Book Review: Operation Homecoming

A soldier writes home to his mother:

"Dear Ma,

They call them HERO missions. They are the worst kind.

It's the body bag in the back, that makes the trip rough."

Think of this as a book that belongs to all of us. It was born out of our collective psyche, as Americans who are witness to an event that is shaping our generation and those after.

Read the rest at The Kitchen Dispatch

Book Review: Three Cups Of Tea

I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands
and wrote my will across the sky in stars
To gain you Freedom, the seven-pillared worthy house
That your eyes might be shining for me
When I came.

-TE Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom

For those of us who fell into T.E. Lawrence's account of the Arab Revolt against Ottoman Turks, Three Cups of Tea should fill a void we've been missing. Like Lawrence, Greg Mortenson is a rare storyteller, former soldier and an adventurer. He's also the son of missionaries, father, husband, humanitarian and a fearless taskmaster.

"The little red light had been flashing for five minutes before Bhangoo paid it any attention. "The fuel gauges on these old aircraft are notoriously unreliable," Brigadier General Bhangoo, one of Pakistan's most experienced high-altitude helicopter pilots, said, tapping it. I wasn't sure if that was meant to make me feel better."

After a failed attempt to scale K-2, he wanders into the small forgotten town of Korphe, high in the mountains of North East Pakistan. Recovering from his trip, he asks the village chief if he can see the school. Mortenson is taken to an open plot of land where the children are without a teacher. They're seated on the ground, and the wind is blowing their pages. Mortenson pledges to build them a school. This rash decision will lead him to his lifelong cause: breaking the cycle of poverty by providing a balanced education.

But it isn't easy. Along the way, we ride with Mortenson as he works shifts at night as a nurse, trying to save enough money to build his first school. Back in the Bay Area, he lives in squalor, and fruitlessly writes letters to find a benefactor who will underwrite the project. Amazingly, he does. And there starts the tale of buying supplies in a foreign land, underestimating, transporting them on the Khyber Highway in a truck too big for the narrow, winding road. We read about finding a wife, and along the way he gets kidnapped, has two Fatwahs declared against him, and is approached Kirghiz horsemen who have ridden over the Irshad Pass to the equally remote Charpurson Valley in Pakistan to build a school for them. The reader is taken through the "stans," --Baltistan, Waziristan. We learn of the the Wazir, Pashtuns who had not only defeated Alexander, but later, the British as well.

This is a great read not because it's an adventure or a tale of the the human spirit. Three Cups of Tea is essential because it's an approachable primer for those who want to understand how the the Taliban and Al Qaeda used a lack of publicly funded education to their advantage. It's estimated they built twenty thousand schools of their own, known as madrassas. As Mortenson points out, not every madrassa is a hot bed of extremism, but it does give easy access to foment their own interpretation of the Koran.

"They admired war because it was the occupation they could adapt to. Their simple belief in a messianic, puritan Islam which had been drummed into them by simple village mullahs was the only prop they could hold on to ad gave their lives meaning."

Three Cups of Tea gives the reader a greater understanding of the problems of the region, its tribes and the landscape. More importantly, Mortenson makes a good argument for building schools to break the cycle of poverty and giving reason to go toward a brighter future, offering an alternative to the extremist movement. He, along with other Muslims, views the education of girls as essential to rebuilding peaceful communities. As of 2008, Mortenson's non-profit Central Asia Institute built 78 schools, educating 28,000 students, which includes 18,000 girls. Three Cups of Tea is an incredible story of humanity and offers a deeper understanding to the region in conflict now.

Three Cups of Tea is available in paperback through the site, a portion of which goes to building schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

And Then There Were Three

As with a lot of groups, activity on The Writerly Pause has ceased.
Three members remain --Sovann Somreth, Kanani Fong & John Louis Peters. We keep in touch, continue to edit, rewrite and submit our manuscripts.
It's been fun.
We hope to see you when the three of us get our books accepted and published.

