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A Flag for Sunrise
An astonishing saga of politics, war, and Americans out of place, by a National Book Award winner!
Possessed of astonishing dramatic, emotional, and philosophical resonance, A Flag for Sunrise is a novel in the grand tradition about Americans drawn into the maelstrom of a small Central American country on the brink of revolution. From the book's inception, readers will be seized by the dangers and nightmare suspense of life lived on the rim of a political volcano.
Possessed of astonishing dramatic, emotional, and philosophical resonance, A Flag for Sunrise is a novel in the grand tradition about Americans drawn into the maelstrom of a small Central American country on the brink of revolution. From the book's inception, readers will be seized by the dangers and nightmare suspense of life lived on the rim of a political volcano.
448 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1981
About the author
Robert Stone
31 books230 followersROBERT STONE was the author of seven novels: A Hall of Mirrors, Dog Soldiers (winner of the National Book Award), A Flag for Sunrise, Children of Light, Outerbridge Reach, Damascus Gate, and Bay of Souls. His story collection, Bear and His Daughter, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and his memoir, Prime Green, was published in 2006.
His work was typically characterized by psychological complexity, political concerns, and dark humor.
A lifelong adventurer who in his 20s befriended Ken Kesey, Neal Cassady, and what he called ‘‘all those crazies’’ of the counterculture, Mr. Stone had a fateful affinity for outsiders, especially those who brought hard times on themselves. Starting with the 1966 novel ‘‘A Hall of Mirrors,’’ Mr. Stone set his stories everywhere from the American South to the Far East. He was a master of making art out of his character’s follies, whether the adulterous teacher in ‘‘Death of the Black-Haired Girl,’’ the fraudulent seafarer in ‘‘Outerbridge Reach,’’ or the besieged journalist in ‘‘Dog Soldiers,’’ winner of the National Book Award in 1975.
His work was typically characterized by psychological complexity, political concerns, and dark humor.
A lifelong adventurer who in his 20s befriended Ken Kesey, Neal Cassady, and what he called ‘‘all those crazies’’ of the counterculture, Mr. Stone had a fateful affinity for outsiders, especially those who brought hard times on themselves. Starting with the 1966 novel ‘‘A Hall of Mirrors,’’ Mr. Stone set his stories everywhere from the American South to the Far East. He was a master of making art out of his character’s follies, whether the adulterous teacher in ‘‘Death of the Black-Haired Girl,’’ the fraudulent seafarer in ‘‘Outerbridge Reach,’’ or the besieged journalist in ‘‘Dog Soldiers,’’ winner of the National Book Award in 1975.
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March 28, 2013
”A scorpion comes up to a buffalo on a riverbank. Please, sir, says the scorpion – could you give us a ride across? No way, says the buffalo. You’ll sting me and I’ll drown. But the scorpion swears he won’t. Why would I, he asks the buffalo, when if I did, I’d drown along with you? So off they go. Halfway across the scorpion stings the buffalo. And the poor Buffalo says, you bastard, you killed us both. Before they go under, the scorpion says – it’s my nature.”
It is the late 70s. America is reeling from a Vietnam hangover. And burnouts from that war go looking for some foothold. They descend, or wash up, on Tecan, an invented Central American cauldron. Father Egan, a drunk and dying priest. Justin Feeney, a nun and nurse, who will laicize if she gets out. Frank Holliwell, an alcoholic anthropologist, asked to give a lecture. And Pablo Tobar, a Coast Guard deserter driven by Benzedrine.
There is revolution in the air, but that is simply a tableau for the literary flailing of American purpose. It is all of a piece, Stone writes: child murderers, right-wing dictators, American interests. Wait, whaaaat? There’s a very rubbishy sort of American loose on the world these days.
Robert Stone is self-aware if not self-debasing. He understands he is being cinematic:
Movies are movies, Oscar. This is your life.
And:
It’s a Walt fucking Disney true life adventure, sweetheart.
Stone writes thrillers, sort of. The amoral, drug-fueled violence is surely meant to be metaphorical. Like Cormac McCarthy, but with less talent and, oddly, less hope.
So, Holliwell is haunted by his unspecified spook-work in Vietnam. Pablo serves as that legacy. Father Egan is a drunken oracle. Justin is either the American kindness which can not be allowed to survive, or maybe just a convenient too-hot-to-be-a-nun character so at least someone can get naked, damnit.
