Brief Encounters With Che Guevara: Stories (2007) - Plot & Excerpts
Brief Encounters with Che Guevara is a 2006 collection of eight brilliant short stories by Ben Fountain, author of the wonderful novel, Billy Lynn's Long Half-Time Walk. Brief Encounters established Fountain’s reputation as a writer to watch, earning him a PEN Award, a Whiting Writers Award, an O Henry, and a Barnes and Noble Discover Award. Must be good, right? Indeed it is.Half the stories are set in Haiti. Others are in Sierra Leone, Colombia, Myanmar and there is even one in Europe. They tell of people trying to do the right thing in an amoral world. The complexity of the world is a central focus in most of these stories, where it is often not so easy to figure out what the right thing to do actually is, let alone doing it. A grad-student ornithologist is taken captive by a revolutionary group in Colombia. An American NGO worker is persuaded to help fund a revolution in Haiti. A soldier returns from an extended tour in Haiti with some very unusual baggage. A pro golfer of questionable morality is recruited by the generals in Myanmar to promote golf in their corrupt and isolated nation. A Haitian fisherman finds that it is not so easy to foil the efforts of drug smugglers. An aid worker in Sierra Leone becomes involved with a blood diamond smuggler, while attempting to support a co-op that provides work for maimed locals. Sundry people relate their intersections with Che in the title piece. And in the final selection, a prodigy pianist with an unusual gift must cope with her notoriety while attempting a supremely challenging piece. Photo by Larry D. Moore via WikipediaThere is considerable moral ambiguity in these pieces, a feast of Faustian bargains to be considered, and even mention of God and the Devil wagering over people’s souls.Fountain was not always a writer. He was born in North Carolina and got his law degree from Duke, then worked in real estate law in Dallas for five years before pleading nolo contendere and turning over a new leaf. It was a lot of things coming together at once: having a kid; my wife, Sharie, making partner at her firm; me having practiced for five years and just absolutely having had enough; me turning thirty and thinking that if I was going to make a run at trying to be a writer I needed to get going. There was a sense of urgency, of time passing. (from Ecotone) Beginning his new career in 1988, he had stories accepted here and there but it took a long time for him to hone his craft and produce top quality work. One of the stories in this collection was first published in 2000. He had his share of frustration during this time, with a couple of novels taking up space in a drawer to prove it. But he stuck with it, treating writing as a job, whether or not he was published, five days a week writing every day, every day, every day.As for why Haiti figures so large as a subjectOn a rational basis, I saw Haiti as a paradigm for a lot of things I was interested in relating to power, politics, race, and history. I went there a couple of times and at that point I probably had what I needed to get. It was some comfort to me to know, flying out of there the second or third time, that I didn’t really have to go back—and yet I did go back, many times. Once I was there I felt pretty comfortable. And the more time I spent there, the more there was that I felt I needed to understand. But I still can’t give a satisfactory explanation for how it happened. He would visit Haiti over 30 times. The notion of going to Colombia or Sierra Leone was raised, but funds and time are not limitless and his wife was aghast at the notion.Fountain is very interested in the impact of the large forces in society on individuals.I practiced law for five years and that gives you insight into a certain mind-set that maybe a lot of writers haven’t had firsthand access to. There’s an almost casual cruelty, a very low level of overall awareness, but sometimes there’s also knowledge that real damage is being done—this attitude of “Oh, what the hell,” this kind of moral cognitive dissonance. These are people who have never missed a meal. It’s an unknowingness, an unawareness, that Reagan personified. Reagan was so sure of everything and yet his experience of the world was so narrow. How could he be sure of anything? I saw that over and over again in the wealthier people I worked with or had contact with while practicing law. Many people were operating from a very narrow range of experience, and yet they had complete faith in it. Their way was the correct way, the only way. They had virtually no awareness of any other way of life except in terms of demonizing things like communism, socialism, or Islam. It’s an extremely blindered experience of the world.By Claudio Reyes Ule via WikimediaThe stories turn a widened eye on this sort of myopia, but Fountain does not spare the revolutionary sorts either, who have issues of their own. I found the stories very engaging, enlightening and moving. It is definitely worth your while to encounter Ben Fountain in this volume. You may find that the time spent in his company is too brief.