Archive - September 2013

I received an email from Marcia Krasnow informing me that Larry Fuchs (CD Philippines 1961-66) died in March at the age of 86. Marcia is the daughter of the late Dr. Joseph F. Kauffman who was the first Chief of the Peace Corps Division of Training at the Peace Corps Headquarters in Washington, D.C. (1961-63). The two families were close. Both Fuchs and her father were at Brandeis University before joining the agency. Fuchs wrote one of the first books on the Peace Corps, Those Peculiar Americans: The Peace Corps and American National Character, published by Meredith Press in 1967. In the Peace Corps’ first year of operations, three hundred Volunteers were in the Philippines; after eighteen months, there were six hundred. Fuchs was, at the time, in charge of one third of all the Volunteers in the world. In his book about “those peculiar Americans,” he would write about . . .

by Dan Zigmond With Vietnam a major trading partner and Russian virtually the second language of Silicon Valley, the intersecting wars of the late 20th century are gradually fading from our collective consciousness. But literature moves at a pace slower than politics. If newspapers are the first draft of history, novels have the luxury of being the second, third or 10th. Great books of the Vietnam War are still appearing, nearly four decades after Tim O’Brien got his start. Now, just as Graham Greene and John le Carre penned the essential novels of the Cold War, so has writer and journalist Bob Shacochis given us a new masterpiece, every bit their equal, that will surely stand as the definitive political thriller of those fragile years of relative peace before Sept. 11, 2001. Shacochis begins “The Woman Who Lost Her Soul” in the largely forgotten U.S. intervention in Haiti in the Clinton years, . . .

Carl Jung, the great Swiss psychoanalyst, wrote that during our first forty years we journey outward to find our place in society and during the second forty we journey inward to contemplate our inner world where we can discover the genuine self. The novel, The Ravenala by Jackie Zollo Brooks (Madagascar 1997–99) is driven by characters who must leave behind some of those they love in order to go on this quest. The title is taken from the ravenala palm, the so-called “travelers’ tree” found only in Madagascar. A traveler cutting into the palm’s branches can receive a refreshing drink of cool water; one who is lost can follow the ravenala’s alignment, always on an east/west axis. The travelers’ tree becomes a metaphor for the novel, suggesting that traveling refreshes us, often setting us off in a new direction Among modern male writers, J.M. Coetzee, John Updike, and Philip Roth . . .

The October issue of Harper’s Magazine carries a review of Bob Shacochis (Eastern Caribbean 1975-76) novel, The Woman Who Lost Her Soul written by Tom Bissell (Uzbekistan 1996-97). This is the first time to my knowledge that we have a mano a mano between an  RPCV writer and an RPCV reviewer. (The only thing better would have been if Tony D’Souza was the referee.) I’m not sure if the editorial staff at Harper’s understand our “below the radar”  world of Peace Corps writers, but I picked up the magazine thinking: this could be good. As a writer and reviewer, and an RPCV, I am sure Bissell is aware of Shacochis’ career and has been tracking it, waiting for Bob’s next big book. And he is impressed by what Bob has produced, a novel that has been twenty years in the making. Bissell also makes a telling point (about Shacochis and . . .

Joshua Berman (Nicaragua 1998-2000) is a freelance writer, Spanish teacher, and dad, based in Boulder, Colorado. He is the author of four Avalon Travel guidebooks; his articles have appeared in The New York Times, USA Today, Yoga Journal, and National Geographic Traveler; and he has a monthly column in the Denver Post. Josh also won the Peace Corps Writers Book Award for his travel book on Nicaragua in 2006. He is married to an RPCV, Sutay Kunda Berman (Gambia 1996-98). His first narrative travel book, Crocodile Love, is a collection of tales from his honeymoon to Pakistan, India, Ghana, and The Gambia. In 2005, the married couple quit everything and flew to Pakistan to begin an open-ended trip together. They didn’t need wedding gifts, they needed shared experiences, preferably toilsome, scary, and rewarding ones in strange, faraway places. Crocodile Love: Tales From An Extended Honeymoon is the story of that journey. . . .

On Sunday, September 22, 2013, from 2:00 pm to 4: pm, RPCV writer, Clifford Garstang will be reading at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland. Garstang’s novel, What the Zhang Boys Know, has been named a finalist for the 2013 Library of VirginiaClifford GarstangAward in Fiction. (The other finalists are The Right-hand Shore by Christopher Tilghman and The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers.) Garstang’s award-winning collection of linked short stories, In an Uncharted Country, was published by Press 53 in 2009. This book won the 2010 Peace Corps Writers Maria Thomas Fiction Award. His work has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Blackbird, Virginia Quarterly Review, Shenandoah, Cream City Review, Tampa Review, Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere and has received Distinguished Mention in the Best American Series. He is the editor of Prime Number Magazine and currently lives in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. The Writer’s Center 4508 Walsh Street Bethesda, . . .

[This email comes for a New York City RPCV writer. This woman is always in the know!] Dear John, Having not read Norm Rush’s book I don’t know how on target the New York Times review is, but what I do know and have learned over the years is that Michiko Kakutani is a very unreliable reviewer. She lauds books that are totally middle-brow and then savages others that are may be flawed in certain ways, but mostly flawed because the author is reaching for a difficult effect. She also tends to overpraise an author early in his or her career and demolish him or her if she feels they’ve failed her in some way. And I use the reference to “her” advisedly.  It seems to be a deeply personal thing with her. I’ve heard she used to be a groupy following, I think, Paul Simon, in her younger days. . . .

The September 26, 2013, issue of The New York Review of Books has a long review of Subtle Bodies by Norm Rush (Botswana 1978-83 ) written by Francine Prose. Prose goes back over Rush’s literary history, his three novels that are set in Botswana, written in the years after Norm and his wife, Elsa, were co-directors in South Africa and then she focuses on where Rush is today. This novel is not set in Botswana. Published by Knopf this month, Subtle Bodies, takes place in New York’s Hudson Valley where Norm and Elsa have lived since (and before) the Peace Corps in Africa. Unlike Michiko Kakutani’s The New York Times review (September 17, 2013), novelist and critic Francine Prose finds much to appreciate in Norm’s new book. In her review, Prose makes the point that Rush writes novels for adults….”Rush endows his fictional creations with so much intelligence, complexity, and . . .

September 16, 2013 Gazing Into Their Past Through Their Bellybuttons By MICHIKO KAKUTANI SUBTLE BODIES By Norman Rush 236 pages. Alfred A. Knopf. $26.95. The premise of this tiresome new novel by the critically acclaimed author Norman Rush sounds as if it had been lifted straight from “The Big Chill”: a group of now middle-aged college friends reunite to commemorate the death of one of their own. The result not only lacks that movie’s humor and groovy soundtrack but is also an eye-rollingly awful read. The novel’s preening, self-absorbed characters natter on endlessly about themselves in exchanges that sound more like outtakes from a dolorous group therapy session than like real conversations among longtime friends. Its title, “Subtle Bodies” – which refers to people’s “true interior selves,” whatever that means – is a perfect predictor of the novel’s solipsistic tone. Readers given to writing comments in their books are likely . . .