WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.839 Welcome to today's deep dive. We have a really 00:00:02.839 --> 00:00:04.980 fascinating one for you today. Have you ever 00:00:04.980 --> 00:00:09.300 wondered how someone goes from bandaging catastrophic 00:00:09.300 --> 00:00:11.839 wounds in the middle of an active war zone to, 00:00:11.839 --> 00:00:13.960 you know, standing in the literary spotlight 00:00:13.960 --> 00:00:16.500 as a Pulitzer Prize nominated author? It is a 00:00:16.500 --> 00:00:18.980 pretty incredible leap. Yeah, right. It really 00:00:18.980 --> 00:00:21.800 is. So today we are unpacking the life and the 00:00:21.800 --> 00:00:23.899 literary footprint of American author Richard 00:00:23.899 --> 00:00:27.120 Curry. And our mission here is to examine how 00:00:27.120 --> 00:00:30.320 those two vastly different realities like the 00:00:30.320 --> 00:00:32.640 visceral life -and -death chaos of a combat medic, 00:00:33.500 --> 00:00:35.840 and the quiet, highly structured space of an 00:00:35.840 --> 00:00:38.259 acclaimed writer, how those ultimately intersect. 00:00:38.460 --> 00:00:41.439 Exactly. And we're working off a single source 00:00:41.439 --> 00:00:44.600 today, which is a concise factual Wikipedia biography 00:00:44.600 --> 00:00:46.840 of Curry. And I know on the surface it reads 00:00:46.840 --> 00:00:49.020 like a standard chronological timeline, just 00:00:49.020 --> 00:00:50.939 dates and places. Yeah, totally. But if you look 00:00:50.939 --> 00:00:53.359 closely at the specific dates and the geographic 00:00:53.359 --> 00:00:55.520 shifts, and especially those thematic pivots 00:00:55.520 --> 00:00:58.200 in his bibliography, you start to see how an 00:00:58.200 --> 00:01:00.700 incredibly specific set of lived experiences 00:01:00.700 --> 00:01:03.520 formed the absolute backbone of his art. Yeah, 00:01:03.520 --> 00:01:05.640 the timeline is essentially our map for this 00:01:05.640 --> 00:01:08.430 deep dive. And we were starting in 1949. That 00:01:08.430 --> 00:01:10.950 was when he was born in Parkersburg, West Virginia. 00:01:11.629 --> 00:01:14.549 And given that West Virginia is really the geographic 00:01:14.549 --> 00:01:17.010 and cultural heart of Appalachia, you kind of 00:01:17.010 --> 00:01:19.969 have to wonder how that regional isolation influenced 00:01:19.969 --> 00:01:22.379 his worldview, right? Yeah. long before he was 00:01:22.379 --> 00:01:24.540 ever thrust into a global war. Oh, absolutely. 00:01:25.340 --> 00:01:27.459 Appalachia carries a very specific narrative 00:01:27.459 --> 00:01:30.219 weight. When we talk about Appalachian roots 00:01:30.219 --> 00:01:32.819 in literature, we are usually talking about a 00:01:32.819 --> 00:01:36.319 profound immersion in an oral storytelling tradition. 00:01:36.319 --> 00:01:38.980 Right. It's a region with a deep sense of family 00:01:38.980 --> 00:01:42.920 loyalty, intense connections to a rugged landscape, 00:01:42.959 --> 00:01:45.400 and a cadence of speech that is highly rhythmic, 00:01:45.920 --> 00:01:48.500 but fundamentally unpretentious. Unpretentious 00:01:48.500 --> 00:01:51.209 is a great word for it. Yeah. Growing up in a 00:01:51.209 --> 00:01:53.530 post -war industrial river town like Parkersburg, 00:01:53.829 --> 00:01:56.049 that would give a future writer a very grounded 00:01:56.049 --> 00:01:58.969 ear for dialogue and a natural inclination towards 00:01:58.969 --> 00:02:00.969 stories about working -class resilience. Okay, 00:02:00.969 --> 00:02:03.370 let's unpack this. Because his life does not 00:02:03.370 --> 00:02:06.430 stay isolated in those mountains. From 1968 to 00:02:06.430 --> 00:02:09.949 1972, he serves as a Navy medical corpsman. And 00:02:09.949 --> 00:02:12.189 those years, I mean, those aren't just any random 00:02:12.189 --> 00:02:13.830 periods in history. We were talking about the 00:02:13.830 --> 00:02:15.409 absolute peak of the Vietnam War. It's the dry 00:02:15.409 --> 00:02:18.419 height of it, yeah. and he wasn't drafted into 00:02:18.419 --> 00:02:21.719 a standard infantry role. Being a medical corpsman 00:02:21.719 --> 00:02:24.599 in that specific era carries a totally different 00:02:24.599 --> 00:02:27.689 psychological burden. It is a profound shift 00:02:27.689 --> 00:02:30.830 in perspective. You know, a combat medic or a 00:02:30.830 --> 00:02:34.650 corpsman occupies this very liminal space in 00:02:34.650 --> 00:02:37.710 a war zone. You are inherently part of the military 00:02:37.710 --> 00:02:40.610 apparatus, but your primary function is not to 00:02:40.610 --> 00:02:43.990 inflict damage. It is to mitigate it. Wow. The 00:02:43.990 --> 00:02:46.870 psychological vantage point there is just staggering. 00:02:47.110 --> 00:02:48.610 I mean, you are running toward the casualties 00:02:48.610 --> 00:02:50.810 while everyone else is seeking cover. You are 00:02:50.810 --> 00:02:53.490 observing catastrophic physical trauma on a daily 00:02:53.490 --> 00:02:55.500 basis. Which is just, it's hard to even... your 00:02:55.500 --> 00:02:58.400 head around it is and to survive that and to 00:02:58.400 --> 00:03:01.000 effectively do your job you have to cultivate 00:03:01.000 --> 00:03:04.259 an intense clinical detachment but simultaneously 00:03:04.259 --> 00:03:06.620 you're holding the hands of terrified young people 00:03:06.620 --> 00:03:10.680 which demands overwhelming empathy that tension 00:03:10.680 --> 00:03:12.780 right there between clinical detachment and raw 00:03:12.780 --> 00:03:14.879 empathy that doesn't just vanish when you leave 00:03:14.879 --> 00:03:17.840 the service no not at all you carry that duality 00:03:17.840 --> 00:03:21.169 with you the necessity of you know, compartmentalizing 00:03:21.169 --> 00:03:23.810 horrors while still remaining human enough to 00:03:23.810 --> 00:03:26.889 treat the wounded. It seems like the exact psychological 00:03:26.889 --> 00:03:29.270 crucible that would forge a writer. It forces 00:03:29.270 --> 00:03:32.009 you to become an observer of the human condition 00:03:32.009 --> 00:03:35.530 at its absolute extremes. You are seeing what 00:03:35.530 --> 00:03:38.509 people are made of when all the societal artifice 00:03:38.509 --> 00:03:40.789 is just stripped away by trauma. Right, there's 00:03:40.789 --> 00:03:43.650 no pretense left. None. And when a writer has 00:03:43.650 --> 00:03:46.750 that kind of visceral data to draw from, their 00:03:46.750 --> 00:03:50.219 prose rarely suffers from triviality. The stakes 00:03:50.219 --> 00:03:52.439 in their writing will always inherently reflect 00:03:52.439 --> 00:03:54.840 the life or death stakes they experienced. What's 00:03:54.840 --> 00:03:56.460 interesting about this military stint, though, 00:03:56.740 --> 00:03:59.580 is a glaring contradiction right in the middle 00:03:59.580 --> 00:04:01.539 of our source material. Yes, the classification 00:04:01.539 --> 00:04:04.060 issue. Right. Because the main text of the Wikipedia 00:04:04.060 --> 00:04:07.080 article states clearly that he served as a Navy 00:04:07.080 --> 00:04:09.379 medical corpsman. But if you scroll down to the 00:04:09.379 --> 00:04:11.939 bottom of the page, the user -generated categories 00:04:11.939 --> 00:04:14.939 list him as United States Army Personnel of the 00:04:14.939 --> 00:04:18.220 