Birdy Book

'Birdy' was author William Wharton's first novel, written at age 50. It is a story of two boys growing up in a poor suburb of Philadelphia who have one of those puzzling friendships, due to the boys' different natures, that somehow works. Birdy is a gifted youth obsessed with birds and flying and raises pigeons and canaries. Alfonso, his best friend, is a child abused by a gruff father. He channels his anger into playing sports, at which he excels, and beating people up, at which he also excels. Both share a strict Catholic school upbringing that neither seems to take too seriously.

In the novel, both are narrators and the setting is a military mental hospital in Kentucky where Birdy has been confined after suffering trauma fighting in the Pacific Theater in WW II. Alfonso is brought to the hospital by Birdy's psychiatrist because Birdy's trauma has caused him to act like a bird. He doesn't talk and squats and has to be fed like a bird by his attendant and has the "thousand-yard stare" common to traumatized war victims.

Alfonzo has his own psychological issues and is at Fort Dix undergoing reconstructive surgeries after being shot up in a skirmish in Germany. He visits Birdy daily and talks about the old days they spent together. Alfonzo is not a person of deep psychological insight but does realize that Birdy is acting like a bird to get away from whatever bad things happened to him in the war.

Several reviewers have speculated that this novel was a way for author Wharton to work out his own "issues" from trauma he suffered in World War II. Here's a line from Wikipedia that seems to support this:

"Wharton was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. From "a poor, hard-working, Catholic family",[1] he graduated from Upper Darby High School in 1943, and was inducted into the school's Wall of Fame in 1997. During World War II, Wharton served in the United States Army and was first assigned to an engineering unit. He was transferred to the infantry, and was severely wounded in the Battle of the Bulge. His memoirs included an account of his role in the killing of German prisoners during the war - "War for me, though brief, had been a soul-shaking trauma. I was scared, miserable, and I lost confidence in human beings, especially myself."

His war experiences seem to be a combination of Alfonzo's and Birdy's, as Birdy was also originally assigned to an engineering unit and Alfonzo was an infantry soldier fighting in Europe. He is not wounded in the Ardennes, as Wharton was, but he is severely wounded and has a long recovery.

Wharton became a psychologist after returning from the war and waited over twenty years to write this book. By the time he wrote it, much more was known about PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), but men (and women) of Wharton's generation were not encouraged to talk about what happened in the war, especially if they saw hard combat, and those veterans unable to function in society were labeled as "shell-shocked" and looked down upon by some peers and many civilians. I think, in part, that this book is Wharton's way of exorcising his own demons about the war while showing the sorts of psychological problems that arise from severe trauma. He succeeds admirably in doing this.

That said, 'Birdy' was not always an easy book to read. At its best, the book's narratives are balanced and equal time is given to Birdy's reminisces about his bird-obsessed past and Alfonzo's attempts to bring Birdy out of his shell, so to speak, by rehashing childhood exploits. About two-thirds through the book, however, Birdy riffs on a lengthy explication of the intricacies of raising canaries that somewhat resembles the divagations on whales in 'Moby Dick,' though with a bit less gravitas. I found this section "readable" but it was slow-going for a person as neurotic and addled as I am :).

'Birdy' is one of those books that I'd been meaning to read for years, after watching the excellent movie version starring Matthew Modine as Birdy and Nicholas Cage (back in the days when he still played roles for art's sake) as Alfonzo. Somehow, thirty years passed between the time I first saw the movie and read the book. It is a flawed but beautiful book that humanizes trauma and shows the power of friendship as a bulwark to help us deal with the things that can break us.