On Truth
Harry G. Frankfurt
Knopf, $12.50
Now he's back with an earnest addendum. "I had omitted any explanation at all," he apologizes, "of exactly why truth actually is so important to us, or why we should care especially about it."
He is not, however, going to address "the entangled debate" over whether "objective reality" exists at all. "That debate," he writes confidently, "seems unlikely ever to be finally resolved, and it is generally unrewarding."
Frankfurt assumes truth exists, and he makes a straightforward case for why we need it. Most obviously, he says, the truth is useful. Just imagine our lives without it. Bridges could not be built, medicine could not be prescribed, food could not be cooked. Common sense says we should care.
But there is more to it than that. Without knowing the truth about ourselves, he says, we have a hard time setting goals and making decisions. This applies to the individual and to society. "In my judgment," Frankfurt writes, "it is nearly always more advantageous to face the facts with which we must deal than to remain ignorant of them."
The interesting clause there is "in my judgment." For all its insistence on the existence of facts, On Truth takes a subjective tone. At first, it appears just in the put-downs. Postmodernists are "shameful antagonists of good sense"; the idea that being true to oneself is more important than being true to facts is "shabby, narcissistic."
But as Frankfurt burrows to the heart of his argument-that in order to operate in the world, we must accept a truth outside of ourselves, the greatest of which is love-he softens, grows almost honeyed. Here is the not-so-subtle secret of Frankfurt's success. When he needs to batten down a creeper vine of falsity, he writes in the stern, no-nonsense voice of a pragmatist. But when he needs to tell us the truth matters, he appeals to our hearts. This may be a minor truth, but it makes this clever little book work.
Lone Wolf: Eric Rudolph-Murder, Myth and the Pursuit of an American Outlaw
Maryanne Vollers
HarperCollins, $25.95
"When it comes to hide and seek," writes Maryanne Vollers in this fascinating study of serial bomber Eric Rudolph, "the mountains of North Carolina have always favored the hiders." They certainly favored Rudolph. After he set off a series of deadly bombings in 1996 and 1997 in Atlanta and Birmingham, Alabama, Rudolph retreated to North Carolina and remained at large in the mountains for five years, eluding one of the country's largest manhunts ever.
Lone Wolf is in part the story of this manhunt, which Vollers re-creates with true-crime panache. The FBI had the woods searched with dogs, monitored by motion sensors, combed by infrared sensors. They even dispatched undercover agents dressed as hikers on the Appalachian Trail. At the investigation's peak, they spent $16,000 a day in tiny Andrews, North Carolina, on rent, food, hotels and gas.
One day in 2003, after they had all but given up, Rudolph wandered out of the woods and was caught by a rookie cop. The so-called "mountain man" had been rooting through a garbage bin just a few miles from where he disappeared.
Rudolph's greatest weapon in eluding law enforcement was the legend that had built up around him. "When he was identified as the main suspect ... investigators profiled him as a 'lone offender,'" Vollers writes, "a self-appointed avenger with no real alliances, no meaningful social ties."
Vollers argues this profile was both correct and far off-base. Drawing upon correspondence with Rudolph, interviews with his friends and family and total access to FBI and other files, she presents a kaleidoscopic portrait of a true Jekyll-and-Hyde personality. In one moment Rudolph could be rational, charming and sensitive. In the next he could retreat into intense bigotry and rage.
Vollers seems to understand the significance of Rudolph's relatively easy capture. He wasn't happy living alone in the woods. In fact, he spent much of his time watching the FBI headquarters in Andrews, sneaking down the hill at night to scavenge for food. If he wasn't the center of attention, he had no reason to exist at all.