Bloodbath nation

First Title Value for Searching:

Bloodbath nation

Personal Author:

Auster, Paul, 1947-

Edition:

First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition.

Physical Description:

136 pages ; 23 cm.

Summary:

"Each year, approximately forty thousand Americans are killed by gunshot wounds, which is roughly equivalent to the annual rate of traffic deaths on American roads and highways. Of those forty thousand gun fatalities, more than half of them are suicides, which in turn account for half of all suicides per year. Add in the murders caused by guns, the accidental deaths caused by guns, the law enforcement killings caused by guns, and the average comes out to more than one hundred Americans killed by bullets every day. On that same average day, another two hundred-plus are wounded by guns, which translates into eighty thousand a year. Eighty thousand wounded and forty thousand dead, or one hundred and twenty thousand ambulance calls and emergency room cases for every twelve-month tick of the clock, but the toll of gun violence goes far beyond the pierced and bloodied bodies of the victims themselves, spilling out into the devastations visited upon their immediate families, their extended families, their friends, their fellow workers, the people of their neighborhoods, their schools, their churches, their softball teams, and communities at large-the vast brigade of lives touched by the presence of a single person who lives or has lived among them-meaning that the number of Americans directly or indirectly marked by gun violence every year must be tallied in the millions"--

Subject Term:

Firearms ownership -- United States.

Firearms accidents -- United States.

Mortality -- United States

Victims of violent crimes -- United States.

Mass shootings -- United States.

Additional Credits:

Ostrander, Spencer

Publication Info:

New York : Grove Press, 2023.

Subject:

Firearms ownership -- United States.

Firearms accidents -- United States.

Mortality -- United States

Victims of violent crimes -- United States.

Mass shootings -- United States.

Gun ownership

Ownership of firearms

Firearm accidents

Firearms -- Accidents

Victims of violence

Mass public shootings

SAILS ISBN:

9780802160454

Available:

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Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

An intimate and powerful rumination on American gun violence by Paul Auster, one of our greatest living writers and "genuine American original" (The Boston Globe), in an unforgettable collaboration with photographer Spencer Ostrander

Like most American boys of his generation, Paul Auster grew up playing with toy six-shooters and mimicking the gun-slinging cowboys in B Westerns. A skilled marksman by the age of ten, he also lived through the traumatic aftermath of the murder of his grandfather by his grandmother when his father was a child and knows, through firsthand experience, how families can be wrecked by a single act of gun violence.

In this short, searing book, Auster traces centuries of America's use and abuse of guns, from the violent displacement of the native population to the forced enslavement of millions, to the bitter divide between embattled gun control and anti-gun control camps that has developed over the past 50 years and the mass shootings that dominate the news today. Since 1968, more than one and a half million Americans have been killed by guns. The numbers are so large, so catastrophic, so disproportionate to what goes on elsewhere, that one must ask why. Why is America so different--and why are we the most violent country in the Western world?

Interwoven with Spencer Ostrander's haunting photographs of the sites of more than thirty mass shootings in all parts of the country, Bloodbath Nation presents a succinct but thorough examination of America at a crossroads, and asks the central, burning question of our moment: What kind of society do we want to live in?

A portion of proceeds from this book will be donated to the Violence Policy Center, a nonprofit organization working to stop gun death and injury through research, education, and advocacy.

Reviews (5)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Novelist Auster (Burning Boy) and photographer Spencer Ostrander take a powerful look at the causes and consequences of gun violence in America. Interweaving tragic stories and eye-opening statistics (40,000 Americas are killed by guns every year) with haunting, black-and-white photographs of mass shooting sites (Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School; the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C.) after the media scrums that cover such "grisly spectacles" have departed, Auster explores the historical and cultural forces that have made America "the most violent country in the Western world" and reflects on his own experiences with gun violence, including the family trauma caused by his grandmother's killing of his grandfather in 1919. Elsewhere, Auster sketches the psychological profiles of mass killers, noting that the Aurora, Colo., multiplex shooter, who played loud techno music through his headphones during his assault, had "nerves so delicately strung" he couldn't "bear to listen to the clamor and the screams" of his victims. For Auster, who casts doubt on the likelihood of judicial or legislative remedies, the end to the gun debate will only occur when "both sides want it, and in order for that to happen, we would first have to conduct an honest, gut-wrenching examination of who we are and who we want to be as a people going forward into the future." This trenchant account goes a long way toward making that possible. Photos. (Jan.)