John Robison: A Fun Filled Feast

John Robison has groupies now. No, not sleep in your bed groupies (his wife fills this role), but book reading ones. I call them this because John used to work as a sound engineer/explosives expert/ flaming guitar builder for KISS, as well as for other bands. Back then, he couldn't have given a flip about all the groupies who were really into guys with mullets and over processed long hair. Nah. But I figure he has them now because he's written a book called "Look Me In The Eye," which serves as a "greatest hit" to millions with Asperger's.

Anyhoo.... after his reading at Book Soup, myself, John, Sovann, David, and the driver sent for John went out for dinner. You know that when in a given night, you're treated to stories about him and Korean War Veterans working behind the scenes at KISS concerts shooting off Howitzers, mirror neurons, research at Harvard, and later --when everyone at the table (well almost everyone) confesses to various recreational drug drug pasts you've stumbled onto something cool. You also know that nothing can push the night off into the realm of "too weird to be believed," when the night is capped off by a long conversation with a book clerk, who happened to work as Oliver North's secretary back in the Reagan Administration.

That's right. Combine the stories of John, Howitzers, Korean War Vets, Explosives, Drugs, Mirror Neurons, Harvard and Fawn Hall, you've pretty much got an evening where even Hunter S. Thompson was called from the spirits and was lurking about.

And that's what happened. All of it. There can be no

replay of everything that was said, but I will only depart with this:

It was great. It was real. He's a charming speaker, you wish he would go on and on. And yes, yes, yes... you must read his book if you haven't yet. If you haven't, then start with my review.

General You-Know-Whats

• Yes, he was the first guinea pig for an experimental treatment called TMS. It has "awakened a part of my brain," meaning that he can now read people's faces, and see music that he hadn't heard in 30 years.
  
• He has no opinion about those who believe their children "got" Asperger's through vaccinations.
  
• Despite the success of his book, John has and will continue to keep his car repair shop open. He knows that making a living as a writer can be fairly treacherous, and the car repair gives him both a different social outlet and also a regular stream of income.
• He shops for cars with people like Peter Frampton.
• His brother Augusten Burroughs lives nearby.
• He's an advocate for the development of TMS (which you can read about on his blog).
• He ate Spaghetti Bolognese (quick someone call TMZ with this tidbit).
• He does pretty well with jet lag.
• He made some changes in his paperback book, expunging the swear words because he became aware that a lot of 12 year olds and teens were reading his book.
• None of my pictures turned out. I am getting a new digital camera that stays still when you click the damned thing. But it's okay. I have a feeling ....call it ESPN* that I'll be seeing more of John in the future.

And by the way, I'm auctioning off one of John's dirty t-shirts on eBay. Buy it. I'm a writer and I need money, and yes, if I have to support myself by filching dirty undergarments and eyeglasses from writers to support myself, I will.

*Extra-special notion

No, we weren't on drugs, but I think fittingly, the waiter shook the camera to make it look like we were!

Seven-Year-Old Authors

Last Friday, I had the honor of speaking to a class of students about life as an author. You may be wondering how that was possible since I’m still looking for an agent for my first book?

Fortunately, I had an in. My seven-year-old son is enrolled in a summer school course called Create a Book where children spend six weeks writing and illustrating their own books. The first day of class, my son came home with a message that the teacher would like me to speak to the class because he had told her I was a writer.

I was really nervous, as I had no idea what to say. Fortunately, the children were interested in writing and had lots of great questions on their mind. Here's a sampling:

"Why did you decide to write?"
"When did you decide to write?"
"What is your book about?"
"Why did you write about that?"
"How many pages is it?" (When I said three hundred, I heard quite a few oohs and ahhs.)
"At what grade level can a child read your book?" (That little girl seemed put out when I mentioned it was geared towards adults.)
"What are you working on now?"
"What’s a catapult?"
"Do you have any pets?"

To think only two years ago these children were learning their ABCs. Now, they’re writing books and asking the same questions I hear adults ask at book signings.

