The Henderson Memories
by Doug Ingold (Brazil 1964-66)
Wolfenden Publishing, $14.95
Kindle Edition, $9.75
379 pages
469kd
2010

Lyndon B. Johnson: The American Presidents Series: The 36th President, 1963-1969
by Charles Peters (PC/Staff 1961-65)
Times Books, $23.00
224 pages
June 2010

Becker’s Farm
by William Timmons (Niger 1965-67)
CreateSpace, $ 13.67
326 pages
June 2006

The Man in the Black and White Dress
by William Timmons (Niger 1965-67)
CreateSpace, $15.99
338 pages
2009

The Trojan Pony
by William Timmons (Niger 1965-67)
Create Space, $ 14.95
223 pages
2009

Under the Same Moon
by Kelli Donley (Cameroon 2000)
Donley Books, $16.00
356 pages
May 2010

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The Henderson Memories
by Doug Ingold (Brazil 1964–66)
Wolfenden
379 pages
$14.95 from Wofenden, $9.75 Kindle version

Reviewed by Reilly Ridgell (Micronesia 1971–73)

THE FIRST TWO OR THREE PAGES OF A NOVEL need to grab the readers and make them want to continue reading. Also, if a book is really bad you’ll generally know after the first few pages. In The Henderson Memories author Doug Ingold starts off by introducing us to the two characters through whom the story will unfold. While the first pages weren’t really grabbing me, they were ok. And the other elements — sentence structure, flow, descriptions — were fine. But something was bothering me, nagging at me as I read on.  Then it hit me. Look at this:

Connie eats half her Greek salad and turns to her laptop. She enters two words into a search engine, a first name and a last. She pauses, feeling somewhat apprehensive.

Good grief. He’s writing in the present tense. Nobody writes in the present tense. Or do they?  Curious, I googled “writing in the present tense” and found a number of web sites with lively discussions on the topic. The consensus seemed to be that while it is possible to write a novel entirely in the present tense, as writers John Updike, Tom Robbins, and others have done successfully, it is very difficult to do well. It can end up reading like stage directions in a screen play, or like a synopsis prepared to pitch the real novel to publishers. Author Emma Darwin likened reading a novel in the present tense to being constantly tapped on the forehead by a teaspoon. Another said present tense books constantly reminded him that he was reading.

If it had just been the tense thing I could have let it go. But there was another problem that was extremely annoying. Ingold apparently doesn’t believe in quotation marks, except when denoting dialogue within dialogue.  Notice the following:

Connie wants to talk about her mother’s hair. You said it was long?

Notice how awkward that whole passage is.  First you have the narrative voice trying to get into Connie’s head in the present tense. Then you have the second sentence which is confusing until you realize that it’s supposed to be dialogue. A writer should never make it difficult to read his book, but every time I ran into these situations I had to remind myself I was reading dialogue. Then I had to figure out who was talking. It broke my concentration and impeded the flow of the book. This drawback, together with the present tense, is almost the kiss of death for what otherwise is a very interesting and compelling novel. Now there is past tense in the book, either when the characters are reading from a journal or when one is recounting his memories. But I really can’t see the point of writing a good portion of the story in the present tense. And I can’t forgive the author for his lack of quotation marks.

If you can get past the tense and quotation mark issues, there is a really interesting story here. The concept is unique — a woman, Connie, finds out her deceased parents had been Peace Corps Volunteers for a few months in Brazil then lived the rest of their lives without ever telling their children.  She looks up one of their fellow Volunteers and tries to find out why they left after only a few months and why they never told their children.  Through their conversations and reading of the father’s journal, the author begins to weave a tale that includes all the best elements of a Peace Corps novel: the culture shock, the frustration at Third World inertia, the attitude both rich and poor have of accepting things the way they are, the dealing with bureaucracies of both the Peace Corps and local governments, the HCN’s both sleazy and good, the wondering if anything can be accomplished by Volunteers. It’s all there and quite well done. Connie’s father is the super Peace Corps Volunteer, or as I used to call them, the mountain movers.  But he quickly realizes how futile his efforts at improving anybody’s life will be and he spirals dangerously into native religion all in an attempt to get closer to the “real” people. Her mother, meanwhile, takes refuge every weekend in a larger town nearby where she can shop and eat at a good restaurant, and as she does so she feels herself falling away from her husband.

