Peace Corps writers

A Writer Writes Whenever I want to annoy Peace Corps writers I tell them that P.F. Kluge Micronesia (1969-70) is the smartest writer to serve as a PCV. That gets them. They, of course, if they know anything of Kluge’s work, can’t really dismiss my claim. Paul Frederick Kluge has had a long and illustrious career as a novelist, academic, travel writer, journalist and lecturer. Not to list all of his lengthy CV, (which runs a full five pages) let just note a few of his many accomplishments. Early in his career, when he was a young editor at Life magazine, he wrote a story for them that became the film, Dog Day Afternoon. He next wrote a novel that became the 1983 film of the same name, Eddie and the Cruisers. In 1992 he wrote his “Peace Corps” memoir, The Edge of Paradise: America in Micronesia, published by Random . . .

Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010 Charles Murray (Thailand 1965–67) Crown Forum 407 pages $27.00 (hardback) 2012 Reviewed by Lawrence F. Lihosit (Honduras 1975–77) WHILE READING CHARLES MURRAY’S NEW BOOK, I thought about our recent national obsession with civil discourse and events in Oakland, California. Since it never snows in Oakland, Occupy Wall Street has been very visible there. It would have been most illustrative to seat Mr. Murray at a cloth covered table, set on a high platform overlooking the street below. A finely dressed and polite moderator could have introduced him while the author poured himself a glass of water from an imported bottle. “Charles Murray is an American libertarian, author and PhD invited here to explain that you do not have jobs because you are fat, lazy and dishonest sons and daughters of bitches.” Murray cloaks these terms in ten dollar words and phrases but . . .

Mark Brazaitis (Guatemala 1990-93) latest short-story collection, The Incurables, has just won the 2012 Richard Sullivan Prize. The collection will be published by the University of Notre Dame Press in winter/spring 2012-2013. The award also  includes a reading at the University of Notre Dame in the spring of 2013. In the judges’ words: “The competition was a difficult one-every entrant had published at least one previous collection, and nearly every entrant had won previous competitions-but Mark’s collection was a standout.” Mark’s stories in the collection have appeared in Ploughshares (The Incurables was recognized as “distinguished” in the Best American Short Stories 2009 volume). Other stories were published by The Sun, Post Road, Confrontation, Cimarron Review, and the Notre Dame Review. Congratulations, Mark!

Warner Bros has optioned Tony D’Souza’s (Ivory Coast 2000-02, Madagascar 2002-03) latest novel Mule for a big budget flick to be produced/directed by Todd Phillips. Phillips is best known for movies such as Old School starring Luke Wilson and Will Ferrell, and The Hangover franchise. The Hangovers 1 and 2 are the highest grossing R rated films of all time. The studio is in the process of finding writers for the adaptation.

[Bonnie Lee Black (Gabon 1996-98) has been kind enough to send me a short history of the hows-and-whys of Creative Non- Fiction (CNF). That is: how did it come to be; where did it come from, and why?  The reason is that some of us have been discussing the topic, off this site, for a few days. What Bonnie Lee has to say is useful and informative and for those of you who are writing your Peace Corps stories, and not quite sure what to call what you are writing, you might want to read this. Bonnie Lee has a MFA and teaches Creative Nonfiction Writing as well as Healthy Cooking at UNM-Taos. She is the author of Somewhere Child (Viking Press) and How to Cook a Crocodile: A Memoir with Recipes (Peace Corps Writers). See her blog, “Cooking Crocodiles and Other Food Musings” on this site. Meanwhile, here’s Bonnie Lee’s take on CNF.] A Short History of CNF in . . .

I heard from Larry Lihosit (Honduras 1975-77) that an article he wrote for this site and which we posted on December 6, 2011,  was recently pirated and posted on an advertising site in re-edited format. The most interesting change was the substitution of “Serenity Corps” for “Peace Corps.”  Give me a break! “My younger son told me that I must be improving as a writer if my stuff is now being jacked,” said Lihosit, “but my legal team was more than annoyed since it’s illegal.” The author of Peace Corps Chronology; 1961-2010 Larry has filed a complaint with Google before continuing his search for the guilty party. Lihosit’s article is a chapter in his new book Peace Corps Experience: Write and Publish Your Memoir to be released in April.

Stanley Meisler was a Peace Corps Evaluator in the early days of the agency and last year Beacon Press published his definitive study of the agency: When the World Calls: The Inside Story of the Peace Corps and Its First Fifty Years. The book is out this month in paperback. Stan stayed in touch with the Peace Corps in all his years as a foreign correspondent for the LA TIMES  in Africa and Latin America. He is an authority on the agency. The book is available on Amazon and any good bookstore. The list price is $19; and Amazon is selling it for six dollars less. Stan also recently published an expanded edition of his history of the United Nation. More than 100 pages have been added by Grove Press to this book entitled, United Nations: A History. The new chapters are on Rwanda, Iraq, Kofi Annan, Ban ki-Moon and the Arab Spring. The book in paperback sells on Amazon for . . .

CHARLES MURRAY (THAILAND 1965–67) HAS a new book. Murray, who I think is our foremost conservative RPCV, (but I don’t know all of them!) writes books about how the U.S. economy (and all of us) are going to hell in a handbag. A few of his books are entitled: Losing Ground, Cox and Murray, Inc. 1988; The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, with Richard J. Herrnstein, The Free Press, 1994; What it Means to be a Libertarian: A Personal Interpretation, Broadway, 1997. Now he has written Coming Apart:The State of White America, 1960–2010 that Crown Forum is publishing on the last day of this month. I am sure it is already in Politics & Prose if you live in Washington, D.C., or your local Barnes & Noble — as well as on Amazon. It, too, predicts the coming of the end for what “once was America” . . .