At the end of class, the students passed around their completed books. Each story was required to have a main character, a problem to be solved, and how it was solved. So basic, that with all of our adult complicated ideas about writing, this basic premise is sometimes forgotten.

Some children wrote mysteries, others science fiction, and others about how to make friends with someone if they don’t like you. It's interesting what's on a seven-year-old's mind.

The last page of their books included an author's bio page. My son's final line brought a smile to my face. "When I grow up, I'm going to write books."

Kent Haruf: Tight Prose On The High Plains

click to order

This is the stuff you dream of writing. It's the stuff that makes you forget about cooking or going to bed. Kent Haruf 's prose is spare and unsentimental, yet lithe as winter wheat blowing in the wind. He depicts everyday people who live in areas that are usually overlooked. The pregnant, homeless girl; the two ranching brothers who've never married; the woman who's lived with the tyranny of her violent father and later, the feebleness of a younger brother, and the social worker who has seen too many tragedies unfolding before her. All of his books take place on the high plains of Colorado, a rugged unforgiving landscape only for the most hearty who can endure isolation, wind and sand.

A finalist for the National Book Award for fiction, Plainsong artfully weaves together the lives of six people in the small farming town of Holt, Colorado. What's astonishing in how smoothly Haruf does it with a minimum of fuss and exactness --one can only compare the structure to great architecture.

In each of his books, the characters come alive because of the emotional truths. Here's a bit from his first novel, The Tie That Binds, where the narrative voice just rolls along, spelling out the truth in a way that's matter-of-fact, but also descriptive. The overall effect is poignancy without sentimentality:

"But she was crying then. There wasn't any sound to it. It was past the point where the puny sound of a human voice can make any difference. She walked out of the house away from her father towards the hayfield to tell Lyman, with the unregarded tears falling onto the breast of her blouse. After that, I know of only two other times in her life that Edith Goodnough allowed herself to cry. Neither was at the death of her father."

The skill with which he writes, the choosing of the right words, when to put in short, sharp passages of description is so well wrought, that one is never distracted from the pull of the story. His latest book, which came out in January 2008 is West of Last Chance, a pictorial of the lands and people of the high plains he writes about. Those who like Willa Cather's My Antonia, will no doubt find the same strength in character and storytelling as well.

National Book Award Winner Sherman Alexie

In June, I reviewed Sherman Alexie's book. You can read it here. What I liked about it was the voice, that ranged from scared to smart alecky, completely stunned, but then also pragmatic. This was a narrator who was uncertain about the world, and whose circumstances have forced him to go beyond his tribe at the reservation, the the larger one outside.

Sherman Alexie, who won the 2007 National Book Award for Young Adult Fiction, reads from his book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.

Gustavo Arrellano: Smart & Pugnacious in "Ask A Mexican!"

What started out as a column for the Orange County Weekly is now the Everyman handbook on the cultural clashes and misperceptions between Mexicans and well, everyone else.

In addition to his usual journalism assignments with the paper, Gustavo Arellano has penned a weekly column that typically starts out with, Dear Mexican. Ask A Mexican! is syndicated in newspapers across the country and has a following of those who understand irony, and others to whom it simply falls flat. Some questions are curious about Mexican culture or history.

Gustavo Arellano, Photo from OC Register

Others are meant to be rude and degrading. Some are just bizarre:

"Dear Mexican, Why don't Mexicans like Science-fiction movies?"

Here's his answer in his typically sharpshooting manner:
"Dear Gabacho, One of my favorite ethnic jokes goes like this. Why aren't there any Puerto Ricans on Star Trek? Because they don't work in the future either." But Mexicans don't like alien films because they're always thinly veiled allegories about Mexicans if you believe University of Texas professor Charles Ramírez Berg."

