Philip Caputo's Blog, page 9

HUNTER’S MOON, NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, FRONT PAGE REVIEW

My new book, Hunter’s Moon, is reviewed on the front page of the New York Times Book Review for this Sunday, Aug. 4. The review is positive and serious, but ignore the headline in the online version of the review, which is a tad silly. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/02/books/review/even-in-hemingways-woods-sometimes-a-man-needs-to-cry.html

Also, the Moresby Press, a web-based literary magazine published in Chicago, has run an interview with me about the book. Its link follows: http://www.moresbypress.com/philip-caputo-hunters-moon-novel.html 

The interview is quite long, so you might want to wait till you have some spare time to read it.

The post HUNTER’S MOON, NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, FRONT PAGE REVIEW appeared first on Philip Caputo.

Author appearance at RJ Julia Booksellers in Madison, Connecticut, on August 9

I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be reading from the new Hunter’s Moon and signing books at the esteemed RJ Julia Booksellers in Madison on Friday, August 9. The event is free and begins at 6:30.

If you’re unable to attend the event and would like a signed copy of Hunter’s Moon, you can purchase a “signed” version from the bookstore website.

Registration and more info on the RJ Julie website: https://www.rjjulia.com/event/philip-caputo-hunter%E2s-moon

Hope to see you there.

The post Author appearance at RJ Julia Booksellers in Madison, Connecticut, on August 9 appeared first on Philip Caputo.

The Story Behind the Hunter’s Moon Collection of Stories

My latest book, a collection of short stories titled Hunter’s Moon, will be released in two weeks (August 6 is the publication date) by Henry Holt & Co. It was inspired by two much older works of short fiction, one by a Russian writer, Ivan Turgenev’s A Sportsman’s Sketches, and the other by an American, Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio.

In the former, Turgenev, an avid outdoorsman, used hunting excursions to provide background for portraits of rural Russia and its people in the mid-19th-century. Anderson’s book, published in 1919 and still in print, is a series of loosely-connected tales that depicts life in a small midwestern town early in the 20th century. Winesburg, Ohio is considered a seminal work of modernist fiction, and it deeply influenced Ernest Hemingway’s 1925 story collection In Our Time, sometimes referred to as “the Nick Adams stories” for its recurrent character, Nick Adams, Hemingway’s alter-ego.

Hunter’s Moon mostly takes place in a fictional American town, Vieux Desert, on Michigan’s wild and remote Upper Peninsula. It features recurrent characters at different points in their lives over the course of several years, roughly from 2004 to 2018. One of them, Will Treadwell, who owns a microbrewery and pub in town, figures in five of the seven stories, sometimes in a minor role, sometimes as the protagonist. People who’ve read my 1987 novel, Indian Country, will recognize Treadwell and Vieux Desert. For years, I’ve wanted to return to it and to him, and Hunter’s Moon bought my ticket. 

In a sense, Hunter’s Moon can be considered a novel in stories, much like Winesburg, Ohio. Like Turgenev’s A Sportsman’s Sketches (one of my favorite books, by the way), it is not about hunting per se; it employs hunting trips as a context to illuminate masculine relationships in today’s America: old high-school friends, war buddies, fathers and sons. One story, however, is told from a woman’s point of view, and presents a once-a-year, extra-marital affair as she experiences it.

Though I did not, at the outset, intend to write a book showing that white, heterosexual males — much maligned these days as racists, sexists, misogynists, etc. — are as complex, emotionally nuanced, and individualized as anyone else, but I realized that’s what I’d done when I finished it.

This book, my 17th and my 10th work of fiction, is my first venture into the short-story form. My only other try at shorter fiction was the 1998 collection of novellas, Exiles, which is, incidentally, a book I’m rather proud of. Writing it wasn’t easy, but I found that writing Hunter’s Moon was even harder. In short stories, there’s no room for side trips or leisurely longueurs.

I turned 78 this year, so I’m not sure how many more books are left in me, if any. But I hope those of you who read this will also read Hunter’s Moon — and feel that the trip was worth it.

The post The Story Behind the Hunter’s Moon Collection of Stories appeared first on Philip Caputo.

IN MEMORIAM

Below are 17 reasons why it’s called Memorial Day and not Picnic and Barbecue Day.