=============================THE STORIESNear-Extinct Birds of the Central CordilleraJohn Blair is a grad-student ornithologist who ignored the risks and is doing research in Colombia when he is kidnapped by members of MURC (a FARC stand-in), a revolutionary group, and is held for ransom. He winds up spending a long time with the group and establishing relationships with some members and the leader. It is a tale heavy with political irony and a very O Henry-ish ending. Reve HaitienMason is an OAS observer in Haiti. He throws chess games with the young local players, as a way of boosting their self-esteem. He encounters a player better than himself, Amulatto, and is drawn in his world. Life here had the cracked logic of a dream, its own internal rules. You looked at a picture and it wasn’t like looking at a picture of a dream, it was a passage into the current of the dream. And for him the dream had its own peculiar twist, the dream of doing something real, something worthy. A blan’s dream, perhaps all the more fragile for that.The Good Ones are Already TakenMelissa is a very sexual person and it is a big sacrifice for her to do without while her serviceman husband is away. But when Dirk returns from an extended tour in Haiti, he has changed, gone voodoo, religious, which has implications for their sex life. Can Melissa adapt to the new man who came home? And what’s up with all that weirdness he is into anyway?Asian TigerSonny Grous, 23, is a pro golfer, built like a bouncer and not all that successful. In Rangoon for a tournament he has the game of his life and is recruited by the generals to be the ambassador of golf for Burma, which is seeking to attract foreigners with great courses. The money is pretty good, but there is the dodgy element of working for people who are truly reprehensible.Bouki and the CocaineConcerned about the massive drug-running, Syto, a small-town Haitian fisherman, and his brother decide to grab the bales that are left by the runners on the beach and bring them to the police, accepting on face value the frequent public announcements decrying the drug trade. Things do not work out as the brothers expect. There are real questions raise here about where honor lies, and how one’s interpretation of that informs behavior. There tale is exceptionally clever and will make you smile, while also getting the moral dilemma involved. The Lion’s MouthJill runs a co-op that provides employment for many local women in Sierra Leone but funds are cut off. She turns to her unlikely bf, Starkey, a dealer in blood diamonds, for help in finding the needed funds. More moral ambiguity here, and an image of a troubled place.Brief Encounters with Che GuevaraChe is a touchstone here, not an actual character, for the most part. Several, very diverse, people tell of their encounters with Che. Among them is Laurent, a Haitian who knew Guevara. Laurent was my favorite character in this entire collection. It is worth reading the entire book just to get to meet him. Fantasy for Eleven fingersAnna Juhl is a young piano prodigy, gifted in a manner identical to Anton Visser, a luminous player of the early 19th century, and composer of a particularly wonderful and difficult piece called Fantaisie pour onze Doigts. She takes on the challenge. This piece seemed a bit out of place in the collection, geographically anyway.=============================EXTRA STUFFA great interview in Ecotone Journal – by Ben George – must read stuff if you find Fountain interesting, and you should, a lot on writing and Fountain’s writing history.An interview in the on-line magazine, The Millions by Edan Lepucki. It is mostly on Billy Lynn, but there is plenty here about how Fountain thinks and writes. Definitely worthwhile.There is a lovely bit in the Barnes and Noble writer details page on Fountain’s favorite booksThe on-line edition of the magazine Rain Taxi also has a lovely review with the author. He talks about his relationship with Haiti. There is a lot of detailed discussion of the stories. There is a piece by Malcolm Gladwell in New Yorker that looks at Fountain as an example of a late-bloomer.