Vietnam War. Exactly. Navy in the heavily edited 00:04:18.220 --> 00:04:20.959 text. Army in the metadata at the bottom. This 00:04:20.959 --> 00:04:23.889 raises an important question. And not just about 00:04:23.889 --> 00:04:26.810 Curry's specific service record, but about the 00:04:26.810 --> 00:04:29.970 architecture of the information we consume every 00:04:29.970 --> 00:04:32.889 day. Definitely. Wikipedia is an invaluable tool, 00:04:33.230 --> 00:04:36.149 but its structure relies on multiple layers of 00:04:36.149 --> 00:04:39.189 editing. The body text often requires citations 00:04:39.189 --> 00:04:41.850 and goes through rigorous peer review by editors 00:04:41.850 --> 00:04:44.930 focused on that specific author or subject. Well, 00:04:44.930 --> 00:04:47.029 the text you actually read is heavily scrutinized. 00:04:47.209 --> 00:04:49.189 But the categories at the bottom, however, are 00:04:49.189 --> 00:04:52.149 often added by casual editors or even automated... 00:04:52.110 --> 00:04:55.310 trying to bulk classify pages based on keywords 00:04:55.310 --> 00:04:58.889 like Vietnam War and medic. It really highlights 00:04:58.889 --> 00:05:01.850 how messy crowdsourced history can get. If someone 00:05:01.850 --> 00:05:04.370 just skimmed the tags to build a database of 00:05:04.370 --> 00:05:07.009 Army veterans, Curry gets misfiled entirely. 00:05:07.149 --> 00:05:09.790 He does. It's just a necessary reminder for you 00:05:09.790 --> 00:05:12.529 as the listener to always weigh the primary text 00:05:12.529 --> 00:05:14.930 against the metadata. Don't just take the tags 00:05:14.930 --> 00:05:17.009 at face value. That's a great point. And moving 00:05:17.009 --> 00:05:19.110 forward on the timeline, Curry exits the military 00:05:19.110 --> 00:05:22.449 in 1972 and immediately pivots to academia. He 00:05:22.449 --> 00:05:27.209 spends two years from 1972 to 1974 at West Virginia 00:05:27.209 --> 00:05:30.449 University. That is a massive state school, essentially 00:05:30.449 --> 00:05:33.949 a homecoming to his Appalachian roots after the 00:05:33.949 --> 00:05:35.889 chaos of the war. Here's where it gets really 00:05:35.889 --> 00:05:38.980 interesting. Because he doesn't stay there. No, 00:05:39.040 --> 00:05:42.600 he doesn't. In 1974, he transfers to Howard University 00:05:42.600 --> 00:05:45.800 in Washington, DC, and he stays there until 1979. 00:05:46.240 --> 00:05:48.980 Yeah. Howard is arguably the most prominent historically 00:05:48.980 --> 00:05:51.660 black college or university in the country. Talk 00:05:51.660 --> 00:05:54.600 about cultural whiplash. Oh, massive. You are 00:05:54.600 --> 00:05:56.500 going from the rural mountains of West Virginia 00:05:56.500 --> 00:05:59.920 to the global trauma of a combat zone, back to 00:05:59.920 --> 00:06:02.699 a massive Appalachian state school, and then 00:06:02.699 --> 00:06:05.209 dropping into the epicenter of black academia 00:06:05.209 --> 00:06:08.410 in DC in the mid to late 1970s. It's incredible. 00:06:08.629 --> 00:06:10.449 That is a resume that just screams, I am trying 00:06:10.449 --> 00:06:12.569 to figure out America. If we connect this to 00:06:12.569 --> 00:06:14.870 the bigger picture, the 1970s in Washington DC 00:06:14.870 --> 00:06:17.269 was an era of profound political and cultural 00:06:17.269 --> 00:06:19.829 reckoning. The country was processing the end 00:06:19.829 --> 00:06:22.069 of the Vietnam War and the fallout of Watergate. 