LCPL CARROLL FANKHAUSER, 1st Battalion, 3d Marines. 8/24/65

PFC ROBERT FERNANDEZ, 1st Battalion, 3d Marines. 6/20/65

CPL BRIAN GAUTHIER, 1st Battalion, 3d Marines. 7/11/65

LCPL REYNALDO GUZMAN, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines. 1/25/66

1STLT WALTER LEVY, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines. 9/18/65

PFC CURTIS LOCKHART, 1st Battalion, 3d Marines. 7/30/65

PFC PATRICK MANNING, 1st Battalion, 3d Marines. 7/30/65

LTCOL JOSEPH MUIR, 3d Battalion, 3d Marines. 9/11/65

PFC STEVEN PAGE, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines. 1/25/66

2DLT JAMES PARMALEE, 2d Battalion, 3d Marines. 7/14/65

1STLT FRANK REASONER,3d Reconnaissance Battalion. 7/12/65

LCPL KENNETH SEISSER, 1st Battalion, 3d Marines. 7/11/65

1STLT ADAM SIMPSON, 1st Battalion, 9th Marines. 10/3/65

PFC LONNIE SNOW, 1st Battalion, 3d Marines. 7/30/65

SGT HUGH SULLIVAN, 1st Battalion, 3d Marines. 6/5/65

1STLT BRUCE WARNER, 3d Tank Battalion. 2/3/66

SGT WILLIAM WEST, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines. 3/28/66.

Semper Fi, Brothers.

The post IN MEMORIAM appeared first on Philip Caputo.

MARINES, BELLEAU WOOD, VETERANS DAY

Somewhat belatedly, I wish a Happy 243d Marine Corps Birthday to all my fellow Marines, and a Happy Veterans Day to all veterans, but especially to the brothers from Vietnam.

World War I ended 100 years ago yesterday. In June, 1918, a Marine brigade consisting of battalions from the 5th and 6th regiments, attacked heavily fortified German positions in a former hunting preserve known as Belleau Wood. After several days of heavy fighting, some of it at bayonet-point and hand-to-hand, suffering 1,100 casualties (out of a total force of about 4,500), the brigade seized the wood from the Germans, who dubbed the Marines “Teufelshunden” (Devil Dogs) for their ferocity and tenacity. The French government awarded the brigade the Croix de Guerre and a Fourregere (worn to this day by the 5th and 6th regiments), and renamed the scene of the battle Bois de la Brigade de Marine (the Wood of the Marine Brigade). Over the weekend marking the centennial of the end of the war, President Trump, that most fortunate of fortunate sons, cancelled a commemorative visit to the Marine memorial at Belleau Wood because it was raining. I think the damp weather affected the bone spur that he claims kept him out of Vietnam.

The post MARINES, BELLEAU WOOD, VETERANS DAY appeared first on Philip Caputo.

JOHN MCCAIN

More than a decade ago, I had the privilege of spending a few hours, over the span of two days, speaking one on one with Senator John McCain. A Hollywood producer had optioned the rights to the first volume of Sen. McCain’s autobiography, “Faith of My Fathers,” and had hired me to write the screenplay. I’d read the book and admired it for its candor, plain but vigorous prose, and the understated way McCain described the horrific five years he’d spent in the “Hanoi Hilton” — North Vietnam’s infamous P.O.W. camp. Adversity does not create character, it reveals it. Under the most adverse conditions imaginable, tortured and interrogated for days on end, he displayed an astonishing degree of courage and steadfastness, especially when his captors discovered that he was the son of a famous U.S. admiral and offered to release him, on condition that he confess to committing war crimes. He refused, first because he wasn’t about to betray his country, and second because the military code of conduct prohibits a prisoner from accepting release ahead of P.O.Ws who have been held for a longer time. That is honor, my friends. Honor can mean a lot of things. In McCain’s case, it meant knowing what your duty is and then doing it.