No matter how someone tries to plot to throw Arellano off, he goes off into the archives of history or through volumes of books to find a quasi-historical/academic answer for the person he'll address as Dear Gabacho or a variant of. Arellano uses his brains and words as a billy club. He handles the questions deftly and with humor, and the voice that comes through is often irreverent --to both sides.

His book, which was published this year by Scribner, will go down as a classic. Not only is it funny, pugnacious and mocking, but it demands we look at perceptions of race and culture, questioning what it is to be an American.

Here he is in an interview at the Los Angeles Press Club:

Elmore Leonard

Elmore Leonard

Short story writer, novelist and screenwriter Elmore Leonard was a copywriter working for Chevrolet supporting his wife and five kids. He submitted western stories to dime-store magazines. The rest, as they say, is writing and rewriting, eventually finding the right voice and a combination of hard work, persistence and luck. His style can only be described as short, sharp making its mark with a minimum of fuss. His stories move at pace that unfolds quickly, the patter between characters is filled with irony, humor, and accuracy. This is standard now for a man who has written 40 books, and whose "ten rules of writing" are well known if not followed by legions.

I was going through an old Moleskine book and found notes I'd taken during an interview with Elmore Leonard at UCLA. Among the gems I wrote down in regards to developing character were:

"The characters are made up, they're fun. I audition characters. If the character isn't interesting, if he doesn't talk, then he's demoted. But, those who don't talk are more likely to get killed!"

A Winner: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

Illustration by Ellen Forney, from the book

The setting is the Pacific Northwest amid tall pine trees and blue skies. The tribe is the Spokane. The focus is Arnold Spirit, the gawky, fourteen year old nerdy teenager whose parents are alcoholics. His sister spends twenty three hours a day alone in a basement and his only friend is the school bully. Arnold stutters and lisps, he's prone to seizures. He's the human punching bag on the Spokane Reservation, a geek who makes sense of life by drawing comics because

"I want to talk to the world. And I want the world to pay attention to me."

His predictable life is interrupted one day at Wellpinit High School after being given a geometry text book and seeing his mother's name on it. Arnold already knows how downtrodden his people are, but when he realizes the textbooks haven't been replaced in twenty years, he throws it at his teacher. During Arnold's suspension, the teacher comes to him and explains the injustices his student feels are correct, that in fact here on the reservation there is no hope, and to find it he will have to get off the reservation. The story gains its momentum when Arnold choses to attend a "white" school twenty-two miles away.

Poet, Playwright, Novelist, Screenwriter Sherman Alexie

This book is about the opening of Arnold's world, and using both the limitations and gifts of his tribe to find hope. Alexie deftly creates characters with both sophisticated realizations with sophomoric behavior and perceptions. His new friend Gordy at Reardan High School tells him:

"And, yeah, you need to take that seriously, but you should also read and draw because really good books and cartoons give you a boner."

This is Arnold Spirit's coming of age amid the incessant hopelessness of the Indian reservation and the gleam of his "white" high school. Alexie is wise not to let Arnold veer off the path and let this become a reality-TV teenage hi-jinks chapter book. He lets Arnold find his own identity by facing the loss of a friendship, alienation from his own tribe, death and grief, love, and the need to make new friends in a foreign environment. With a self deprecating but smart narrative voice, Arnold finds both hope and acceptance. He discovers that even though he is a Spokane Indian, he's a member of other tribes as well:

"And the tribe of cartoonists.
And the tribe of chronic masturbators.
And the tribe of teen age boys.
And the tribe of small-town kids.
And the tribe of Pacific Northwesterners.
And the tribe of tortilla chips-and-salsa lovers...."

Finding one's way in life and a sense of belonging is the recurring theme in novels. If you've seen his 1998 hit Indie movie "Smoke Signals," you'll see True Diaries as an expansion on this theme. Alexie writes this coming-of-age novel with humor, skill and consideration. This book garnered him the 2007 National Book Award for Young Adult Fiction. Frankly, I can't wait for this movie to come out.

Sherman Alexie accepts the National Book Award for YA Fiction 2007