00:06:22.110 --> 00:06:25.009 Right, to a very volatile time. Very. And Howard 00:06:25.009 --> 00:06:27.250 University was a vibrant, politically active 00:06:27.250 --> 00:06:31.269 hub of Black intellectualism. For a white Appalachian 00:06:31.269 --> 00:06:34.569 Vietnam veteran to immerse himself in that specific 00:06:34.569 --> 00:06:37.430 academic and cultural environment for five years, 00:06:37.829 --> 00:06:41.470 it suggests a deep, restless intellectual curiosity. 00:06:41.610 --> 00:06:43.670 He isn't just staying in his lane. Exactly. He 00:06:43.670 --> 00:06:46.370 is actively placing himself in environments where 00:06:46.370 --> 00:06:49.519 he is the outsider. where his baseline assumptions 00:06:49.519 --> 00:06:51.579 about the world are going to be challenged daily. 00:06:52.040 --> 00:06:54.279 That kind of deliberate exposure is how a writer 00:06:54.279 --> 00:06:57.300 builds a multi -dimensional voice. He isn't relying 00:06:57.300 --> 00:07:00.560 on a single lens to view the world. He has the 00:07:00.560 --> 00:07:03.360 insular specific culture of Appalachia. He has 00:07:03.360 --> 00:07:06.060 the rigid life and death hierarchy of the military. 00:07:06.560 --> 00:07:09.459 And he has the rich, culturally shifting landscape 00:07:09.459 --> 00:07:13.300 of a premier HBCU. to completely unique triad 00:07:13.300 --> 00:07:15.420 of experiences. It really is. When you combine 00:07:15.420 --> 00:07:17.980 those perspectives, you develop a profound capacity 00:07:17.980 --> 00:07:20.240 for nuance. You start to see the interconnectedness 00:07:20.240 --> 00:07:22.199 of different American struggles. And that nuance 00:07:22.199 --> 00:07:24.680 clearly translated onto the page because the 00:07:24.680 --> 00:07:27.779 literary accolades listed in the source are incredibly 00:07:27.779 --> 00:07:29.879 significant. They are major. We're talking about 00:07:29.879 --> 00:07:32.639 a Pulitzer Prize nominee. He won an O. Henry 00:07:32.639 --> 00:07:35.899 Award, which is essentially the gold standard 00:07:35.899 --> 00:07:38.459 for short fiction in America. It means your work 00:07:38.459 --> 00:07:40.779 has been recognized as fundamentally shaping 00:07:40.779 --> 00:07:43.800 the literary landscape of that year. And he was 00:07:43.800 --> 00:07:47.019 a Penn -Hemingway Award finalist, which usually 00:07:47.019 --> 00:07:49.759 flags massive potential in early career fiction. 00:07:49.879 --> 00:07:52.399 He also secured two fellowships from the National 00:07:52.399 --> 00:07:55.680 Endowment for the Arts, the NEA. Wow. Those are 00:07:55.680 --> 00:07:58.800 incredibly competitive, peer -reviewed government 00:07:58.800 --> 00:08:01.800 grants. To get one is a career -defining moment. 00:08:02.220 --> 00:08:05.560 To get two signals sustained, undeniable artistic 00:08:05.560 --> 00:08:07.639 merit. Yeah, they don't just hand those out twice 00:08:07.639 --> 00:08:10.459 by accident. No. Add in the D .H. Lawrence Fellowship 00:08:10.459 --> 00:08:12.720 and a stint as a writer in residence at the University 00:08:12.720 --> 00:08:15.000 of New Mexico, and you have a clear picture of 00:08:15.000 --> 00:08:17.639 an author whose peers deeply respect his craft. 00:08:18.220 --> 00:08:20.199 And when you look at his actual bibliography... 00:08:20.199 --> 00:08:23.459 The titles and publication dates map almost perfectly 00:08:23.459 --> 00:08:25.459 onto the life phases we just analyzed. It's like 00:08:25.459 --> 00:08:27.920 a roadmap of his life. It really is. Yeah. He 00:08:27.920 --> 00:08:31.540 starts by processing the war. In 1980, which 00:08:31.540 --> 00:08:35.000 is eight years after his service ends, he publishes 00:08:35.000 --> 00:08:39.100 Crossing Over, a Vietnam journal. Then, in 1988, 00:08:39.500 --> 00:08:42.059 he falls it up with Fatal Light. The eight -year 00:08:42.059 --> 00:08:44.720 gap between his service and that first book is 00:08:44.720 --> 00:08:47.419 very telling. How so? Well, it takes time to 00:08:47.419 --> 00:08:49.419 metabolize that kind of trauma before you can 00:08:49.419 --> 00:08:51.480 structure it into a narrative that civilian readers 00:08:51.480 --> 00:08:54.220 can actually digest. That makes a lot of sense. 