My interviews with him took place in his offices in the Senate Office Building. It was arranged by McCain’s long time aide, friend, and co-writer, Mark Salter. I knew I could write the screenplay merely by re-reading “Faith of My Fathers;” but I wanted to see McCain in person, to get a feel for the man, and to ask him to flesh out a few episodes in his book. He’d portrayed himself with admirable honesty as a temperamental, rebellious, hell-raiser at the Naval Academy and as a newly-commissioned ensign at the Naval flight training base in Pensacola, Florida. He brought a stripper known as the “Flame of Florida” to married officers’ parties, crashed a training plane in the Gulf of Mexico, and made a career of breaking rules and regulations. Even then, as he was training to be a fighter pilot, he was honing his skills as the maverick he would eventually become in the U.S. Senate. McCain had a great sense of humor. He made me laugh when he depicted the reaction his fellow officers’ wives to the Flame of Florida when she whipped out a switchblade and began to clean her fingernails. He also told a funny story about his mother, Roberta, from whom he inherited at least some of his scrappy personality. In her late 80s, she made a trip to France, where she attempted to rent a car to make a driving tour of the country. The rental agent turned her down; under French law, cars cannot be rented to drivers over 75.”How much is that car?” she asked. The agent told her the price. Roberta bought it on the spot and drove off.

McCain was a true-blue, Arizona Republican. He had won Barry Goldwater’s Senate seat in 1986. But he showed some of his independent, non-ideological spirit when a discussion we were having about the media turned to my old employer, the Chicago Tribune Company. It was then involved in a kerfuffle with the Federal Communications Commission over its proposed acquisition of a TV station. Or maybe it was several TV stations, I don’t recall. The Tribune already owned more than 20 TV and radio outlets, in addition to half a dozen major newspapers from Los Angeles to Orlando. Why do these guys need another one? I asked. When is enough enough? McCain leaned back and said quietly, “That’s why we have government, Phil.To keep these guys in check.” A Republican stating that we need government to put the brakes on greedy corporations? Wow..

McCain’s political reputation as his own man is well established and needs no elaboration from me. Though I’m a registered Democrat, I’d admired him before I met him, an admiration that only deepened afterward. I was going to vote for him if he won the Republican nomination in 2000, and I never forgave the George W. Bush campaign for the way it viciously smeared his reputation in the South Carolina primary, which led directly to McCain’s loss. Likewise, as a combat veteran of Vietnam myself, my loathing for President Trump began when he disparaged McCain’s service and the captivity he endured for so long.

It is probably a cliché to call McCain a lion of the Senate, but sometimes clichés are clichés because they’re true. He marched to his own drummer for most of his political career, and made a point of calling shots as he saw them. Remember his campaign bus in the 2000 elections, the Straight Talk Express? The man had his flaws, an explosive temper among them, but they were far outweighed by his virtues. I treasure the brief time I got to spend with him. He showed me, showed all of us, how to live a life of dedicated service, and in the last year of his own life, struggling with brain cancer, how to face death with grace and dignity. When I think of him, in these divisive times, in this era of rampant political corruption, and lies, and “alternative facts,” I think of the great statesmen of the late Roman republic, like Cicero and Cato the Younger, fighting to retain the republic’s values even as it grew into a bloated empire. There is no one in the Senate today who measures up to McCain, and that’s why his departure is an especially grievous loss to the country.

There is one other thing that he showed us — what it means to be a man. I can think of many things it doesn’t mean, like making a hundred million as a hedge fund manager or dreaming up a cool new app. God knows, it doesn’t mean behaving like a hyper-masculine jerk who gropes women. It does mean cultivating the virtues of courage, honesty, and a sense of duty to one’s country, to one’s society. To me, he was a warrior and a brother-in-arms, and if there is a warrior’s heaven, I hope he and I can one day share a beer at the Valhalla officer’s club.

R.I.P. John Sidney McCain.

PS:I never wrote the screenplay. I quit the project because…oh, let’s just say that honor is not characteristic of most Hollywood producers)

The post JOHN MCCAIN appeared first on Philip Caputo.

ANOTHER POINT OF VIEW

Here is a link to a columnist’s point of view about our recent wars, one that some of you may disagree with. Nevertheless, it’s worth reading and thinking about.

https://www.alternet.org/cost-war-end-empire

The post ANOTHER POINT OF VIEW appeared first on Philip Caputo.