Each well-wrought tale–and many are about Haiti–explores the love that guides the personal revolutionary act. And whenever someone acts, whether Haitian or foreign, in a country so on the edge, there is risk. So the stories have tension.First comes “Reve Haitien,” with its haunting inner-city dokte fey, “a kind of roving leaf doctor and cut-rate houngan who happened to have a grounding in Western medical science.” This guy imposes a dangerous task on our do-gooder American narrator, who so loves him and his country that he willingly takes it on. By the end, the reader has explored what is at the heart of Haitian art.Next there ‘s “Bouki and the Cocaine,” which, believe it or not, manages a loving tribute to the Haitian voodoo tradition in the context of the drug trade and its many temptations. By the end, the reader has learned about family life, economics and religion in a small Haitian town.After this, we have “The Good Ones Are Already Taken,” about a white American couple dealing with the fact that the soldier husband, recently returned from Haiti, is possessed by a voodoo goddess. By the end, the reader understands a whole lot about both the marriage in question and how Erzulie kicks ass.And finally the title story. Che Guevara haunts the life of a spectral guy in Port au Prince, one of Che’s comrades-in-arms back in the day. After Che the Haitian was almost elected Senator in the midst of Duvalier’s brutality because he called on Haitians to dance. Dance instead of fight. Dance. By the end, the reader has met many who are forever haunted by Che.Fountain’s beautifully-wrought stories about Haiti humanize people often depicted only as pitiful victims. Each narrative insists –without slogans–that respect for the poor, their needs and their religion, are the primary imperatives. Exquisite fiction focused on social justice. For this lover of both social activism and literature? Died and gone to heaven!
What do You think about Brief Encounters With Che Guevara: Stories (2007)?
I discovered this book in the same way that I have discovered most of the books that mean the most to me: browsing a second-hand bookshop in an unfamiliar place. In this case it was a charity bookshop in Covent Garden, London.The stories are original and superbly written. They reveal different facets of the human condition against the volatile backdrop of revolution. From the diamond mines of Sierra Leone to the Bolivian jungle the chosen settings, like the stories themselves, are rich and evocative.
—Ally Shand
Malcolm Gladwell led me to Ben Fountain's stories through an article published in the New Yorker titled, "Late Bloomers: Why do we Equate Genius with Precocity?" Fountain's work stands on its own pillars in terms of storytelling and underlying complexities. With an internationalist perspective, this book of stories thwarts stereotypes by taking its readers on a journey from the jungles of Colombia's rebel held territory through the eyes of an ornithologist, through the slums of Haiti in search of the nation's great art, the golf courses of Myanmar (yes, golf courses!) and war torn Sierra Leone. They are tests and testaments of morality and ideology and the unpredictable reaction of what happens when these theories brush up against reality--like the dedicated aid worker who takes a diamond smuggler as her lover, the pro who wants to make money hitting little white balls with a club and ends up swinging in international corruption, to a meditation based on second-hand encounters with the guerrillero Che Guevara - a famous martyr possessed by all yet forever ephemeral. All that's left for me to say is, "Bravo, Ben Fountain! BRAVO!"
—Kara
Ben Fountain, a Dallas-based writer, has written a remarkable collection of stories. This is slightly old news—the book was published in 2007 (HarperCollins)—but the fiction is so compelling I thought I would give it a plug here. The stories with a significant exception find Americans abroad in murky circumstances that challenge their principles and force them to make uncomfortable choices: an ornithology graduate student is taken prisoner by guerillas in the mountains of Colombia; an aide worker in Haiti and another in Sierra Leone find their efforts to improve the lives of the poor frustrated by the complexity of life in third world countries; a golf pro in Myanmar becomes complicit in a complicated scam. The last story in the collection, "Fantasy for Eleven Fingers," is an amazing miniature piece of historical fiction, at once suspenseful and moving.The writing is graceful and engaging, and—unlike many modern short stories—well plotted. In a word, things happen and these events drive the narrative. By pulling his characters out of their everyday context, Fountain deprives them of reasonable anticipation of the consequences of their actions. The tactic sharpens their dilemmas and raises the tension level. At times these stories feel like minithrillers. I found myself rooting for Fountain's characters, hoping they would not be sucked into an abyss. It was an amazing read for me.All together the collection is remarkable and compelling and deserves an even wider readership.
—Michael Lieberman
