Still Here, Still There: From Living in the Weather of the World

by Richard Bausch

A powerful coda to Richard Bausch’s “brilliant” (The New York Times Book Review) World War II novel, Peace, the basis for the film Recon.   Originally published in Living in the Weather of the World, this poignant short story picks up the tale of American GI Robert Marson, who was improbably saved from death by a German solider, Eugene Schmidt. Seventy-two years later, the two men are poised to reunite in Washington, D.C. Although they kept in touch after the war, it has been decades since their last meeting, a meeting which reshaped their relationship, and not for the better. Now old men with children and grandchildren, Marson and Schmidt brace themselves to speak one last time, with their families—and the world—watching.   A story of nostalgia and regret, of memories forgotten and not, and of how the past never really leaves us, no matter what we may hope, Still Here, Still There is the dazzling final chapter to one of Richard Bausch’s most revered works, and a tribute to the enduring legacy of the bravery of the men who fought in the Second World War.

Genres: Short Stories

47 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 12, 2021

About the author

An acknowledged master of the short story form, Richard Bausch's work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Harper's, The New Yorker, Narrative, Gentleman's Quarterly. Playboy, The Southern Review, New Stories From the South, The Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories, and The Pushcart Prize Stories; and they have been widely anthologized, including The Granta Book of the American Short Story and The Vintage Book of the Contemporary American Short Story.

Richard Bausch is the author of eleven novels and eight collections of stories, including the novels Rebel Powers, Violence, Good Evening Mr. & Mrs. America And All The Ships At Sea, In The Night Season, Hello To The Cannibals, Thanksgiving Night, and Peace; and the story collections Spirits, The Fireman's Wife, Rare & Endangered Species, Someone To Watch Over Me, The Stories of Richard Bausch, Wives & Lovers, and most recently released Something Is Out There. His novel The Last Good Time was made into a feature-length film.

He has won two National Magazine Awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lila-Wallace Reader's Digest Fund Writer's Award, the Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, The 2004 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story and the 2013 John William Corrington Award for Literary Excellence . He has been a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers since 1996. In 1999 he signed on as co-editor, with RV Cassill, of The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction; since Cassill's passing in 2002, Bausch is the sole editor of that prestigious anthology. Richard Bausch teaches Creative Writing at Chapman University in Southern California

Reviews

[Mindo'ermatter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deeply Moving Account of Two War Survivors

This poignant and highly personal retrospective of two soldiers on opposite sides, who in a single moment saved each other's lives. The German soldier, tired of war and killing, chose to help a seriously wounded American soldier, as his way to end the war alive for both of them.

In brief glimpses of these two reuniting, one 95 and the other 99, as family and cameras watched, both reliving and remembering again what they both had tried so long to forget, the ravages of war and the long, dark, and lonely shadows it had cast over their two broken lives, their still being caught in the tragedies of war over 70 years earlier.

This insightful yet brief portrayal spotlights how those experiencing firsthand the life-and-death struggles of combat are never again the same, and how as survivors, though yet alive, remain silent victims who have long forgotten medals and parades, only finding their joy in their families who remained faithful to these aging veterans to the very end, enduring with them their hidden pains and struggles.

This extremely well-written and believable fictional tale is excerpted from the author's book "Living in the Weather of the World: Stories" and is highly representative of of the neverending but quiet war so many combat veterans endure as they some exist in their civilian lives.

Well worth the brief yet harrowing reading experience, definitely 4.5 stars. It will make you think differently about those who have served yet rarely talk about their experiences.