NP (except for the cover of Vineland and where everything is P). Train Dreams cont.

[Mark Kohut]

That we--America, the Western world-- uprooted the land as we 'built'
modernity; that to make the railroad happen, workers destroyed millions of
trees and laid track over thousands of acres is another fact; see the simple
beginning of Democracy in America where Tocqueville hits us in the face
with the incredible wealth of natural resources that was America.

Remember that the worker protagonist of Johnson's *Train Dreams *worked for
the railroad to clear land.
There are two presentations, one kinda long for a compact novella, of men
vs
trees in *Train Dreams*. One might be enough for a sub-theme but two...

makes it above sub.

Let me sum up the two discussions, monologues mostly. Trees are dangerous;
stories of how 'they've" killed men and once, says a guy, he saw a five-ton
log
"jump up startled", fly off the cart and kill six horses.

Johnson ends one monologue with this telling line. "After the blade
bit in, you had yourself a war". Add this thought: In international law,
the only justification to go to war is self-defense.

Johnson's quiet thematic use of such despoliation might be his connection
to the
 emergence of some kind of curious spirit world later in Train Dreams,
dunno.
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