Love Thy Neighor: A Story of War, Vintage, 1997.

Peter Maass is a journalistic heavyweight with a stellar resume: The Wall Street Journal, International Herald Tribune, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and so on. From 1992 to 1993, he covered the war in Bosnia for the Post and shortly thereafter released a book about his time there entitled Love Thy Neighbor.

I disliked Love Thy Neighbor. At first I had trouble putting my finger on why. But rather than toss it in the trash, I decided to conduct an autopsy on it and try to diagnose what went wrong. Here are the results of my exam.

First, let Maass tell you — in his own words — why he isn’t the ideal war correspondent:

“Reporting on the war required me to take many more risks than I felt comfortable with, so I did my best to avoid the unnecessary ones. Everyone has to make his own private rule, draw his own private line. Mine might be more conservative than others, less heroic, and it might mean I would miss out on stories or experiences that other journalists would get, because they were willing to do things I would not. I could live with that.”

I can live with that, too. Unfortunately, it doesn’t make for the best of books. And that brings us straight to problem number one:

Problem #1) When there is no drama, drama is spun out of thin air.

The book is full of things that “could” or “might” have happened. For example, while driving in a BMW and being pursued by Serbs in a Yugo (for entering a restricted area) Maass conjures this scene up:

“Perhaps as they drove deeper into the cornfield they realized that they should probably get permission to punish us. “Damn journalists,” the barrel-chested leader might have said. “They deserve to die, but, shit, we better get the commander to approve it first.” He might then have started at one of the guys in the back, “Hey, Bogdan, stop hogging the brandy, and goddamnit, stop farting.” (p. 19)

Keep in mind that none of that happened. And the line about “brandy” and “farting” is flat-out bizarre. Imagine if you were reading a story about a man being pursued by the police in the United States. Imagine if this man would later write about his experience: “Perhaps the NYC policemen chasing me were thinking about shooting me 41 times like they did to Amadou Diallo. ‘Damn tourists,’ the cop might have said. He might then have told his partner: “Hey Johnny, stop drinking Coca-Cola and eating Big Macs, and goddamnit, stop farting.”

If that sounds silly, it’s because it is.

Problem #2) Bad Teenage poetry is used to describe a concentration camp.

Maass gets an attack of Live Journal Syndrome (LJS) during a visit to the Trnopolje camp and writes:

“I saw dozens of other walking skeletons of that sort. I could break all of their arms, all of their legs. Snap. Snap. Snap.” (p. 41)

Even better would be: “I could break all of their arms, all of their legs. Snap. Crackle. Pop. Kablam!”

Problem #3) On Caricatures.

“Muslim” is a horrible word in America because it dredges up racist images. The images are of unshaven rug merchants with a hand on your shoulder and another in your pocket; of billionaire sheiks who ooze piety and hypocrisy at the same time; of Koran-waving fanatics …. toothless nomads… In Bosnia, the caricature didn’t fit.” (p. 69)

In other places this caricature fits like a charm?

Problem #4) Incorrect Apocalypse Now Reference

This is actually considered a capital crime in some universities. Here’s the offending passage:

“A doctor who had survived the attack on Gorazde’s hospital, and who apparently had seen “Apocalypse Now,” requested over the radio link that America attach loudspeakers to the wings of its F-16s and have them fly over the city blaring out the “Death March.” (p. 82)

It’s not the “Death March.” As any college freshman will gladly point out, it’s Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries.” There is in fact a “death march” in Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen — it accompanies the death of Siegfried in Goetterdaemmerung. But that’s not what the American helicopters play in the movie.

Problem #5) Sloth.

This part makes me want to snap, crackle, pop:

“An often told incident in the press corps concerns a Serb roadblock where a carload of journalists was stopped, searched, and then one of them was hauled away for “questioning.” The quivering journalist, from a Dallas newspaper, was taken to the commander, who demanded to know who shot J.R. This tale might be apocryphal. A similar episode is described in Thomas Friedman’s book “From Beirut to Jerusalem,” regarding a checkpoint in Lebanon. I suspect that both episodes occurred.” (p. 92)

How difficult would it be to determine if this story is true? How hard do you think it would be to find out who was writing for a Dallas newspaper in Bosnia during the war, and then ask them if it really happened? Five minutes? More?

Problem #6) Avoids the Main Actor in the Bosnian War: Death

“I have a confession to make. In the period that I covered the Bosnian war, approximately 100,000 human beings were turned into corpses. I saw precisely one of them. It was not easy to miss the 99,999 other ones, but I did.” (p. 135)

No comment.

Problem #7) Has Slightly Skewed Priorities Because He Avoids the Main Actor in the Bosnian War: Death

“It’s a sign of the nature of journalists today that I dreamed about being stuck in a remote part of Bosnia without a special telephone linkup. Refugees shrieked at night because of murder; I was more likely to shriek because of modems.” (p. 103)

War is hell?

Problem #8) Botched an interview with Milosevic.

A really hard-hitting, gloves-off interview with Slobodan could have single-handedly redeemed this entire book. But after struggling to get an interview, Maass can’t bring himself to even ask a question about Milosevic’s parents. He ends up folding faster than Superman on laundry day:

“I folded. The idealistic journalist inside of me says I was a coward. Journalists are not supposed to let presidents stare us down.” (p. 218)

Problem #9) Inappropriate WW2 metaphors.

You know, we’ve been through at least five-thousand years of civilization already. Why do we insist on using the years 1939-1945 for all of our historical metaphors? Just for the record: Saddam is not Hitler, Bush is not Hitler, Milosevic is not Hitler, in fact, the only one who can be accurately described as Hitler is Adolf “Schicklgruber” Hitler.

Just once, I’d love to see someone say that Saddam resembled Sin-shar-ishkun of Assyria. Even if there are no similarities, it’s better than this whole “You’re a Nazi! No, you’re a Nazi!” phenomenon.

That said, Maass can’t seem to resist the lure of the Second World War and writes that British Prime Minister Major “followed the politics” of Chamberlain, and that Mitterand was like Petain, etc… (p. 266) In case you didn’t know, Mitterand was like Petain because when the Serbs overran France during the Bosnian War, Mitterand ruled the south of the country as a fascist sympathizer. Or something like that.

Problem #10) In the middle of a warzone, worries what his colleagues might think of him

Remember number six? The one about seeing one dead body despite being in the middle of a war? Well, the dead body he sees is in an old people’s home in Nedzarici. He goes there with 12 journalists to check it out. There he sees an old lady, named Milena Topalovic, who is in the process of dying. A British journalist comforts her, which is something Maass “could not imagine doing” (p. 138)

He then writes:

“I would feel awkward when the time came to leave, and I would feel foolish if other colleagues saw me doling out tenderness.” (p. 138)

Apparently, if Maass had comforted the lady he would have gotten a telegram the next day from an AP reporter saying something like:

“i saw u with the old d00d last night! LOL!!!!!!! u r a big faggit!!!!!”

The Stirring Conclusion

The thing about this book is that, despite its weaknesses, the author comes across as a likeable guy. He’s modest and passionate and hates injustice. If you mixed all of this together with fearlessness and a bit more background knowledge, you would have a fantastic war correspondent. Unfortunately, that’s not the case here, with this book.