War is Hard to Find: The Art of Violence in America. His work has appeared in the Paris Review Daily, Utne Reader, The Normal School, Image, Creative Nonfiction, and Killing the Buddha, among other publications.

Reviews

[Corrigan Vaughan · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing read the second time around, too. Perhaps even more so this time, as I have a much better concept of what's going on globally then I did when I read this five years ago.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the central essay on using Flannery O'Conner to interrogate Christian America in the wake of Abu Gharib.

[Richard]

In the wake of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, American leaders from different fields, politics, journalism, law, psychiatry struggled to understand what happened in the notorious prison, and why. In this astonishingly elegant and passionate series of essays, David Griffth contends that our society's shift from language to image has changed the way we think about violence and cruelty, and that this best explains what happened during the winter of 2003 and spring of 2004 at Abu Ghraib prison.

In effect, Griffith argues, our much-touted visual “savvy” has lead to a true science fictional moment: a disconnect between the image and the consequences of the actions depicted—-a problem Anthony Burgess meditates on via Alex’s experimental “rehabilitation” in A Clockwork Orange.

In the spirit of Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others, Griffith meditates on images and literature, from the Abu Ghraib photos themselves, to Andy Warhol and even Star Trek; but Griffith in particular suggest that Flannery O'Connor—whose writings explored the gulfs between faith claimed and lived and the meaning of human evil—might offer the most potent insights into the failures at the prison facility.

Unlike Sontag, however, the narrative focuses inward, on the story of Griffith's own visual education, in order to expose the roots of a new violence, the violence of disbelief. Ultimately therefore, this book is more in the tradition of Joan Didion’s Salvador and Hunter S. Thompson’s The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved —a dramatic, experiential first-person story from inside the mess and noise of the culture, inflected by a radical Catholic philosophy. The essays will be accompanied by illustrated facts about torture. Along the bottom of each page, the reader will find a continuous timeline of the development of torture practices and pertinent historical events. Throughout, the book includes lists of torture methods and their long-term effects, as well as graphics such as the schematics of the “pain pathways” in the human body. The images and essays will work together to give the human being back the complexity denied it through images.

[J.A.A. Purves · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading this, I can heartily say that I deeply appreciate David Griffith's thoughtfulness and I look forward to reading whatever he writes in the future. After digesting it all, I can't say that I'm quite sure what to make of the title. The idea of a "just war" has been a subject extensively explored in the writings of Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle and Cicero. St. Thomas Aquinas reflected upon it in his Summa Theologica, as later did the Jesuit thinker, Francisco de Vitoria, and the Dutch Enlightenment philosopher, Hugo Grotius. Machiavelli, Edmund Burke, and more recently Hans Morgenthau and Kenneth Waltz, have all engaged upon the subject with both brilliance and passion.

Now that I think about it, according to all these thinkers, a "just" war is both a legitimate cause and a difficult one. The vast majority of people who have fought wars in human history probably all insisted that their war was a good one, and the majority of them have probably been wrong.

But Griffith is interested, for purposes of his book, in exploring the relation of art and culture upon popular notions of war. He argues persuasively that Americans have been desensitized to violence, and that the haunting images of Abu Ghraib are proof of the result of the culture that we have allowed to develop in our own country. Many of us can get this far on our own. But then the questions begin on whether the culture of our own society now hinders our ability to do good - to use military force for what is right - around the rest of the world ...

https://underlyingassumptions.org/201...

[Scotch · Rating 2 out of 5]

Griffith's openness in relating his thoughts, experiences and beliefs to larger political contexts is an engaging way to discuss these heavy subjects of war, torture and violence. However, the emphasis on the personal might have allowed him to make claims that I felt were unsupported if not just plain wrong. Most disquieting, he has a very outdated understanding of the act of violence in relation to representations of it: in photography, he conflates viewing/looking at photographs of violence with participating in it; in cinema, he attributes a lack of compassion to a desensitization caused by the media. Yawn. I've heard that one before, and there's still no clear correlation.

I was also a little surprised that the book was actually a Christian inquiry into "evil," which ends with a theocentric diagnosis: America has disregarded the Christian morals it so celebrates and claims to embody. While I don't take any issue with that (Christian morals, as Griffith describes it, could very well be understood as a secular ethics), I do feel like it's a cop-out. Saying, "It's wrong," or as he ends his book, "We have met the enemy, and they are US," doesn't do very much at all. Can I just say, DUH. Griffith seems to miss some of the mechanisms that encourages a lack of empathy with the suffering of others, and dismisses some of the possibilities within photography, cinema and representations to inspire compassion and awareness.

And as a side note, I felt like the book's design and printing of violent images (both of Abu Ghraib and historical images) were just plain dumb. What's with the surveillance monitor-filter effect?! UGH!

[Jared · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very timely message. Some of my favorite movies, Pulp Fiction, Deliverance, Full Metal Jacket, Slingblade, etc. are groundbreaking, thought-provoking, important pieces of art. But they also numb the viewer to the violence of the images they see. As Griffith puts it, "Violence turns both the perpetrator, the victim and the witness to stone." They are a reflection of our society's thirst for increasingly violent media. I thought my viewing those movies made me more informed, wiser to the ways of the world, more in tune with the human suffering taking place in the world all the while maintaining that such images couldn't corrupt me personally. But as Griffith expains, "violence doesn't enlighten; it taints. We can't be both pervert and detective. We may attain knowledge-power-but not without compromising our souls."