Guardian Review

When reporting on gun deaths in the United States I always asked bereaved parents an open?ended question about what they thought had made the tragedy possible. Generally they mentioned bad parenting, teenage pregnancies, absent fathers and a range of other cable TV talking points. The one thing they would never raise was guns. After 12 years in the US I concluded that many Americans regard gun deaths like traffic fatalities - an unavoidable, if horrific, consequence of everyday life. This sense of learned hopelessness bleeds through to the polity. Most Americans who are shot dead do not die in mass shootings, but mass shootings are the spectacles that catch the attention and galvanise protesters and legislators. Whenever such an incident occurs the urgent feeling that something should be done is soon eclipsed by a sense of resignation that nothing will change because a significant, well-organised minority believe nothing should change, and point to the constitution as though it were a holy book in a theocracy. And so what should be a debate about public safety descends into a set of well-rehearsed incantations, devoted to grief and dogma, which form a permanent national requiem for the massacre of innocents that most Americans feel either too defeated or too stubborn to save. Paul Auster's Bloodbath Nation - part memoir, part essay - offers a reflection on the role that the gun has played in history, society and the novelist's own life. We learn of his gradual, uneventful introduction to guns, from childhood toys to the rifle he tries out at summer camp and a double-barrelled shotgun at his friend's farm; when he joins the merchant navy he meets people from the south and marvels at their reckless relationship to firearms. We also discover that while there were no guns in the Auster home, there was a significant, if rarely mentioned, gun death in the family's history: his grandmother shot his estranged grandfather in front of his uncle. Having unpacked both his own ambivalent, alienated and somewhat antipathetic personal connection to the weapon itself he then sets out to understand where the nation is coming from and why. "America's relationship to the gun is anything but rational ¿ and therefore we have done little or nothing to fix the problem," he writes. The problem, he claims, is not new and the nation will have to dig deep to uncover its roots. "In order to understand how we got here, we have to remove ourselves from the present and go back to the beginning, back to the time before the US was invented." The fix, he insists, does not reside in banning the manufacture and sale of all guns - because attempting to do so would be as impractical and ineffective as the banning of alcohol during prohibition, which criminalised ordinary people and created a flourishing black market. Moreover, he points out: "Gun owners in this country would not stand for it." Auster argues that dealing with the problem, unique to the United States among developed countries, demands a process far more thoroughgoing and introspective that does not start with legislation. "Peace will break out," he writes, "only when both sides want it, and in order for that to happen, we would first have to conduct an honest, gut-wrenching examination of who we are and who we want to be as a people going forward into the future, which necessarily would have to begin with an honest gut-wrenching examination of who we have been in the past." There is something in this. There is an atavistic attachment to firearms in America that places the gun at the centre of some of the nation's most cherished myths. The gun speaks to self-reliance and small government: defend yourself, don't leave it to the state, which can't defend you and may well seek to oppress you. It speaks to masculinity and homestead: real men protect their families and property by any means necessary. To power and domination: the nation was won, defended and protected by force in general and by the gun in particular. You are more likely to be killed by a gun if you have a gun; and you are most likely to be shot by someone you know These claims are either obnoxious or nonsense or both. Most people who are killed by guns kill themselves; you are more likely to be killed by a gun if you have a gun; and you are most likely to be shot by someone you know. In short, if guns really made you safer then America would be the safest place on Earth. It's not. According to the Centers for Disease Control, in 2013 seven kids and teens were shot dead every day; in 2020, the last year for which figures are available, it was 12. Facts and arguments for reform are important, but when set against myths they generally lose. While the gun control lobby is championing background checks and smart technology, the National Rifle Association, which claims to advocate for gun owners, is talking about freedom and the constitution. The latter doesn't win the argument; polls consistently show that most Americans favour stricter gun laws. But they generally lose the fight, and every time such legislation is introduced in Congress it fails to pass. But while there is something to Auster's argument, there is not enough in it to carry the day and not enough elsewhere in the book to sustain it. It is true that banning guns in America would be impractical and unworkable; but then no country completely bans guns, they just regulate their ownership and use effectively. In a nation still bitterly divided over who won the last presidential election and whether Covid is real, it is also not clear why he thinks the country engaging in a "gut-wrenching examination" of its past is any more plausible a prospect than banning guns. And given the polarising rhetoric of the NRA and its allies, who regard every mass shooting as an opportunity to argue for more guns not fewer, peace is not going to break out - because one side does not want peace. I would not expect Auster to produce a game plan for how such a battle might be waged, or even for how his own version of peace might be forged. There are no easy answers. But I did expect that having demanded an honest, difficult national conversation he would, at least, go on to tell us what he thinks the nation should be talking about. He doesn't. Instead he takes us on a journey that passes by the second amendment, slavery, Native American genocide, Vietnam, the Black Panthers, Black Lives Matter, Donald Trump, neoliberal globalisation and much more. It's a lot of ground to cover in such a small book: arguably too much. Auster, one of the finest storytellers in the English language, makes for an informed and enlightened companion as he meanders through the subject. But his failure to signal a destination, let alone arrive at one, leaves the reader lost and feeling as hopeless as when they started.

