![]() Perhaps by the measure of tests or the judgement of fools, you might fall into some category or other, but deep down, Forrest, I have seen that glowing sparkle of curiosity burning deep in your mind. The crucial question is, what will you do? I don't think you're an idiot at all. This war is to for you, old pal - nor me - and I am well out of it as I'm sure you will be in time. When I think back on it now, there is something in your eyes, some tiny flash of fire that comes now and then, mostly when you smile, and, on those infrequent occasions, I believe what I saw was almost a Genesis of our ability as humans to think, to create, to be. I sense, Forrest, that you are on the verge of something very significant in your life, some change, or event that will move you in a different direction, and you must seize the moment, and not let it pass. The doctors made their decision quickly, and before I knew it, I was being taken away, but I asked if I could stop long enough to write you this note, because you have been so kind to me whileI was here. A heavy-handed, one-joke (Forrest confounds and frustrates various teachers, coaches, Army sergeants, and Presidents) sort of novel which is, finally, a cheat: Forrest, after all, isn't really an idiot-he's simply a country boy who doesn't test well.I am sorry there was no time for us to speech other before I left. I do not lie!"" After this, it's the dismal 70's, and Gump tries his hand at professional wrestling, tournament chess, and shrimping, before settling happily down as a street musician in New Orleans. He crashlands in New Guinea, spends four years playing chess with a Yale-educated cannibal, then is rescued and taken to a crude caricature of President Nixon for congratulations: ""I am your commander-in-chief. The authorities give him a choice: he can have permanent hospitalization as a dangerous moron, or he can take his computer brain on a secret NASA space flight (""Look,"" I tell him, ""I am just a idiot""). After a publicity tour which takes him as far as China, he leaves the Army and goes through a hippy/protest phase (the freaks think he's, yuk-yuk, far out) but gets busted when he throws his Medal over the White House fence during a demonstration. Before they can exploit him, however, he flunks out, gets drafted and sent to Vietnam, and wins the Congressional Medal of Honor, mainly because he's too dumb to be afraid. His teachers there discover he's an idiot savant-he can't pass Gym 101, but he knows the theory of relativity like nobody's business. After surviving a poor-white-trash childhood that would've destroyed better men (such as, say, Benjy), Gump is plucked from obscurity by Coach Bear Bryant and taken to play football at the University of Alabama. My IQ is 61, which qualifies me, so they say."" And off we go, Gump starring as a self-consciously literary half-wit (he's a fan of Lennie and Boo Radley) while Groom makes Statements about America. The narrator is Gump himself, of Mobile, Alabama, 6'6"", 242 pounds, and all idiot: ""I've been a idiot since I was born. The usually reliable Groom (Better Times Than These, Conversations with the Enemy) turns as gawky and ham-handed as his hero-Forrest Gump, contemporary American idiot-in this stumbling, droopy-drawered attempt at a picaresque novel.
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