Eventually the father appears to be losing his grip and the Peace Corps sends them home. Along the way in this tale the descriptions of life and the settings are vivid. A number of interesting characters interact with her parents and they are well done. I found no stilted dialogue, noticed no awkward sentences (except as noted with the tense and quotation mark problems) and very few typos. There are a number of interesting twists and turns in the plot, especially at the end, most of which had been cleverly foreshadowed. I believe Wolfenden is a POD/Vanity press since a traditional press editor would never have allowed the lack of quotation marks. Otherwise, the production value of the book seems pretty good. I would have given it a more catchy cover and a better title.  “Out of Brazil” would have been perfect except too much of an obvious rip off of “Out of Africa.”

The book did seem to drag in a few places but that may have been more from my exhaustion at having to recognize dialogue and deal with the present tense narrative. If you can get past that, this is really a good Peace Corps story.

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Hunting Hemingway’s Trout
by Lauri Anderson (Nigeria 1965–67)
North Star Press of St. Cloud Inc.
$14.95
139 pages
2010

Reviewed by Mark Brazaitis (Guatemala 1991–93)

IF IMITATION IS THE HIGHEST FORM OF FLATTERY, writing a book in the spirit of an author one admires must be the second highest form.

I think Ernest Hemingway would have been flattered by Hunting Hemingway’s Trout, and not only because it’s a tribute to him (or at least his writerly influence) but because it’s well-written and entertaining. It’s fiction that, especially in its opening story, occasionally reads like memoir, with an appealing intimacy.

Hemingway is everywhere in this book. Let us count the ways (or at least some of them).

Portions of Hemingway’s biography are included in short pieces between longer stories. These pieces have titles like “Hemingway and Women” and “Hemingway and War” and offer insights into his life and work such as the real-life characters on whom he based his fictional characters. Lady Duff Twysden, Anderson (or his narrator) informs us, was a “twice-married alcoholic party-goer and flirt” who “accompanied Hemingway and friends to Spain and later became Brett Ashley in The Sun Also Rises.”

1) Hemingway is an obsession (or at least a concern) of the characters in the short stories. In the title story, for example, the narrator and his cousin, Toivo, set out to find the river in Hemingway’s short story “Big Two-Hearted River.” Both characters know the story well, but not as well as the narrator of “A Short Unhappy Life” knows the Hemingway story “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.” A professor, he claims to have read the story five hundred times. Even so, he hasn’t come to a conclusion about the ending. Did Macomber’s wife, Margot, shoot her husband intentionally or was she aiming for a buffalo?

2)  Anderson’s writing, no doubt intentionally, sounds a little . . . well . . . Hemingwayesque. The opening to Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”: “It was very late and everyone had left the café except an old man who sat in the shadow the leaves of the tree made against the electric light.” The opening of Anderson’s “By the Eggplants”: “Through my window I watch the September wind pile brown leaves against the base of an adjacent building.” Not only do both stories open with a description of setting (while at the same time introducing a character), but their rhythms are similar.

3) Like Hemingway, Anderson writes about the experiences of Americans abroad. Unlike Hemingway, who died as the Peace Corps was beginning, Anderson writes about the experiences of Peace Corps Volunteers. Lars Olson in “There Is No Smyrna, Only Izmir” believes he’s doing something radical by having his English class in an all-girls school in Turkey read essays by Hemingway. But as one of the Turkish students tells her American friend later, “All of us read those Hemingway pieces years ago. Does he think we’re children? We’re seventeen.”

Hunting Hemingway’s Trout was first published in 1990. It’s back in print in a readable paperback from North Star Press of St. Cloud. While readers who aren’t familiar with Hemingway’s work might find things to like here, it’s true audience is certainly Hemingway fans. The more one knows about Hemingway’s life and works, the greater the appreciation. In a scene in the title story, for example, an old man the two protagonists meet in their hunt for the Big Two-Hearted River recalls a trio of young fishermen who came to test their luck in the nearby waters in 1919. “If I remember right, the one with all the questions was a newspaper man,” says the old man. But Toivo dismisses this: “That couldn’t have been Hemingway. He didn’t write newspaper stuff.” But of course he did, as any Google search on “Hemingway Kansas City Star” will tell you.