00:08:54.419 --> 00:08:56.740 Crossing Over sounds like a literal documentation, 00:08:56.940 --> 00:08:59.120 a journal of that liminal space between life 00:08:59.120 --> 00:09:01.440 and death he occupied as a corpsman. By the time 00:09:01.440 --> 00:09:03.320 he writes Fatal Light, almost a decade later, 00:09:03.399 --> 00:09:05.820 you can assume he is continuing to refine and 00:09:05.820 --> 00:09:08.490 explore the visceral flashbulb memories of combat 00:09:08.490 --> 00:09:11.509 from a more distant, perhaps more critical perspective. 00:09:11.649 --> 00:09:14.070 But he doesn't stay in Vietnam, literally speaking. 00:09:14.450 --> 00:09:17.590 He pivots back to his roots. In 1990, he publishes 00:09:17.590 --> 00:09:21.029 The Wars of Heaven, and in 1997, Lost Highway. 00:09:21.470 --> 00:09:23.690 Returning to the Appalachian landscape, it is 00:09:23.690 --> 00:09:25.870 a very common trajectory for writers who leave 00:09:25.870 --> 00:09:29.289 home, experience the wider, often chaotic world, 00:09:29.490 --> 00:09:31.649 and then realize that the foundational themes 00:09:31.649 --> 00:09:34.309 of their youth, things like isolation, community, 00:09:34.470 --> 00:09:37.549 survival, are just as potent. as the themes of 00:09:37.549 --> 00:09:40.129 war. He comes full circle. He does. He takes 00:09:40.129 --> 00:09:43.070 the refined, globally tested literary voice he 00:09:43.070 --> 00:09:45.950 built and focuses it back on the mountains. There's 00:09:45.950 --> 00:09:48.149 one entry in this bibliography that completely 00:09:48.149 --> 00:09:50.269 breaks the mold, though. Oh, the nonfiction piece? 00:09:50.450 --> 00:09:53.649 Yes. In 1992, right between those two Appalachian 00:09:53.649 --> 00:09:56.549 books, he publishes a nonfiction work titled 00:09:56.549 --> 00:09:59.929 Medicine for Sale, Commercialism versus Professionalism. 00:10:00.159 --> 00:10:02.639 And it is published by Whittle Communications, 00:10:03.179 --> 00:10:04.740 which is a company known for highly targeted 00:10:04.740 --> 00:10:07.419 media, often placing materials directly in doctors' 00:10:07.659 --> 00:10:10.259 waiting rooms. What's fascinating here is he 00:10:10.259 --> 00:10:12.960 uses his highly specialized practical background 00:10:12.960 --> 00:10:16.620 in medicine to launch a systemic critique. Consider 00:10:16.620 --> 00:10:20.340 the cognitive dissonance at play here. His foundational 00:10:20.340 --> 00:10:22.960 experience with healthcare was combat triage, 00:10:23.799 --> 00:10:26.679 a pure desperate form of medicine where resources 00:10:26.679 --> 00:10:30.000 are scarce, the environment is hostile, and the 00:10:30.000 --> 00:10:33.059 only metric of success is keeping a human being 00:10:33.059 --> 00:10:35.820 breathing for one more minute. And then you return 00:10:35.820 --> 00:10:38.039 to the civilian world and you watch healthcare 00:10:38.039 --> 00:10:40.779 evolve into this massive corporate apparatus. 