Glory Denied

by Robert L. Pincus | Jun 6, 2001
Glory Denied "Glory Denied: The Saga of Jim Thompson, America`s Longest-Held Prisoner of War" by Tom Philpott; Norton, 457 pages, $26.95.

In November 1970, Capt. Floyd J. "Jim" Thompson was officially recommended for promotion. Col. George A. Maloney`s report reads like a brief for canonization.

Thompson, the colonel wrote, "was in every way an exemplary officer." His leadership was "outstanding." His personal conduct "above reproach." "His professional competence, imagination and ingenuity were remarkable."

Remarkable? At the time, Maloney hadn`t seen his subordinate for more than six years. Reported missing in Vietnam on March 26, 1964, Thompson spent nine years in captivity, the longest imprisonment of any POW in U.S. history.

That glowing recommendation was remarkable in another sense. It wasn`t sincere.

"If you think a guy is dead," Maloney said, "there`s no point in saying anything adverse about him."

Thompson, who retired as a colonel in 1981, still lives. So does his legend, especially among fellow POWs, who regard him as a hero. Tom Philpott agrees, but his searingly candid "Glory Denied" does not deny the humanity of this hero.

In his 25-year Army career, Thompson often received mixed, even negative, evaluations. On his return home, he drank heavily; tried to commit suicide; suffered a heart attack, then a stroke.

"Faith in God is one thing that no man can take away from you," Thompson assured the congregation of his boyhood church, in one of his many post-release speeches.

An artist, moved by the image of a POW mentally attending a "chapel in the sky," tried to capture that scene.

"It`s in black-and-white and, well, it`s worth a million words," said Thompson`s daughter Laura. "Dad had it framed. He might have thrown it away now since he no longer believes in God."

While the ex-Green Beret survived the war, his faith and family life did not. His wife, Alyce, had assumed that "missing" meant "dead." By the first summer of Thompson`s absence, she was dating. Eventually, she moved the family into another man`s home.

Understandably, Alyce shrank from publicity. Within the media, and even within some Pentagon corridors, Thompson dropped from sight. Even today, other POWs (notably Everett Alvarez) are occasionally accorded the distinction of being America`s longest-held POW.

On his return, Jim tried to reconcile with Alyce. It didn`t take. Neither did Jim`s second marriage. The Thompson children grew up confused and angry. Several dabbled in drugs. His only son, Jim Jr., was convicted of murder in 1990.

And yet, Philpott is not being ironic. Thompson is a hero. Many testify to this fact and Philpott lets them have their say, often at length. "Glory Denied" is an oral history. This technique has its drawbacks, especially for readers seeking a broader context for this POW`s story. And, initially, I sorely missed having an outside party to weigh the conflicting evidence.

Gradually, though, I understood that Philpott enlists the reader as that skeptical observer, sifting the various stories. By allowing Alyce, the kids, Thompson`s fellow POWs, his neighbors, his subordinates and dozens of others to have their say, Philpott digs beneath the dusty facts and down to bedrock, emotional truths.

If we see Thompson`s flaws and failure, we also see his - no other word will do - heroism. In Vietnam, he made five escape attempts. Beaten, caged, kept for five years in solitary confinement, he defied his captors and inspired his colleagues.

"I respected Jim, and not because he was the longest-held or because he had been tortured," said Larry Stark, an American civilian who was held by the North Vietnamese with Thompson. "This was a guy who consistently rose above all that."

Beset by war, heartache, ill health and his own demons, Jim Thompson repeatedly picked himself up and pressed on. Perhaps there is no glory here, but behold the persistence of the human spirit. Few heroes have been more human, or more persistent.

- Peter Rowe

"Aaron Rose: Photographs," essay and interview by Alfred Corn Abrams, 131 pages, $49.50.

Leaves matter to Aaron Rose. His way of seeing them will likely matter to you, after you`ve seen his photographs. No one has envisioned leaves in the way that Rose has. They form a kind of staccato tapestry in one image, in browns and oranges, and velvety undulations in another, the dominant color a deep gray.

Photography matters to Rose, too - deeply. He has studied its history, becoming intimate with old camera and printing technologies. He has built cameras and lenses to suit his purposes. He has aged photographic paper and treated it with various metallic elements to achieve the colors and patinas he desires. Now, he has mostly abandoned lenses, preferring to work with a camera equipped with a tiny aperture that allows light to reach the film - generally called a pinhole camera.

In an an era of quick gratification and split-second technology, Rose works against the grain. His pictures look meditative and they are often the result of sustained attention to things large and small. His pictures of New York, mostly seen from rooftops, often take hours. Buildings become big and small interlocking planes of light and shadow, their lines of windows sweeping up, down and across as dynamic patterns.

Just as much attention is paid to the printing process. Rose solarizes portions of his images: dark passages become dramatically light in the process, and vice versa. He mixes his own chemicals, using gold and other metals to add subtle colors to black and white pictures.

There is an Emily Dickinson dimension to his story, in that the 62-year-old Rose has produced his remarkable body of work apart from the public arena, commercial or academic. He turned his back on a career as a commercial photographer in the 1960s, pursuing his vision as an artist with a monastic sort of concentration since 1976. (Rose has subsidized his career with rents from a Soho building, purchased several years before the district became fashionable.)

Though a small number of collectors, photographers and curators knew of his work, it was in essence discovered when Rose was picked for the 1997 Whitney Biennial. Solo exhibitions and highly favorable reviews quickly followed.

This is the first book of his photographs. Poet, novelist and critic Alfred Corn contributes a polished, informative and eloquent essay on Rose, as well as a relaxed interview with the artist that reveals him to be clearheaded and unpretentious about his art.

There are images from seven series or groups in all, each as quietly stunning as the last. He takes his camera inside seashells, whose spaces look cavernous and gorgeously textured. He pictures the sun as a tiny orb, seen through and among clouds that are swirling expanses of gray and blue, tinged with white light. Other pictures of sky, round in format, are crisp and gently echo the early 20th century great Alfred Stieglitz, a key inspiration for Rose. Looking still further afield, he pictures the Milky Way as tiny points of light in variously colored space.

We can place Rose in a tradition that includes Edward Weston and Eliot Porter, as well as Stieglitz, but he never seems burdened by either his links to past masters or his knowledge of the history of the medium. The way he finds grandeur in small things and intimate effects in the heavens conjures associations with Walt Whitman, and his line: "I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars." Rose`s expressions of this belief seem sure to endure.

(c) Copley News Service

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Author: Robert L. Pincus

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