NONFICTION: MORROCAN MEMORIES
Travels: Collected Writings, 1950-1993 by Paul Bowles (Ecco)
As anyone familiar with the career of American novelist and composer Paul Bowles (1910-1999) might expect, many of these travel pieces center on Morocco, the country he came to love after moving there in the late 1940s.
His sensitivity to the ways of his newfound compatriots comes across in a 1950 piece on Fez, originally published in Holiday magazine.
In one amusing passage, Bowles shows how nuanced everyday conversation can be for a people who excel in it. If your partner in gab says, “We want to be Americans. It is better to be American than Moroccan,” don’t contradict him, Bowles advises. “You must agree briefly, and thank him, because if you protest publicly you will show him that you actually believe he means what he says, which of course is impossible, and you will prove yourself extremely ill-bred.”
Later in the piece (which, mind you, was first published in a popular American magazine), an incident that Bowles mentions gives the lie to the notion that post-World War II America was a wholly uptight country. The writer talks at some length about ingesting hashish and being accompanied by visions as he makes his convoluted way home for the night. Dennis Drabelle, Washington Post Writers Group
FICTION: COMIC THRILLER
Plugged by Eoin Colfer (Overlook)
Great writers can write anything, and “Plugged” is proof.
Its author is Eoin (pronounced “Owen”) Colfer, a name you might recognize because he wrote the best-selling “Artemis Fowl” books for young adults, as well as a sequel to Douglas Adams’ “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” Taken together, those books feature fairies, unemployed gods, a boy genius, a green alien and a galactic president, which means it’s not easy to categorize Colfer or his writing.
That’s a good thing. Because now he’s produced a bang-up crime novel for adults.
“Plugged” is the story of a few manic days in the life of Daniel McEvoy, an Irish bouncer at the seedy Slotz casino in New Jersey. McEvoy is a bighearted if unsentimental man, a loner who’s meeting middle age with wisecracks and hair plugs. Like any great fictional character, he is what he does, and the first thing he does in the novel is rescue single mom Connie, his favorite exotic dancer, from the roving tongue of a low-rent lawyer. A fight ensues, threats are exchanged, and a few days later, poor Connie turns up murdered, with Daniel a suspect.
He sets out to find her killer and begins to suspect that the same person might have killed his missing best friend, a wacky doctor named Zeb Kronksi. Along the way, he kills a few people and gets shot at by a few more, including Irish mobsters, crooked cops, a sex-crazed housewife and a gang of steroids sellers — a picaresque of sleaze. The pace of the novel never lets up, and considering that it’s only 254 pages long, it seems to run a knife fight, gun battle or one-liner in a continuous loop.
“Plugged” packs a powerful dramatic wallop for such a slim volume, like a flyweight with a knockout punch.
As I said, great writing. Lisa Scottoline, Washington Post Writers Group
NONFICTION: WAR MEMOIR
What It is Like to Go to War By Karl Marlantes (Atlantic Monthly)
Karl Marlantes, who served a brutal tour of duty as a Marine lieutenant in Vietnam, first told his war story in “Matterhorn,” an autobiographical novel that came out last year to high acclaim. “What It Is Like to Go to War” is not a novel. It is a well-crafted and forcefully argued work of nonfiction that contains fresh and important insights into what it’s like to be in a war and what it does to the human psyche. At heart, the book is a from-the-gut psychological and philosophical meditation on what happens to human beings in combat and afterward. In delivering those insights, Marlantes re- creates his own wartime experience and his subsequent decades of emotional difficulties.
Combat, Marlantes says, is “the crack cocaine of all excitement highs — with crack cocaine costs.” He goes on to describe the adrenaline surge of combat and the psychic pain that inevitably follows. To help mitigate that cost, he believes that warriors must bring meaning to the chaos and violence of war through rituals, spirituality and even literature.
He favors making spiritual guidance available during training, in the war zone and afterward. He concedes that this cannot be forced on young people in combat. “You can, however, put people in situations where consciousness and spiritual maturity can grow, rapidly if those people know what to look for.”
Marlantes recovered from his wounds and is recovering from his post-traumatic stress disorder. He offers sound advice about how the Pentagon can help future generations of war veterans do the same. If past experience is a guide, the military will ignore his suggestions. Marc Leepson, Washington Post Writers Group