The events of Abu Ghraib are a direct reflection of how tolerant we are of violent and sexually explicit images. What happened there should be appalling, but more, we should examine the way we behave, pursue entertainment, interact with other people. What can be done to keep Abu Ghraib from happening again? Are we a morally corrupt society with no chance for redemption, or can something be done? This book has made me consider myself in ways that only a few books have.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

David Griffiths is reading my mail, plain and simple. Portions of his bio feel so eerily like my own, so much so that I'm almost convinced we attended the same school, church, and/or social functions. (We didn't - he's Catholic. I was raised Protestant, but really "Christian Fundamentalist." Call it what you want, but you definitely didn't call it Catholic back then.) This work primarily explores the author's struggle to understand his reaction to the Abu Ghraib photos, and - in the process - take to task America's odd attitude towards violence. However, he wends such a curious path towards thinking about the photos that no portion of his youth and young adulthood escape deconstruction or unflinching examination. A work like this could so quickly fall prey to melodrama and excess, but his voice, and its well-honed restraint prove most enviable and commendable. I have to confess, I think this is the narrator I wanted to become when I entered a Non-Fiction program, so I imagine I'll be toting this one around, returning to it again and again, for a long, long time to come. Timely, and one you shouldn't miss.

[C · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic book.

Basically, a series of essays on violence in American culture, it touches on everything from Abu Ghraib to Pulp Fiction, from Hiroshima to Andy Warhol. It takes a deep look at the hypocrisy involved in our constant self-referral as a Christian nation despite our decidedly non-Christian political and social policies.

While each essay is written in an educated and obviously well-researched manner, there is a very personal tone to the whole book which I found to be extremely refreshing. It taught me some things. It made me think. At times, I felt like the narrator was inside my own head.

I can't say enough about this book. I definitely highly recommend giving it a shot.

[Darrell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strong slim low tones kind of a book. A meditation on brutality in American culture and its media. It centers around the impact of seeing the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse photos and branches off into Faces of Death, the Pulp Fiction aftershock, Andy Warhol, lynching, Halloween costume parties and being a sensitive man in harsh times.
The author writes from an earnest almost monastic Catholic perspective which is something i don't come across too much in my reading.

It is a nice change of pace.

It is best described as a Thomas Merton introspective take on the lumbering intangibles of modern society...

good book

[Bridgett · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Good War is Hard to Find: The Art of Violence in America David Griffith (2/02) This is an incredibly smart book. A meditation that has at its center the torture photos from Abu Ghraib, Griffith explores violence in our culture through the astute prism of the writing of Flannery O'Connor and its Christian impulse. Griffith examines media depictions of violence in our culture and how those depictions impact people. Especially interesting was the discussion of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction and Griffith's changing perspective on the film.

[Danica · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm biased to this book due to the fact that Dave Griffith is such a nice man (he's one of the few people at my school who will take the time out of his day to acknowledge my presence). After attending a reading he did at the Firehouse Art Gallery, I immediately checked out the book from SBC's library. I have yet to be disappointed with this book.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is a really amazing essay collection from a young writer. doesn't make the mistakes (or what i perceive as mistakes) as a klosterman or a sedaris when addressing more difficult, serious topics. he is youthful and clever, but not overly sarcastic, bitter or snarky towards his material.

[Emily Fuentes · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are no words to describe this book. It was so emotionally moving, that all I could do was sit for about an hour after finishing it & reflect on all that I had read. Highly recommend it- one of the best books I have read all year.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finds a way to connect Flannery O'Connor, Abu Ghraib, and Christian philosophy in American politics in one slim collection of essays. Great book.

[Biscuits · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was pleased with the amount of learning and curiosity that this book sparked in me. Blends multiple ideas together well.

[Margaret Gipson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a re-read after 18 years. This collection of essays is great, and while it would be easy to assume it will feel dated, it more than holds up. The past 20 years have certainly provided us with more examples of violence and violent art that Griffith could have mined, but clearly he had plenty to work with back in 2005, and his examples are still ones that are relevant and devastating. News is old news so fast these days that it actually felt good (in an awful and upsetting kind of way) to step back and spend a few hours thinking about Abu Ghraib. These essays are personal and relatable and just really good. I'm really surprised that this is the single book Griffith has published.

[Alexander Pyles · Rating 4 out of 5]

An engaging and personal read. I'm not entirely sure by the end of what Griffith was attempting to accomplish here, but for a debut book (I believe) it was much more well-formed than other nonfiction debuts I've seen.

The meditations here on violence have a strong post-9/11 tone (for obvious reasons) and a lot of that helped recontextualize that time period for me since I was only a pre-teen/teen during those years. What a wild period.

[Tom Buller · Rating 3 out of 5]

War is bad. Violence in society results in a country that doesn't calculate the costs of war.

Not really earth shaking revelations. It was well written though.