Nicholson Baker wrote a funny, self-deprecating homage to John Updike, U & I, which details his obsession with the older master. Anderson’s book is less forthright about its obsession, but it’s similar in spirit. Both works lead us back to the authors who inspired them. And isn’t it about time we picked up A Farewell to Arms again?

To order Hunting Hemingway’s Trout from Amazon, click on the book cover or the bold book title — and Peace Corps Worldwide, an Amazon Associate, will receive a small remittance that helps support our awards.

The Internet workshop will focus on key issues for writers of nonfiction, among them are:  1) how to turn an opinion into a publishable op-ed piece; 2) what a really marketable nonfiction book proposal looks like; 3) how to increase the chances that your book-which will be published into an environment full of competing messages-will  attract as much attention as possible; 4) what actually happens in the publishing and book promotion cycle. And more!

She is offering sessions in September and October. Each session consists of three live classes, and each class is two hours long. You may register for all three or any combination. The first half of each webinar will be a lecture. The second half will be interactive where participants can ask questions and also network with other participants. The cost is $350 for the three webinars.  $125 for individual sessions.

You can find out much more, and register at: www.morethansound.net <http://www.morethansound.net>

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Henry Walters & Bernard Berenson: Collector & Connoisseur
by Stanley Mazaroff (Philippines 1961–63)
Johns Hopkins University Press
$40.00
212 pages
May 2010

Reviewed by Leita Kaldi Davis (Senegal 1993–96)

Stanley Mazaroff has written a fascinating account of the relationship between Henry Walters, founder of the legendary Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, and Bernard Berenson, the world’s greatest connoisseur of Italian paintings.

Walters opened his Italianate museum in 1909, and he enlisted Berenson’s expertize in analyzing his collection, procuring further paintings, and writing a catalogue of the art in his museum that would be acclaimed all over the art world. Walters’ collection was deemed by The New York Times to be on a par with the great collections in London, Paris, and Berlin.

From 1910 till 1916 Walters and Berenson were close friends. Walters visited Berenson’s fabulous Tatti Villa in Florence and they corresponded regularly until, over time, Berenson sought greener pastures from more affluent clients and not only abandoned his friend, but sabotaged Walters’ reputation.

The story of Walters and Berenson reveals the intricacies of collecting Italian Renaissance paintings, commercial ethics, and the trials of early American art museums.

While I have no education in art history, I have spent plenty of time gawking at the splendors of Italian art. Mazaroff makes art history accessible to the layman with his lucid explanations of all the elements involved in collecting and evaluating art, while his story of the relationship between Walters and Berenson reads like a novel. Most striking are the plates and prints of Italian Renaissance and Baroque paintings that fill this book. Many appeared like old friends to me, but false friends in some cases, according to the critiques on their authenticity. It’s always disconcerting to learn nasty secrets about someone or something you think you know.

To order Henry Walters & Bernard Berenson from Amazon, click on the book cover or the bold book title — and Peace Corps Worldwide, an Amazon Associate, will receive a small remittance that helps support our awards.

Okay, how do you tell the story of  your amazing life in the Third World as a PCV?

You grab the reader by the throat. You begin your memoir as if it is a fast pace adventure story. You start with an opening line, an opening paragraph, that compels the reader to read the next sentence and the next.

You write something like this: “My record was so bad (they sent the FBI to check up on you then) that I was first rejected by the Peace Corps as a poor risk and possible troublemaker, and was only accepted as a volunteer after a great deal of explaining and arguing.”  (Paul Theroux, Malawi 1963-65)

Or this: “I got my Peace Corps application at the post office in Red Bluff, California, put it on the kitchen table, and walked around it for ten days without touching it, as though it were primed to detonate, trying to convince myself that for a forty-eight-year-old farmer the idea of Peace Corps service was impractical and foolhardy.” (Moritz Thomsen, Ecuador 1965-67)

Or: “If you live in Equatorial Africa and you can’t afford a refrigerator, you might as well kiss butter good-bye.” (Bonnie Black, Gabon 1996-98)

Finally: “The year Detroit burned, I taught English and algebra in Dilla, Ethiopia. There were four of us ferenjis in Dilla that year. Doug, from Michigan, saved all the clippings from The Christian Science Monitor that his mother sent him about the riots and brought them out whenever a student asked him about his country. He would unfold the pictures of burning buildings and say, ‘This is my home’.” (Kathleen Coskran, Ethiopia 1965-67)

(In my next blog, I’ll tell you what to do next.)