Another Point of View

 

Here is a link to a columnist’s point of view about our recent wars, one that some of you may disagree with. Nevertheless, it’s worth reading and thinking about.

 

https://www.alternet.org/cost-war-end...

The post Another Point of View appeared first on Philip Caputo.

SOME RISE BY SIN

The paperback edition of my latest novel, Some Rise By Sin, will be officially released on May 8, but can be pre-ordered now from Amazon or from your local bookstore. Some Rise By Sin was named as a Southwest Book of the Year for 2017.

From the award citation: “In a small town in northern Sonora, a motorcycle-riding Franciscan priest and a female doctor grapple with the practical and moral ambiguities of a lawless world that blurs the lines between friend and foe, government and outlaw…Caputo succeeds in capturing both the desperate uncertainties of border life and the complex ethical issues at play in modern-day Mexico.”

Some other commentaries:

“Caputo knows how to set a scene and build tension through detail…His prose is tough minded but not without compassion, and he brings experience from one part of the world to another.” — The Seattle Times.

“A work of genuine heft, Some Rise By Sin explores the search for meaning in a place where the stakes are highest and does so with unwavering focus. Caputo remains a master of his craft.” — Booklist (starred review).

“A novel that couldn’t be more timely…Caputo is an acute observer of human disorder and disarray.” — Kirkus Reviews.

The post SOME RISE BY SIN appeared first on Philip Caputo.

BRING COMMON SENSE TO THE SENSELESS

Leslie and I took part in the March for Our Lives protest in Tucson today, March 24, 2018 — one of 800 nationwide demonstrations staged in reaction to the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida, last month. The purpose, as everyone who hasn’t been lost in New Guinea now knows, is to reform the country’s gun laws to make it less likely that kids will be shot to death in their classrooms by monsters who should never have had access to any kind of firearm. In a sane country, which isn’t an adjective I’d use to describe the present-day U.S., such atrocities would be virtually impossible; so “less likely” will have to do.

The U.S. has the highest rate of mass shootings (defined as 4 or more victims in a single incident) in the developed world. No other advanced nation comes close. In the past 5 years, from a shooting in McKeesport, PA., through the all-time record in Las Vegas in 2017, to the killings in Parkland, there have been 1,624 incidents, resulting in 1,875 deaths and 6,898 injuries. Those are war-time statistics, people. If you want to see what they look like in graphic form, go to:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/n....

The deaths of 17 students and faculty at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school appears to have been a tipping point, a sea change, a moment in history when, as protestors chanted in Tucson and all across the country, “enough is enough.” The protests have been largely a children’s crusade, led by students who are fed up and frightened and fed up with being frightened. After listening to the teens and preteens speak at the Tucson rally, I vowed I’ll never utter a disparaging word about Millennials again.

This is personal for me and Leslie. Our place in Norwalk, Connecticut, is near enough to the Sandy Hook elementary school, where 20 kids were slaughtered by a deranged killer in 2012. We know people who were friends of the victims’ families. We also have three granddaughters, ages 15, 9, and 7, attending school in Miami, 40 miles from Parkland. Since the murders there, I pray at Mass every Sunday for their safety, I beseech God to protect them from some psychopath who may be out there, with murder in his heart and a gun in his hand. There is something gravely wrong with a society where a grandparent has to offer up such prayers. There is something gravely wrong when elementary and high  school kids have to go through lock-down and active shooter drills, wondering if at an unexpected moment their classrooms will be turned into human abattoirs. There is something gravely wrong when federal and state legislators ignore their constituents’ pleas for safety from gun violence and listen instead to the voices of lobbyists shilling for the firearms industry, because those lobbyists, led by the NRA, pour millions into the politicians’ campaign coffers.

By the way, I am a hunter, and therefore a gun-owner — bolt action rifles, shotguns, a revolver — no weapons of mass destruction, thanks very much. Obviously, then, I am not opposed to private ownership of guns. I am opposed to the absurd, unregulated proliferation of certain types of guns, however. An Ar-15, the civilianized version of the military M-16, along with semiautomatic rifles like the AK-47, as well as certain semi-automatic handguns, are weapons of mass destruction, designed to kill as many people as possible as quickly as possible. The gunman who seriously wounded Congresswoman Gabby Giffords at a campaign rally in 2011 fired 33 rounds in about 20 seconds, killing 6 other people and injuring 13 more. I know what these weapons can do from the butt end to the muzzle end. I carried one, and fired it in combat in Vietnam, and when I was a war correspondent covering the Lebanese civil war in 1975, I was shot in the left ankle and right foot by an AK-47. My injuries landed me in hospitals for a month, and kept me in a wheelchair or on crutches for several months afterward.