What A Flag for Sunrise is not, however, is a clash of cultures. Nothing like Matthiessen’s At Play in the Fields of the Lord. ‘Tecan’ is a fictitious country, so, apparently, there’s no real need to create a Tecanese people or culture. The natives are props against which the Americans can be ugly adventurers. We lost our soul in Vietnam, he says, and never got it back.
Stone reworked this theme to much better artistic success in Outerbridge Reach. But AFFS is thematically and metaphorically accessible, deeper than its plot, even if disagreeably so. Stone sums things up for us: it was not easy to watch all the world’s deluded wandering across the battlefield of a long-ago lost war. One had to close the heart to pity – if one could. The truth was a fine thing, but it had to be its own reward.
A man has nothing to fear…who understands history, Stone concludes. That would be hopeful, Robert, had we not been cast as scorpions, damned by our nature.
It is the late 70s. America is reeling from a Vietnam hangover. And burnouts from that war go looking for some foothold. They descend, or wash up, on Tecan, an invented Central American cauldron. Father Egan, a drunk and dying priest. Justin Feeney, a nun and nurse, who will laicize if she gets out. Frank Holliwell, an alcoholic anthropologist, asked to give a lecture. And Pablo Tobar, a Coast Guard deserter driven by Benzedrine.
There is revolution in the air, but that is simply a tableau for the literary flailing of American purpose. It is all of a piece, Stone writes: child murderers, right-wing dictators, American interests. Wait, whaaaat? There’s a very rubbishy sort of American loose on the world these days.
Robert Stone is self-aware if not self-debasing. He understands he is being cinematic:
Movies are movies, Oscar. This is your life.
And:
It’s a Walt fucking Disney true life adventure, sweetheart.
Stone writes thrillers, sort of. The amoral, drug-fueled violence is surely meant to be metaphorical. Like Cormac McCarthy, but with less talent and, oddly, less hope.
So, Holliwell is haunted by his unspecified spook-work in Vietnam. Pablo serves as that legacy. Father Egan is a drunken oracle. Justin is either the American kindness which can not be allowed to survive, or maybe just a convenient too-hot-to-be-a-nun character so at least someone can get naked, damnit.
What A Flag for Sunrise is not, however, is a clash of cultures. Nothing like Matthiessen’s At Play in the Fields of the Lord. ‘Tecan’ is a fictitious country, so, apparently, there’s no real need to create a Tecanese people or culture. The natives are props against which the Americans can be ugly adventurers. We lost our soul in Vietnam, he says, and never got it back.
Stone reworked this theme to much better artistic success in Outerbridge Reach. But AFFS is thematically and metaphorically accessible, deeper than its plot, even if disagreeably so. Stone sums things up for us: it was not easy to watch all the world’s deluded wandering across the battlefield of a long-ago lost war. One had to close the heart to pity – if one could. The truth was a fine thing, but it had to be its own reward.
A man has nothing to fear…who understands history, Stone concludes. That would be hopeful, Robert, had we not been cast as scorpions, damned by our nature.