The Orawan Poems by Gerry Christmas (Thailand 1973–76; Western Samoa 1976–78) The Yuletide Press 148 pages $14.95 (paperback) 2011 Reviewed by Tony Zurlo (Nigeria 1964–65) THE LOVE EXPRESSED by Gerry Christmas in The Orawan Poems, for Orawan, one of his students in Thailand, embarrasses and shames me. Can there be such perfect love in this life? In these poems, Christmas reveals that for him this romantic Shangri -La of pristine love between man and woman does exist. Sometime in the future, according to Christmas, Orawan will understand the inevitability that she and Christmas will fuse into one hallowed bond. He writes as if it is predetermined. Unfortunately for Christmas, he must continue to make sense of the physical time and distance of separation because Orawan refuses to submit to him spiritually. Instead, she commits to a clandestine Thai rebellion that Christmas labels as “communist” (123). However, Christmas is convinced she . . .

Paul Geren resigned his duties effective August 1, 1969. He said on leaving the university,  “My family and I thank the many people of Florida who have given us their friendship and support. I hope to continue to work in higher education, probably in teaching economics at another university.” Leaving Florida, and just days before his resignation would take effect, Geren went with his wife Elizabeth and their youngest daughter, 17-year-old Nancy to Kentucky. He thought that he could get a job teaching economics at the University of Kentucky, though he had no firm commitment. They decided to drive to Lexington and find out if there was a job for him. On Sunday morning near London, Kentucky, they encountered bad weather and severe driving condition. Elizabeth took over the driving so her husband could move into the back seat and rest. It was while Elizabeth was driving that she hit a deep hole in the road and lost control of the car. They swerved . . .

Paul Geren arrived at the Baptist college as a veteran foreign service officer with a wide-ranging successful career in government. He had been deputy director at the Peace Corps in its first year. He had been a diplomat for more than a decade. And he had been a college faculty member and a vice president of Baylor University. He  was 54 when he was appointed just the fifth president of  Stetson University. Geren’s first success at Stetson was setting up a foreign exchange program and building a swimming pool for the students! But the wheels soon came off his presidency. What happened? Why was Geren such a quick failure at Stetson University when he had such a successful career earlier in his life. Or had he been so successful? He had lasted less than a year at the Peace Corps; he never jelled with the Mad Men and Women in the Maiatico Building at 806 Connecticut Avenue. He was, everyone soon learned, not . . .

Geren’s diary ends with no happy ending. He finishes it on July 30, 1942 in Bamgarh, Bihar, writing: Our group moving over the mountains is a replica of the world community of sufferers. We were many races and nations: Chinese, Burmese, Indians, British, and Americans. We were hungry together on one meal a day. We were wet together, body, bedding and bread when the elements changed their policy from scorching us to soaking us. We jumped together for joy to see biscuit falling to us from the bomb rack of an airplane. We were banded together for whatever should come. Within a few months the tide of battle would turn to victory in every theater of the war-at Midway, Stalingrad, and El Alamein. Still Geren’s Diary ends with no guarantee of victory or a “happy ending” for in mid-1942 there was no assurance that the tide would turn, or that even . . .

The retreat from Burma started at Shwebo on May 1, 1942. Geren would write in his Diary on May 6, 1942, from near Homalin. “The trudge has begun. The way stretches ahead of us 250 miles, first across the hot plains, then across jungle and mountains, 7,000 feet high, named in a moment of miscalculations or irony the Chin “‘Hills.’ Our small company of 104 Indians, Burmese, Chinese, British, and Americans, has become part of a great and tragic flight: the flight of Indians-perhaps a quarter million of them-from their promised land.” There party was headed by General Stilwell. For the first six days they drove trucks. They got as far as Mansa. Then they walked. They walked across the mountains and arrived at Imphal on May 20, 1942. There are many moving accounts noted by Geren and recorded in his Burma Diary. Here is just one, written by Geren . . .

In the weeks and months that followed the bombing of Rangoon, Geren worked as a driver, and then as a field hospital attendant on the front lines which the Chinese were failing to hold against the advancing Japanese. “Our supplies were cut off and the Japs were advancing all the time,” Paul recalled. “We were the only medical unit with Western standards. The few members of the Quaker Volunteer Ambulance Corps and myself, we carried the wounded back from the battlefield.” All of this time his faith buffered him. On Christmas Eve, 1941, he wrote in his Diary, “The Japanese are promising a ‘Christmas present for the white people’ over the Bangkok radio.” They carried on in Rangoon. From Geren’s Diary, Christmas Eve, 1941: Whatever came yesterday, and whatever will come tomorrow, tonight we sang Christmas carols. We were a motley choir, begotten of a day between air raids, so widely apart . . .

Paul Francis Geren was deeply religious. And his religion, it appears to me, propelled him through his life, aiding him in his journey from Rangoon to Ramgarh, the legendary march out of Burma, and through dozens of  other appointments, foreign and domestic, government and academic. The pivotal point of this man’s life, however, was his escape from Burma that he details in Burma Diary, his short articulate memoir that was published by Harper & Brothers in 1943, and became an immediate best seller. It is a story told with quiet dignity, much like the man himself who is described often by others as “a quiet, studious looking individual.” But first, a quick survey summary of WWII for all of us who missed the war, thanks to Harold J. Schultz, Chairman of the International Studies at Stetson University. Schultz wrote about Paul when Geren became the fifth president of that Florida college: The Battle . . .