"In this (and other) such work, every choice by the characters is always the worst--except for all the other choices. Tragic heroes are true to themselves, persistent in their choices, and fearless in the face of consequences. They triumph heroicly, strive mightily and fail because of their humanity."

Sounds like a description of George Bush's approach to foreign and domestic policy in a nutshell! ;-) (persist stubbornly in your unwise choices...brook no interference....never change your mind no matter what...raise a lot of ruckus...do a shitload of damage...fail tragically in the end, and be remembered as a damn fool by posterity)

Maybe that is the unofficial credo of the American West! ;-) Bush, after all, seems to think of himself as a cowboy.

kendall - I agree with your comments on O'Brien's writing. I think it's overly wordy and drawn-out, and I think that C.S. Forester's books (the Hornblower series) are much superior as adventure fiction, because they tell their story wonderfully and they stick mainly to the characters, who are quite interesting ones, and the action itself...rather than burying the reader in interminable volumes of minutiae.