Review of The Life and Death of Sensei


The Life and Death of Sensei by Loren Christensen 
c2021, 200pages

This is a fictional work by one of my favorite authors who weaves a tale of a beloved karate instructor. The story opens with a student of Sensei's who is a writer being contact and requested to write his bio, the good, the bad and the ugly. 
Shortly after the sensei dies. 
The writer begins to interview several important people around Senei, either senior students or those who knew him outside of the studio.  The writer gets bits and pieces of sensei's story and begins to weave them together. The result is a portrait of a deeply flawed and damaged individual. 
In the story, sensei, is a vietnam vet who saw some really bad combat and comes home with PTSD. He looks for thrills for a couple of years and eventually settles down with a few dark times here and there. During one of those dark times, in the throes of a flashback / PTSD episode he ends up killing two Vietnamese who strongly resemble some bad guys in country. He is haunted by this for the rest of his life. 
When the writer finds out about the incident he has a crisis of what to do; write the book as is, whitewash it or not write it at all. 
In the end, he ends up writing the book.

Reading this was interesting and it does bring out the human side of the effects of combat but you can't sweep under the rug the guy was an alcoholic, a womanizer, a liar, a rageaholic when it was justified and a murderer.  Yet throughout most of the book he was Saint-a-fied. He's not someone that I would want guiding me in my journey ( or my kids ).  Is this a case where we divorce the man from the product like we do our musicians and athletes? 
 

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