# 3 is particularly true of anyone who self-publishes a novel or memoir. What writers soon realize is that no one wants to read their book!

What writers have to realize is that just because you have written a book that doesn’t necessarily mean an audience is waiting to read it. There are famous stories of how successful authors were approached by new would-be writers and they’d say: “I’ll get you published, as long as I don’t have to read it.”

That happened to William Faulkner, by the way. Sherwood Anderson got him published but didn’t read Faulkner’s first book. So don’t feel bad if no one reads your book, not if it helps you get published.

Now, how do you sell your novel or memoir?

Here are a few ideas.

Go to a POD company that publishes books. There are many, many companies out there, and you have your pick. See examples of what they have produced. Cost out the various companies as they can become expensive. You might do better by having others prepare the manuscript for publication. Or publish your own book as several RPCV writers have done, create your own imprint, or come to www.peacecorpsworldwide.org where we have begun to publish books written by RPCVs.

Remember that writing the book is only one small step in the whole process.

First, you have to sell your book with its design. It has to look like a ‘real’ book with an interesting jacket, readable title, and a description of the content on the back. If you can, get a graphics person to help you with the cover. I just saw a POD book that came to me from an RPCV writer, and I couldn’t read the text on the back of the jacket. Poorly designed.

Put the price of the book on the jacket. Again, a writer who has published, so far, five books has not yet put a price on them. And he isn’t giving away his novels!

Get an ISBN # for your book to ‘prove’ that you are for real.
Write a press release about your book and yourself.
Get the book on Amazon.com
Create a postcard with the jacket cover on one side, information on the other side and mail it to everyone you know or knew.

Build a website & create a blog about yourself and your book. (You can usually hire a high school kid to do this.) Keep it simple, not too many graphics, but add:
          A chapter of the book.
          Bio of yourself, not overwhelming, and have your bio relate to what you have written.
          Tell where to buy the book besides Amazon. Are you selling it yourself?
          Send the address of your website to every email you have.
         Contact your local book stores–in person–and try to arrange a reading.

Let your local newspaper know you have written a book. They will write an article about you.

If your book has a ‘news’ connection and something happens, for example, in your country, write an op-ed and get it published. If you can’t get an op-ed in the paper, write a letter-to-the editor and list yourself as the author of ____.

Let your high school and college(s) know you have published a book….send them a copy for the library. Send a copy of your book to the alumnae magazine editor.

Send a copy to the Peace Corps, though they won’t do anything about it but send you a nice formal note saying thank you for your service.

Send a copy to www.peacecorpworldwide.org and we’ll list it and review it. Perhaps our review will be positive!

Send a copy to your “Friends of…..newsletter.

Now, all of this takes work and skills and expertise. You might want to hire a PR person. Check around your town for a free-lance public relations person. They are everywhere. You want to hire someone who does PR for books.

I have one suggestion (and other RPCV writers might email me more suggestions of people they have used) but you could contact Brooke Hall. Her email is: brookehallcreative.com. Brooke is in Baltimore at: 717.951.8493. It will cost you $$$ but you might just buy some of her many services.

Meanwhile, good luck with writing your book! That is where this all begins.

•

Madame Victoire

by Leita Kaldi Davis (Senegal 1993-96)

At the Hopital Albert Schweitzer in Deschapelles where I worked from 1997 to 2002, every day I saw death bump up against life, perhaps most dramatically with Madame Victoire.  Pastor Jasmin told me about our Security Chief, Ivon Isme’s wife, Victoire, who had been ill for a long time.  Diabetic, her gangrenous leg had been amputated below the knee four or five years before, but she suffered constantly from pain in her phantom leg.  He guessed she had contracted cancer, too, and finally she died and was to be buried after a service in Pastor Jasmin’s church.

On my way to the church service I stopped at Sabael Paul’s little gingerbread house.  Dressed in a long-sleeved white shirt, tie and suit trousers, Sabael held court to neighbors and family on his porch.  He had retired some months before so I was very happy to see him again.  He kissed me on both cheeks and put his arm around my waist, introducing me as the “gwo chef opital.”  (Big hospital chief)

“Zanmi ou,” I amended. Your friend.