00:10:41.519 --> 00:10:44.220 Exactly. You are looking at profit margins, HMOs, 00:10:44.360 --> 00:10:46.340 and commercialized care. The friction between 00:10:46.340 --> 00:10:49.299 those two realities would be immense. For a corpsman, 00:10:49.559 --> 00:10:52.220 medicine is a sacred, desperate duty. To see 00:10:52.220 --> 00:10:54.740 it treated as a commercial commodity would understandably 00:10:54.740 --> 00:10:57.500 provoke a sharp analytical response. It really 00:10:57.500 --> 00:10:59.659 shows another side of his intellect. It shows 00:10:59.659 --> 00:11:02.139 that Curry wasn't just interested in exploring 00:11:02.139 --> 00:11:04.980 his past through fiction. He was actively using 00:11:04.980 --> 00:11:07.159 his analytical skills to critique the present 00:11:07.159 --> 00:11:09.279 societal systems around him. Which naturally 00:11:09.279 --> 00:11:11.159 leads to the core theme mentioned in the source 00:11:11.159 --> 00:11:13.940 material. His role as a frequent speaker on the 00:11:13.940 --> 00:11:16.279 intersection of art and the military. We often 00:11:16.279 --> 00:11:18.720 treat those two worlds, the creative arts and 00:11:18.720 --> 00:11:22.289 the armed forces, as diametrically opposed. One 00:11:22.289 --> 00:11:24.889 is viewed as fluid and expressive. The other 00:11:24.889 --> 00:11:27.830 is rigid and tactical. But that intersection 00:11:27.830 --> 00:11:30.809 is historically where some of our most vital 00:11:30.809 --> 00:11:33.809 literature comes from. The military experience, 00:11:33.830 --> 00:11:36.539 particularly in combat. isolates the service 00:11:36.539 --> 00:11:39.059 member from the civilian world. It builds a wall. 00:11:39.299 --> 00:11:41.580 A huge wall. The things you see, the decisions 00:11:41.580 --> 00:11:43.820 you have to make, create a gap in understanding 00:11:43.820 --> 00:11:46.299 that everyday language often fails to bridge. 00:11:46.899 --> 00:11:49.159 If you come home and just recite the facts of 00:11:49.159 --> 00:11:52.000 a battle, it doesn't convey the emotional truth 00:11:52.000 --> 00:11:54.399 of the experience. Art serves as the translation 00:11:54.399 --> 00:11:57.350 matrix. It gives shape to the unimaginable. A 00:11:57.350 --> 00:12:00.330 novel or well -crafted memoir allows a civilian 00:12:00.330 --> 00:12:02.690 reader to safely step into the psychological 00:12:02.690 --> 00:12:05.429 space of the soldier. By speaking extensively 00:12:05.429 --> 00:12:08.070 on this intersection, Curry advocates for the 00:12:08.070 --> 00:12:10.909 utility of art. It isn't just an aesthetic pursuit. 00:12:11.250 --> 00:12:13.730 It is a functional necessary tool for veterans 00:12:13.730 --> 00:12:16.769 to process their history and for society to actually 00:12:16.769 --> 00:12:19.450 comprehend the immense psychological weight it 00:12:19.450 --> 00:12:22.009 asks its service members to carry. So what does 00:12:22.009 --> 00:12:24.779 this all mean? That is the big question. We have 00:12:24.779 --> 00:12:26.679 traced the timeline from the mountains of West 00:12:26.679 --> 00:12:29.200 Virginia, through the triage tents of Vietnam, 00:12:29.820 --> 00:12:31.940 into the academic halls of Howard University, 00:12:32.200 --> 00:12:35.159 and finally into the upper echelons of American 00:12:35.159 --> 00:12:37.580 literature. A hell of a journey. It really is. 00:12:37.820 --> 00:12:40.179 For you listening to this right now, Richard 00:12:40.179 --> 00:12:43.519 Curry's biography is a master class in the utilization 00:12:43.519 --> 00:12:46.700 of lived experience. Beautifully said. It demonstrates 00:12:46.700 --> 00:12:49.519 that the disparate, confusing, and sometimes 00:12:49.519 --> 00:12:52.379 traumatic chapters of a life don't have to remain 00:12:52.379 --> 00:12:54.879 fragmented. You can forge them into something 00:12:54.879 --> 00:12:58.320 cohesive. Yes. He took the intense empathy required 00:12:58.320 --> 00:13:01.659 of a medic, the