She didn’t flinch or go prissy because she knew she was in the presence of that sacred and awful thing, American Loneliness, akin to the face of Abraham Lincoln. She knew that Americans were the saddest people in the world in time of war because they were Magnificent Provincials. That was why every American soldier who wasn’t queer had to have his buddy, with whom he shared a stream of consciousness in itself meaningless, but which added up to all the nobility and isolation of a young and idealistic people thrown into death and destruction.