I am a member of, and a contributor to, the PAC Ms. Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, have set up to bring some common sense to America’s gun laws. I’ve got my own ideas on what we can do to drastically reduce firearms violence, without doing harm to the 2d Amendment.

A word about that. In a 2008 case, the Supreme Court ruled that the amendment grants citizens the right to keep and bear a firearm “unconnected to service with a militia and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.”

However the ruling goes on to say:

“Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. Miller’s holding that the sorts of weapons protected are those “in common use at the time” finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons.”

In other words, the individual right to possess a gun doesn’t mean there should be no firearm regulations whatsoever. Indeed, the 1934 Firearms Act prohibits private citizens from owning fully automatic weapons such as machineguns and sub-machineguns except by those who have passed a background investigation much more rigorous than the background checks for buying other types of firearms. It has worked for the past 84 years, and no one’s 2d Amendment rights have been violated. I don’t know of a single incident since 1934 in which a killer has used a machinegun to  commit murder. If you do, I’m open to hearing about it.

So, to my proposals:

. Universal background checks for all gun purchases, covering private sales or transfers as well as sales at gun shows. This would go a long way to keeping guns out of the wrong hands. All guns sales should have a 3-day waiting period between the transaction and the time the customer takes ownership.

. Ban the continued manufacture and sale of military assault rifles, high-capacity magazines, and semi-automatic pistols capable of carrying those magazines.

. An absolute ban on bump stocks or any other device that converts a semi-automatic weapon into a fully automatic weapon.

. Expand the 1934 Firearms Act to cover AR-15s, AK-47s, and other military-style weapons already in private hands, offering owners a choice between turning them in on a buy-back basis or undergoing the same background investigation that now applies to owners of automatic weapons. (Australia has done something like this, and its mass-shooting rate has been reduced dramatically).

. Prohibit persons convicted of serious felonies and domestic violence from possessing any firearm; ditto for persons deemed by competent authority to be a danger to themselves or others.

Were legislation like this introduced in Congress, the NRA and its allies would fight it tooth and nail, considering that they have been pushing for repeal of laws regulating silencers and laws prohibiting veterans with mental disabilities from owning guns, even as they advocate for laws allowing guns to be carried on college campuses. That’s only a partial list of their objectives. The NRA, in its collective heart, doesn’t believe the clause quoted above from the 2008 Supreme Court decision. Second Amendment rights, in their view, should be virtually unlimited, sanctioning citizens to “keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever.” As I see it, and there is evidence to back it up, this ideological stance is partly, if not not wholly, motivated by money. The NRA long ago morphed into a fund-raising organization, as well as an organization that promotes increasing production by firearms manufacturers, who are the group’s biggest contributors. To accomplish these ends, issues like carrying guns on campus, revoking regulations on silencers, etc., have to be invented and elevated into threats to the 2d Amendment. I wouldn’t be surprised if someday they campaign for rights to own machineguns, hand grenades and rocket launchers.

Some words of caution to the young people who have started the crusade for sensible gun laws — and their adult supporters: marches and rallies are exciting, but they are no substitute for hard, undramatic work on local, state, and federal political levels. Get out and vote, if you’re eligible. Voting is an act your demographic too often doesn’t do. The NRA has already struck back by disparaging you as tools of liberal politicians, as actors, as frauds. You ain’t seen nothing yet. The gun lobby and the politicians who do its bidding are going to come at you with everything they’ve got — and they’ve got a lot. And, finally, don’t let the media spotlight, thrilling as it is, put you on an ego trip. Your cause is a serious one requiring serious, consistent effort. It should not be one that pits progressives against conservatives, Democrats against Republicans. It’s a moral cause that pits right against wrong.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The post BRING COMMON SENSE TO THE SENSELESS appeared first on Philip Caputo.