April 28, 2022
Βαθμολογία: 9/10
Πέρυσι τον Απρίλιο διάβασα το "Η αίθουσα με τους καθρέφτες" του ίδιου συγγραφέα, ένα παρανοϊκό και τριπαρισμένο μυθιστόρημα για τη σκοτεινή πλευρά της Αμερικής της δεκαετίας του '60, το οποίο πραγματικά με ξετρέλανε, ε, το ίδιο μπορώ να πω ότι συνέβη και με τούτο δω, το "Ένα λάβαρο για την αυγή", ένα εξίσου τριπαρισμένο πολιτικό θρίλερ που διαδραματίζεται σε μια φανταστική χώρα της Λατινικής Αμερικής που βρίσκεται στα πρόθυρα της επανάστασης, με το οποίο ο Στόουν κρίνει και κατακρίνει την αλαζονεία των ΗΠΑ και την τάση τους να επεμβαίνουν με πολιτικό ή και στρατιωτικό τρόπο σε χώρες στις οποίες θεωρούν ότι έχουν συμφέροντα. Επιτέλους έβαλα μια τελεία! Λοιπόν, πρόκειται για ένα πολύ δυνατό μυθιστόρημα, με σκληρή γραφή, μπόλικο κυνισμό και σκοτεινή ατμόσφαιρα, με μαύρους χαρακτήρες που είναι στα πρόθυρα ή και πέρα από τα πρόθυρα της τρέλας και της κατάπτωσης: Έχουμε έναν μπερδεμένο και μάλλον αλκοολικό ανθρωπολόγο, μια πανέμορφη νεαρή καλόγρια που έχει χάσει προ πολλού την πίστη της και γέρνει προς τα αριστερά, έναν ηλικιωμένο παπά που βλέπει τον Θεό στο αλκοόλ και σε δολοφόνους, έναν χαπακωμένο νεαρό τυχοδιώκτη που δεν το έχει σε τίποτα να σε καθαρίσει αν καταλάβει ότι έχεις περίεργους σκοπούς απέναντί του, έναν παρανοϊκό στρατιωτικό, κάτι κυνικούς έμπορους όπλων που κάνουν τις πλέον βρώμικες δουλειές, και ένα κάρο άλλους παρόμοιους τύπους και τύπισσες. Α, και έναν σαλεμένο κατά συρροή δολοφόνο παιδιών, που κάνει εδώ κι εκεί την εμφάνισή του. Ναι, όπως καταλάβατε, είναι ένα χαρούμενο μυθιστόρημα για να περάσει ευχάριστα η ώρα. Τέλος πάντων, εγώ μια φορά πραγματικά το ευχαριστήθηκα, κάτι τέτοια σκληρά και μαύρα μυθιστορήματα που δείχνουν με ρεαλιστικό και πολλές φορές ωμό τρόπο τη σκοτεινή πλευρά της κοινωνίας μας σίγουρα με ενθουσιάζουν, με κρατάνε στην τσίτα, και τούτο δω, με την πλοκή, τη γραφή και τους χαρακτήρες που έχει, πραγματικά με καθήλωσε. Πάντως, σε καμία περίπτωση δεν είναι για όλα τα γούστα. Κρίμα που δεν έχουν μεταφραστεί άλλα βιβλία του Ρόμπερτ Στόουν, όπως για παράδειγμα το κλασικό του κερατά "Dog Soldiers" (το έχω στα αγγλικά, όπως επίσης και την ταινία που είναι βασισμένη σε αυτό), το "Outerbridge Reach" ή το "Damascus Gate". Αλλά τι να κάνεις...
Πέρυσι τον Απρίλιο διάβασα το "Η αίθουσα με τους καθρέφτες" του ίδιου συγγραφέα, ένα παρανοϊκό και τριπαρισμένο μυθιστόρημα για τη σκοτεινή πλευρά της Αμερικής της δεκαετίας του '60, το οποίο πραγματικά με ξετρέλανε, ε, το ίδιο μπορώ να πω ότι συνέβη και με τούτο δω, το "Ένα λάβαρο για την αυγή", ένα εξίσου τριπαρισμένο πολιτικό θρίλερ που διαδραματίζεται σε μια φανταστική χώρα της Λατινικής Αμερικής που βρίσκεται στα πρόθυρα της επανάστασης, με το οποίο ο Στόουν κρίνει και κατακρίνει την αλαζονεία των ΗΠΑ και την τάση τους να επεμβαίνουν με πολιτικό ή και στρατιωτικό τρόπο σε χώρες στις οποίες θεωρούν ότι έχουν συμφέροντα. Επιτέλους έβαλα μια τελεία! Λοιπόν, πρόκειται για ένα πολύ δυνατό μυθιστόρημα, με σκληρή γραφή, μπόλικο κυνισμό και σκοτεινή ατμόσφαιρα, με μαύρους χαρακτήρες που είναι στα πρόθυρα ή και πέρα από τα πρόθυρα της τρέλας και της κατάπτωσης: Έχουμε έναν μπερδεμένο και μάλλον αλκοολικό ανθρωπολόγο, μια πανέμορφη νεαρή καλόγρια που έχει χάσει προ πολλού την πίστη της και γέρνει προς τα αριστερά, έναν ηλικιωμένο παπά που βλέπει τον Θεό στο αλκοόλ και σε δολοφόνους, έναν χαπακωμένο νεαρό τυχοδιώκτη που δεν το έχει σε τίποτα να σε καθαρίσει αν καταλάβει ότι έχεις περίεργους σκοπούς απέναντί του, έναν παρανοϊκό στρατιωτικό, κάτι κυνικούς