Body, Mind & Health - Fiction, War & Military Fiction

I Don't Know but I've Been Told: A Novel

Name: I Don't Know but I've Been Told: A Novel
Author: Raul Correa
ISBN: 9780060955694

by Raul Correa

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Overview

Unfolding in the space of one night, I Don't Know But I've Been Told is a mesmerizing novel in which a man recounts to himself a story of a time twenty years past. The story is so precious that he must handle it carefully, use it gently, in order that its power might not be worn out. It is the story of Paola, a woman he met in a bar, and a group of young paratroopers, and a golden time he knew while training in Panama. He joined the army a poor, kicked-around kid who views his platoon buddies and sergeant with a kind of reverence. He and the rest of the Recon Dogs are fearless; jumping out of planes isn't enough — they take mescaline to heighten the experience. But they are also naive, and when approached by a man who wants them to steal arms, they are easy targets.The young soldiers get a temporary reprieve from dealing with the devil when they're sent to Panama for three months of jungle training. It's a time of parachute jumps, the man's first true taste of camaraderie, and his only experience of love, when he meets Paola. The letter he receives from her after returning to Fort Bragg will haunt and protect him as he faces the consequences of his dealings.Now, twenty years later, that letter is still his talisman. And through its powers, in the space of one night spent walking the streets of New York City, he will relive the story of that time, "the last time it was good." It is a tale both raw and tender, told with a mature and singular voice that marks the debut of a genuinely extraordinary new author.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly

Swaggering yet vulnerable, like a cross between Huck Finn and Holden Caulfield, the unnamed narrator of this gritty, darkly comic debut novel joins the army at the tail end of the 1970s. Like his pals, a bunch of misfit "doper scouts," he joins to escape grinding poverty, prison, or both. Their Fort Bragg scout platoon stands in stark antithesis to the gung-ho, overachieving Special Forces teams in training. Under the loose eye of their "Platoon Daddy" the only soldier in the group with real combat experience, the mystique of which maintains his rein over his unruly charges the Recon Dogs, as they are known, enliven their days of peacetime idleness and easy drills by getting stoned as often as possible, burning their paychecks, selling plasma, even burglarizing motels to fund their binges. This leads to trouble when the Dogs are offered cash by a local "entrepreneur" looking to stockpile military ordnance. The story is told in flashbacks by the narrator, 15 years later, following a breakdown and prison sentence. What is ostensibly a story of a young man too sensitive for military life is muddled with its narrator's self-styled comparison with Huckleberry Finn, his mooning over his lost love (a Panamanian prostitute) and his complete inability to come to terms with his situation. What the novel does offer is a frank, often comical look at life in America's peacetime volunteer army; as such, it joins the ranks of stories of military screwups from time immemorial although few of those offer detailed descriptions of parachute jumps on mescaline. (Apr. 4) Forecast: Correa, who spent time in the 82nd Airborne Division, has a real-life story to rival the fictional one he tells. He will embark on a five-city author tour and should be an appealing interview prospect. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Parachute drops, Panamanian romance, and Huck Finn fill the memories of a tugboat crewman walking Manhattan's streets and riding the subways through the night. The authenticity in this first novel from a former paratrooper is not the usual tough-guy patriot stuff. Correa's nameless protagonist, a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne, is a doper who hangs onto his one copy of Twain's masterwork and a pathetic letter from a girl he met in a tropical bar. He and his buddies routinely fuel their flights with uppers and fill their nights with marijuana, and when their chutes rip, they're ripped. In their off-hours at Ft. Bragg, they head for the strip to add beer to the drug mix and spend everything they've got on Korean bar-girls. Tough kids, dropouts, orphans, guys with records, they respect their lifer sergeant "Platoon Daddy," Vietnam battle veterans, the handful of outfits that are tougher than guys who jump out of planes to go to war, and that's about it. Small-town and ghetto ignorance is their weakness, leaving them vulnerable to the wiles of Mr. Big, a fat criminal lurking on the fringe of the huge Army base. Mr. Big promises the boys big bucks for purloined ammunition, a task that looks easy on the face of it, but is most definitely a crime. Correa follows his soldiers through the Army's jungle training course in Panama, where "Too Easy," the nameless protagonist, falls big for Paola, a pretty young whore, to a wild jump in Kansas, then back to Ft. Bragg, where Mr. Big is getting impatient for his explosives. The final incident that puts the narrator on the track to his present dark days in New York is funny, stupid, and horribly predictable. Rough, nearly impenetrable in some spots,but, still, this is as accurate a depiction of the attractions and idiocies of enlisted warrior peacetime life as you'll find. Officers may take offense, but the troops will say, "Yeah, man. That's right." Author tour