cultural education of an HBCU, 00:13:02.139 --> 00:13:04.179 and the storytelling rhythm of his Appalachian 00:13:04.179 --> 00:13:07.159 hometown, and he used them as raw material to 00:13:07.159 --> 00:13:09.419 build a legacy that bridges the gap between the 00:13:09.419 --> 00:13:11.840 military and civilian worlds. And that legacy 00:13:11.840 --> 00:13:14.840 has a remarkable staying power. There is a detail 00:13:14.840 --> 00:13:16.799 in the publication history that leaves us with 00:13:16.799 --> 00:13:19.039 something quite profound to consider. Oh, yeah, 00:13:19.100 --> 00:13:21.639 the reprint dates. Right. The Wikipedia info 00:13:21.639 --> 00:13:26.659 box lists his years active as 1974 to 1997, which 00:13:26.659 --> 00:13:28.559 covers the primary period when he was writing 00:13:28.559 --> 00:13:31.299 and publishing his major works. But the bibliography 00:13:31.299 --> 00:13:33.779 notes show a huge resurgence much later. They 00:13:33.779 --> 00:13:36.919 do. Crossing over. His Vietnam Journal from 1980 00:13:36.919 --> 00:13:39.679 was reprinted by the Santa Fe Writers Project 00:13:39.679 --> 00:13:43.720 in 2018. That is 38 years after its initial publication. 00:13:43.980 --> 00:13:46.600 That's practically unheard of. Yeah. Satellite 00:13:46.600 --> 00:13:49.559 was reprinted in 2009. The Wars of Heaven was 00:13:49.559 --> 00:13:52.759 reprinted in 2014. Decades after his officially 00:13:52.759 --> 00:13:56.080 active period, an entirely new publishing house 00:13:56.080 --> 00:13:58.220 looked at the literary landscape and decided 00:13:58.220 --> 00:14:00.740 these specific stories needed to be put back 00:14:00.740 --> 00:14:03.279 into print. Wasn't just a digital archive. No, 00:14:03.399 --> 00:14:05.860 it was an active reintroduction of his work to 00:14:05.860 --> 00:14:08.279 a new generation of readers. If an independent 00:14:08.279 --> 00:14:11.039 publisher in 2018 looks at a book about the Vietnam 00:14:11.039 --> 00:14:14.480 War written in 1980 and says, we need this on 00:14:14.480 --> 00:14:17.679 shelves today. It speaks volumes. It forces us 00:14:17.679 --> 00:14:20.000 to ask, what does that tell us about the timeless 00:14:20.000 --> 00:14:23.100 nature of trauma and recovery? We might change 00:14:23.100 --> 00:14:25.379 the locations of our conflicts and we might update 00:14:25.379 --> 00:14:28.000 the technology of medicine, but the core human 00:14:28.000 --> 00:14:30.820 experience of going to war, trying to heal the 00:14:30.820 --> 00:14:33.360 broken, and returning home to a society that 00:14:33.360 --> 00:14:35.700 doesn't quite understand that remains entirely 00:14:35.700 --> 00:14:38.200 unchanged. It's a universal truth. The fact that 00:14:38.200 --> 00:14:41.639 Curry's work is still finding new audiences suggests 00:14:41.639 --> 00:14:44.039 that the conversation between art and the military 00:14:44.039 --> 00:14:47.019 is never actually resolved. It just finds new 00:14:47.019 --> 00:14:49.379 resonance with every generation that inherits 00:14:49.379 --> 00:14:52.100 the consequences of conflict. The conversation 00:14:52.100 --> 00:14:54.379 doesn't end. We just keep needing new readers 00:14:54.379 --> 00:14:57.100 to engage with it. Exactly. Thank you for joining 00:14:57.100 --> 00:14:59.700 us on this deep dive. We hope this exploration 00:14:59.700 --> 00:15:02.100 of Richard Curry's timeline has given you a new 00:15:02.100 --> 00:15:04.320 way to think about how diverse experiences shape 00:15:04.320 --> 00:15:07.649 the stories we tell. Until next time, keep seeking 00:15:07.649 --> 00:15:09.610 out the narratives that challenge your perspective.