έμπορους όπλων που κάνουν τις πλέον βρώμικες δουλειές, και ένα κάρο άλλους παρόμοιους τύπους και τύπισσες. Α, και έναν σαλεμένο κατά συρροή δολοφόνο παιδιών, που κάνει εδώ κι εκεί την εμφάνισή του. Ναι, όπως καταλάβατε, είναι ένα χαρούμενο μυθιστόρημα για να περάσει ευχάριστα η ώρα. Τέλος πάντων, εγώ μια φορά πραγματικά το ευχαριστήθηκα, κάτι τέτοια σκληρά και μαύρα μυθιστορήματα που δείχνουν με ρεαλιστικό και πολλές φορές ωμό τρόπο τη σκοτεινή πλευρά της κοινωνίας μας σίγουρα με ενθουσιάζουν, με κρατάνε στην τσίτα, και τούτο δω, με την πλοκή, τη γραφή και τους χαρακτήρες που έχει, πραγματικά με καθήλωσε. Πάντως, σε καμία περίπτωση δεν είναι για όλα τα γούστα. Κρίμα που δεν έχουν μεταφραστεί άλλα βιβλία του Ρόμπερτ Στόουν, όπως για παράδειγμα το κλασικό του κερατά "Dog Soldiers" (το έχω στα αγγλικά, όπως επίσης και την ταινία που είναι βασισμένη σε αυτό), το "Outerbridge Reach" ή το "Damascus Gate". Αλλά τι να κάνεις...
January 10, 2008
Second Stone I have read after Dog Soldiers; a darker but less cynical updating of Conrad’s Nostromo. It starts off fairly somber with a structure that reminds me of an Altman film; with the book switching between various characters having conversations that slowly are showing the canvas on which this book is drawn, all relating to the fictional Central American country of Tecan (and its neighbor Compostelan). Tecan resembles a disguised Nicaragua but has elements of other moments in the troubled history of that region. At some point the conversation and events take a menacing tone that accelerates as the book becomes increasingly claustrophobic; at this point the book resembles Dog Soldier’s jittery energy. Great dialogue, detail, and lunatic characters (a speed freak on an existential journey, a whisky priest turned Gnostic prophet, sadistic policeman, revolutionary nun, a serial killer, and a very confused and lost Anthropologist); all add up to another great but disturbing and seven shades dark novel by Stone. And the deranged finale on a boat is worth it.
February 13, 2013
“A Flag for Sunrise” is less a novel than an existential exercise in meaning, sacrifice, and cosmic collisions. Set in a fictionalized Nicaragua, the novel simmers over a flame of political intrigue, religious desperation, and maniacal selfishness, until it explodes at the end as all these strands intertwine into a combustible resolution. The plot of the novel pushed way down in the mix and doesn’t really affect the reader in meaningful ways. This of course is good for a review as most reviewers spend half their energy dancing around the plot – trying to explicate the book without talking about the end of the novel: usually the most important part, thematically and otherwise. Robert Stone’s writing style could be seen as Dostoyevsky in the jungle, cueing some reviewers to compare him with Conrad. And while the comparison is apt, Stone lacks Conrad’s stilted formality, his rigged assurance that native equals sinister. Stone is more Tolstoy in this regard, measuring human failing in terms of action rather than race, creating a guerilla War and Peace. This doesn’t mean that the ‘natives’ are well-drawn and as fully figured as the Americans, but this is to be expected from a white male author. The true balance lies in the failings of all characters: from Hispanic to White, young to old, male to female. All try and fill a void, strive to become more than they are - to signal in some larger way the meaning of their personal existence.
