Our Man In Saipan: RPCV P.F. Kluge

Visiting author Dr. P.F. Kluge (Micronesia 1967-69) will start a monthlong lecture series on four classic American novels at 6pm this evening at the American Memorial Park Theater.

The series will kick off with Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961. Participants will spend three 90-minute sessions exploring this novel before moving on to the next title.

Other books to be discussed over the course of the program include The Old Man and the Sea, Huckleberry Finn, and The Things They Carried.

Kluge will examine these books on three levels-what they say, how they say it, and how their themes relate to contemporary life in the Commonwealth. Ample time will be reserved for questions and answers.

The program is sponsored by the NMI Council for the Humanities under a “We the People” grant awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Kluge is writer-in-residence at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, and has written several critically acclaimed novels including Gone Tomorrow and Eddie and the Cruisers. Before beginning his academic career, Kluge spent two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer on Saipan in the late 1960s.

The Council will videotape each lecture and copies will be provided to Tinian and Rota so that interested individuals on those islands may participate in the discussion series. The series will also be aired on cable television.

A program schedule is available on the council’s Web site at www.nmihumanities.org. Participants are invited to pick up their books at the council’s office in Springs Plaza, Gualo Rai. [from the Saipan Tribune, January 19, 2010]