We heard a brass band approaching and leaned out toward the road where a procession of musicians approached dressed in white shirts and black trousers playing “Auld Lang Syne” in New Orleans style on trumpets, trombones, saxophones and drums.

“Ahh,” Sabael chuckled, sounding like Louis Armstrong.   “People do like a good funeral!”

A fact that appalled Dr. Mellon, by the way.  Dr. Mellon, heir to family fortunes, had founded the hospital in 1956 with his wife, Gwen Grant Mellon.  He thought it a terrible waste of money to hold vigils for days on end, during which food and drink had to be provided for myriad mourners.  Morgue fees would mount daily as families awaited kin to arrive for the funeral, often from the United States.  Families begged, borrowed or stole money to propriate the loved one’s spirit and show up their neighbors, believing that the fancier the coffin the happier the soul and the more respected the family would be.  Dr. Mellon thought simple, inexpensive burials should be the norm among poor people, and he tried to set an example by being buried in a cardboard coffin the day after he died, with no vigil or fanfare.  People were mystified that such a rich man would not have a magnificent funeral, and they never understood the point of his humble burial.

As the band passed Sabael’s house, he donned his suit jacket, dusted off his bowler hat, settled it onto his mat of white hair and we stepped out onto the road.  He held my hand in his big mitt as we walked to the church.  I was more than a little touched by his friendship and by his well-dressed form next to me as we sat side by side in a front pew.  The church’s cement walls were festooned with paper decorations hanging on strings across the bare rafters, and pasted on all the walls were admonitions: “This is the temple of the Lord, Be Silent!,” “Jerusalem lives,” “Bethel - May the Children Obey!,” “Everyone welcome.”

Madame Ivon’s ornate silver coffin with a domed lid lay open at the front of the church.  People crowded up to peer in, women screamed and ululated, jumping up and down, twisting their with hands in the air.  Finally, everyone settled down.  Only the deceased’s sister in the front pew continued to moan in a perfect blues cadence, “What shall I do now that she’s gone/  M pa konne, M pa konne.” I don’t know, I don’t know.

An electronic keyboard squealed an opening hymn which the congregation sang heartily.  Three other pastors preached for half an hour or more.  Suddenly, I heard a loud  snort.  Ladies in front of us turned around to level indignant stares at Sabael, whose chin had sunk to his chest.  I stifled a giggle, remembering how, when he was still working, I would find him at his desk, slumped in his big chair snoring, while his young staff tip-toed respectfully around their chef.

Pastor Jasmin finally approached the pulpit and got to the heart of the matter, which was Madame Victoire’s life.  Born June 16, 1933, he began, she was perhaps the most beautiful woman in Deschapelles, with light skin, always well-dressed, she walked through town proudly.  When Ivon met her in 1975 she belonged to a certain man, but she te revokay li - “fired him” - and took up with a Monsieur Desira.  After a time she fired him, too,  and went to Ivon, then fired Ivon and went back to Desira, eventually returning once again to spend her last years with Ivon.  Jasmin, who knew she practiced Voodoo,  had been trying for years to persuade her to come to Jesus.  She joined the Seventh Day Adventists for a time and vacillated between that church and Voodoo.  In her last years, however, Jasmin said she was “hit in the brain,” a stroke, perhaps, and her mind went.  Ivon carried her back and forth to the hospital, but the doctors said there was nothing wrong with her that they could see.  An ryen!” Nothing!

Jasmin relentlessly tried to reach the dim corners of her mind, and finally ….Victory over Victoire!  She accepted Jesus.  “And Jesus, who forgives all, will take you to his bosom at the last minute,  even if you have denied him all your life,” Jasmin boomed. “What is man before death?  An ryen!” He waved towards the coffin.  “Even this flower, too long in the sun, goes back to the earth.  An ryen!”

As the service ended and we left our pew, I did not see Ivon.  I asked Sabael where he was.  “He could not leave his house,” he whispered.  “He is too desolay.”

