Overview

Details about the nine manuscripts in The Brautigan Library's "War and Peace" (WAR) category.

Background

These manuscripts are included in the "War and Peace" (WAR) category using The Mayonnaise System, a classification system developed for The Brautigan Library. Manuscripts are cataloged according to fourteen general categories, the year of submission, and the order of acquisition into the category. For example, LOV 1992.005 indicates the manuscript was the fifth one cataloged in 1992 to the LOV(e) category. Manuscript synopses provided by authors at time of submission. Comments from The Librarian provide additional information.

Stats

Manuscripts in WAR category = 9
1995 = 1 manuscript
1994 = 1 manuscript
1993 = 1 manuscript
1992 = 1 manuscript
1991 = 5 manuscripts
Missing = 0 manuscripts

Beyond Pearl Harbor

Clio Wetmore
MS #310
WAR 1995.001
Registered 1995/02/02 by The Librarian

Author's Synopsis
Beyond Pearl Harbor is my story about the three years spent as a prisoner of the Japanese, together with my mother and two brothers. It is a story about the fate of thousands of American, British, and Allied civilians imprisoned by the Japanese in Manila and an auxiliary camp called Los Banos. It tells how the American and Philippine Red Cross provided funds to pay for our food, after one month when we were left in camp without any provisions by the Japanese. We had to rely on outside relatives and friends to bring food packages to us until the Red Cross was able to organize. I describe how the camp organized committees to handle our needs: food kitchens, schools, hospital, security, entertainment, everything necessary, as the Japanese did nothing. I tell of the way we survived the dirt, crowding, indignities, and eventually starvation, with our elderly dying for lack of food and the children scavenging the Japanese garbage cans for scraps until forbidden by the commandant. Finally I tell of our glorious liberation by tanks of the First Cavalry, who freed us on February 3, 1945 and later when the 37th Infantry arrived with food and supplies. Our troubles were not at an end, as the Japanese started lobbing shells into our camp, killing and wounding many. Pearl Harbor had been bombed for one day and all the world knows of it. The Philippines wee bombed daily from December 8th until the 30th, when Manila was declared an "Open City" and the Japanese marched in. I am hoping that this part of history will not be forgotten.

Enjoy the War, Peace Will Be Terrible

Romana Pflugfelder
MS #301
WAR 1994.001
Registered 1994/02/03 by The Librarian

Author's Synopsis
Enjoy the War, Peace Will Be Terrible takes place in Vienna, Austria. It portrays the life of two teenage girls during World War II. It relates about their family, including their brothers who served in the war, one of which died in combat. It gives an inside picture of Vienna with all it's charm and splendor. During the concluding days of the war the family's flight to Bavaria, Germany to, escape the Russian conquest of the city of Vienna. The narrative deals primarily with the trials and tribulations of the civilian population in war torn Austria; encompassing intrigue, danger, romance, incarceration, failure, success, and survival. It also deals with the return to Vienna and the hard times after the war.

In Pursuit of Submarines

S. Lanahan
MS #276
WAR 1993.001
Registered 1993/02/04 by The Librarian

Author's Synopsis
In Pursuit of Submarines concerns a young naval officer serving on an escort aircraft carrier assigned to anti-submarine duty in the Atlantic during World War II. He correctly guesses that the Allies have broken the German code used in transmitting messages to submarines at sea. A college classmate, also a naval officer, is engaged in directing Task Groups, consisting of escort carriers and destroyers, to attack wolf packs of submarines. The protagonist accuses his classmate of causing the needless loss of ships and crews by allowing Task Groups to go through the center of known wolf packs. There are subplots involving women and personality conflicts on the escort carrier.

Librarian's Comment
S. Lanahan has contributed two manuscripts to The Brautigan Library. They are In Pursuit of Submarines (WAR 1993.001) and Good Looking People (SOC 1993.002).

Blue Ridge

Emily Ballard
MS #242
WAR 1992.001
Registered 1992/01/09 by The Librarian

Author's Synopsis
Blue Ridge is a collection of three interwoven stories of the American Civil War, centered on the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia in 1864 when General Sheridan's troops laid it waste. "The Butternut" is the story of an Ohio man who found an unusual way to help his country. "The Yankee" brings a Valley school teacher face to face with the soldiers who would burn her home; and "The Scalawag" tells of a Virginian torn between loyalty to his State and to his country.

Where the Shadows Run from Themselves

Paul Clayton
MS #236
WAR 1991.005
Registered 1991/12/03 by The Librarian

Author's Synopsis
Viet Nam made me a writer. The experience was so penetrating, so crushing, that all I could think about when I returned was to write it all out and tell other people. I wanted all of you who weren't there to know what it was like. Part of that was from anger. I wanted you to squirm and suffer like I and my friends did. So I wrote Where the Shadows Run from Themselves over many years, learning all I could about writing along the way. Finally, I was finished and started sending it out. I then discovered an ugly truth: publishers were interested only in blood and gore glamorization, cheap thrills and bullshit, not the true face of war and the learning and brotherhood which sometimes can result from it. They wanted McNovel, more Rambo-regurgitations, not an honest story. So, here it is, a real war novel, where the naive and innocent, the proud and the fanatical are all chewed up and spat out to crawl off and die or, hopefully, heal and grow. Have a good read!

Chapterbook

Stewart Chaulk
MS #227
WAR 1991.004
Registered 1991/10/15 by The Librarian

Author's Synopsis
Chapterbook deals with the space-between, the binding mystery that can never be spoken. By examining an archeology of myself, I come up with a printed nothingness. I express the unexpressed, only to make Chapterbook a thing of the past. To read it is to destroy the idea. It is a mixture of philosophy, literary criticism and black and white memory photos is all context.

The Deadly Sea

Gilbert Dean
MS #208
WAR 1991.003
Registered 1991/09/12 by The Librarian

Author's Synopsis
During World War II slow ore ships carried bauxite ore from the Giuanas to Port of Spain, Trinidad. It was a deadly four-day voyage. Largely ignored by historians, the bauxite shuttle ranks as one of the most costly battlegrounds of the conflict. Estimates from area shipping offices and Naval archives are that during 1942-1943 some one hundred thirty carriers were sunk with a loss of more than one thousand eight hundred men. In July 1942 alone, U-boats sank nineteen of twenty five ore ships attempting the run. The Deadly Sea honors nameless men of all colors and nationalities who crewed the ships attempting to cross a killing sea of chance.

The Promise and The Plan

Herbert Eveloff
MS #183
WAR 1991.002
Registered 1991/06/20 by The Librarian

Author's Synopsis
The Promise and The Plan is a novel based on a true story taken from the psychiatrist-author's own files. It is a novel of strident, conflicted emotions; of vengeance and healing; of love and hate. It is a tale of high adventure played out against the backdrop of pre and post World War II Germany. But this is not a holocaust novel. Rather, the central themes are universal and could be unraveled anywhere as well as in an obscure German village.

Noah's Moon

Russell Hicks
MS #147
WAR 1991.001
Registered 1991/01/03 by The Librarian

Author's Synopsis
Noah's Moon is a nuclear war novel that portrays about fifty scientists and administrators in a detente project on the moon. The NATO and Soviet's of the project become friends and lovers who resist pressure from their sponsoring nations to take sides in a nuclear was that has developed on Earth. They become self sufficient on the moon and witness the gradual devastation of life forms on the war poisoned Earth. Communication with Earth is silenced and the moon's people spend a twenty eight year half-life exploring necessary social behavior for peace before returning their progeny to repopulate Earth.