Kirkus Review

The acclaimed novelist lays out how America became a nation terrorized by personal weaponry. In this brief but remarkably moving work, Auster blends personal and historical commentary, anecdotal and statistical evidence, sober analysis, and passionate appeals for reform, sketching the origins and present reality of American gun violence. Early in the book, he reveals a disturbing secret: When his father was 6 years old, his grandmother deliberately shot and killed his grandfather in an act attributed to temporary insanity. Auster suggests that this tragedy and its ramifying trauma might be viewed as broadly and uncannily representative of modern American life, where such violence has been normalized by its frequency. The author remains both sensible and compelling in his commentary as he notes the divisiveness of efforts at gun control, and he skillfully summarizes the reasoning and emotional commitments of both pro- and anti-gun activists. His outline of the nation's historical relationship with guns is astute and memorable, and he persuasively assesses the sociopolitical roots of the "right to bear arms," the ideological impacts of long-term conflicts with Native Americans and the enslavement of African Americans, and the strange oscillations of outrage and complacency that define contemporary responses to mass shootings. Though Auster's arguments will be familiar to anyone who has followed gun control debates closely, the author's overview is exceptional in its clarity and arresting in its sense of urgency. The book includes a series of photographs by Ostrander, each of them absent of human figures or any overt suggestion of traumatic events--caption: "Safeway supermarket parking lot. Tucson, Arizona. January 8, 2011. 6 people killed; 15 injured (13 by gunfire)." The photos document the sites of mass shootings and provoke, like the text, disquieting confrontations with the nation's transformation of all private and public settings into potential sites of violence. A harrowing, haunting reflection on the routine slaughter wrought by guns. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Booklist Review

Strange things happen in Auster's novels, while in his nonfiction we learn that he's no stranger to the inexplicable in real life. As he takes up the painful and confounding subject of rampant gun violence in America, he reveals a tragic family secret that embodies the fact that fatal shootings reverberate through families and communities for generations. A refined and electrifying writer, Auster presents memories, facts, and commentary with stunning clarity, recounting the horrific details of one mass shooting after another in sync with Spencer Ostrander's somber photographs of grocery stores, schools, a small-town city hall, a Walmart, churches, each silent and haunted after massacres of innocent people. Auster ponders bewildering statistics and the motives of mass shooters, considers the role of guns in our "national mythology" and our failure to face our violent past, parses the Second Amendment and failed attempts at gun control, and examines how social media has helped turn mass shootings into "both a competitive sport and a sinister new variant of contemporary performance art." A rigorous and evocative grappling with mass tragedies in this time of "furious discord."

Library Journal Review

Novelist Auster ("The New York Trilogy") writes an anguished cry of bafflement at this country's obsession for guns; it's not a call to regulate or ban certain types of firearms. Although Auster has never owned a gun, he became a skilled marksman by the age of 10. He learned firsthand how a single act of gun violence can start a generational collapse of family when his grandmother murdered his grandfather. But his personal history goads him to ask, why does society accept approximately 40,000 deaths a year--half of them by suicide--from guns? To answer that, the author examines how these shootings grow out of the combined psyche of U.S. Americans, the cowboy mythos, endless fictional violence on television, and the politicians who use fear to distort reality. He also traces the racial history of the United States and how it's translated into widespread violence. VERDICT Not a comfortable read but rather a work that deals with the societal consequences of sacrificing thousands of lives. Ideal for libraries with collections on both gun control and sociology.--Edwin Burgess