I had seen Ivon in the hospital corridor the morning after his wife died and he burst into violent sobs as he told me.  I put my arms around him and patted his shoulder.  My heart went out to Ivon when I heard he was too prostrate to attend Victoire’s funeral, but I later learned that the final vigil the night before was fraught with rum-drinking, dancing and singing until dawn and that Ivon, when he went to claim his wife’s body from the hospital morgue to load it into a pick-up truck that morning, had passed out on the steps.

A cortege of fifty people followed the pick-up truck with the coffin and pall-bearers past Ivon’s house.  Was he lying in his bed listening? lamenting?  longing?  or merely sleeping it off?  We slowly marched behind the brass band down the rocky path around the hospital grounds and skirted the canals through fields where little houses nestled in shady groves and children stood gaping at the procession.  At last we arrived at the cemetery of Deyebwa - Back-of-the-woods.  The noon sun burned through the clear sky; the only clouds were of dust that rose in our footsteps.  Sweat puddled in the creases of Sabael’s face, and wilted his shirt collar as he walked more and more slowly, his small feet shod in elegant black shoes.  Not one man took off his jacket in the pounding heat.  The band led us to a colony of crypts, each decorated with ornate masonry on peaked roofs and sculpted facades.  We approached a mausoleum with two shoulder-high doors, one plastered over, the other gaping open. I peered in and saw another coffin pushed to the back of the vault, presumably a member of Victoire’s family.  The perspiring pall-bearers laid Victoire’s coffin on the ground in front of the crypt and the band blared a hymn while Pastor Jasmin mumbled prayers quickly, anxious to get out of the sun.

As the band ended the hymn, he signaled to the pall bearers.  “Okay, mette li dedan.”  Put her inside.

They heaved the coffin to the open door.  But the domed lid would not fit inside the opening!  Consternation reigned as people crowded around, giving advice and scolding the pallbearers.  A young carpenter produced a hammer and sprang to the coffin, opened it and commenced to rip away the lid from its hinges, while everyone watched approvingly.  The carpenter handed the lid to someone, and clapped the dust off his hands.  Victoire lay in her open coffin, hands folded on her chest, a lily wilting between her fingers.   They shoved her through the door into the dark interior.

Sabael took my arm.  “Let’s go.  It’s hot.”

The exhausted crowd disbursed quickly, leaving two men mixing cement to seal Victoire into her final dwelling.

Also, remember, bad books also make best sellers. Take Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code. It has sold millions. It is unreadable to anyone who reads English. Look at the Love Story by Erich Segal. Another huge bestseller. It’s a sappy, teenage love story written by a classics professor at Harvard. Segal wrote it as a movie script and the studio made into the first novelization ever done. 

Remember The Bridges of Madison Country by Robert James Waller? It sold 50 million copies worldwide. Has anyone ever attempted to read James Patterson and the novels that are manufactured by his publishing factory?

Then there is Nicholas Sparks who wrote The Notebooks, and other novels, about faith, love, tragedy, but no sex!

You don’t have to be able to write to be a successful writer. In fact, I think it actually helps if you can’t write!

Also, great writing goes in and out of vogue. Faulkner was out of print until The Portable Faulkner, with an introduction by Malcolm Cowley, came out in 1946. This book ‘reintroduced’ William Faulkner to American readers. In the early 1970s F. Scott Fitzgerald was out of print but then Nancy Milford wrote a biography of Zelda Fitzgerald, and suddenly ‘everyone’ was reading The Great Gatsby.  His novels have been taught ever since in college literature classes.

It is not a level playing field. Bad writing can provide success and fortune, and great writing goes unnoticed and unread.

There is only one answer.

You write first for yourself. The pleasure and satisfaction from having written something that you are proud of is about as good as it gets. Everything else in the way of praise or profit is only the icing on the cake. Let’s hope its green.

Maureen, in her other life, is the founder of the Marina Orth Foundation, a non-profit that serves underprivileged schools in Colombia. At the request of the secretary of education of Medellin, where Maureen was a PCV, she has developed a pilot program in English and Information Technology with teachers and students at the Marina Orth Rural School, a school of 350 students from kindergarten through high school. This program makes the Marina Orth school the first public bilingual school in the nation. It is also the first school in Colombia to provide every primary school student a laptop from the One Laptop per Child Foundation. This school was built by Maureen as a School-to-School project when she was a PCV.