The novel begins with a familiar trope: the alcoholic priest. But Father Egan plays a supporting role, not wanting to abandon his charges in the midst of growing political turmoil. His main assistant is Sister Justin Feeney (it doesn’t bode well that she shares a name with Justin Martyr). Her last name is most certainly taken from Father Leonard Feeney, who was excommunicated in 1953 for disagreeing with the church’s ideas about damnation of non-Catholics (which could be a whole essay in itself). But these namesakes place Justin Feeney as a radical, willing to disobey authoritarian orders, to pursue her personal vision of what salvation is. Both the Father and Justin are ordered to return to the States, but refuse to leave their mission. Rumors then circulate they are involved with radicals. Thus, the CIA (who as per usual is propping up a corrupt dictator all in the hope of quelling the tide of communist revolutionaries) recruits Frank Holliwell, a Vietnam veteran (who as per usual is psychologically damaged by what he had to do in the name of his country) that recluctantly accepts, telling himself the old whopper “if I don’t go they will send someone worse”. Oh and he’s also an anthropologist – the perfect cover, kinda. Holliwell is your standard white American protagonist in that he really wants to be good and yet can never really make the personal sacrifices needed for true goodness (see Frank Bascombe, Rabbit Angstrom –although a debate could be made about whether Rabbit wanted to be good or just wanted people to think he was – and every DFW character minus Mario Incandenza (I would try and make a point about DFW characters regarding perceptive vs. true goodness but that is a thicket I will not enter.)) Holliwell flails around Tecan (our fictional Nicaragua) - drinking to excess (obviously) and making overall poor life choices. Our last corner in this square of human squalor is Pablo Tabor (named after a 15th cent. Heretical movement in the city of Tabor, Bohemia – Stone really pushes the outsider religion theme, or rather finding your own strain of religion and refusing to yield). When we meet Pablo he proceeds to: a) get high on uppers, b) shoot his two dogs as they were “fucking with his head” and c) nearly kill the mother of his child. So yeah, Pablo is so mentally frayed he’s almost not worth the effort of figuring out, even on a literary level. But, I think the point is that Pablo’s impulse is the same as Holliwell’s and Justin’s – all three yearn to prove a meaning to their existence. The difference is Pablo’s frayed faculties make that yearning dangerous and inchoate. Most characters in the novel think Pablo – a mistake some pay for.
The novel’s title comes from an Emily Dickenson poem; a splendid little piece of literary craftsmanship that combines a desire for a man/wedding with a desire for God/re-birth. This all wrapped in the temporal movement from midnight to daybreak and the spatial movement from West to East. The idea being a rebirth at sunrise (rising in the east at daybreak). Yet the metaphorical imagery can also be a rebirth through Christ (the Bridegroom), and Dickenson, being the wondrous poet that she is, also hints at death preceding the re-birth – with “Angels bustling in the Hall” as “my Future climbs the Stairs”. And at the end when the savior comes she has seen his face – many times actually – when the sun was miraculously reborn every morning. The author takes these same themes and expands them into a larger idea of re-birth through surrender to a larger meaning, yet in Tecan sometimes meaning can only come through sacrifice or death, as each character realizes in her own way. Justin even says “Behold the handmaid of the Lord” in an intense moment of delirium, signaling her deference to her ultimate meaning. This is a mirroring of the Dickinson line “At Midnight, I am but a maid”. The poem continues on, “How short it takes to make a Bride/Then – Midnight, I have passed from thee/ Unto the East, and Victory – “. Using the poem as a key, Justin will transform from ‘handmaid of the lord’ to a bride, just as the day shall pass from midnight to daybreak, and in the east will be re-birth and victory, will be the flag for sunrise.
The novel begins with a familiar trope: the alcoholic priest. But Father Egan plays a supporting role, not wanting to abandon his charges in the midst of growing political turmoil. His main assistant is Sister Justin Feeney (it doesn’t bode well that she shares a name with Justin Martyr). Her last name is most certainly taken from Father Leonard Feeney, who was excommunicated in 1953 for disagreeing with the church’s ideas about damnation of non-Catholics (which could be a whole essay in itself). But these namesakes place Justin Feeney as a radical, willing to disobey authoritarian orders, to pursue her personal vision of what salvation is. Both the Father and Justin are ordered to return to the States, but refuse to leave their mission. Rumors then circulate they are involved with radicals. Thus, the CIA (who as per usual is propping up a corrupt dictator all in the hope of quelling the tide of communist revolutionaries) recruits Frank Holliwell, a Vietnam veteran (who as per usual is psychologically damaged by what he had to do in the name of his country) that recluctantly accepts, telling himself the old whopper “if I don’t go they will send someone worse”. Oh and he’s also an anthropologist – the perfect cover, kinda. Holliwell is your standard white American protagonist in that he really wants to be good and yet can never really make the personal sacrifices needed for true goodness (see Frank Bascombe, Rabbit Angstrom –although a debate could be made about whether Rabbit wanted to be good or just wanted people to think he was – and every DFW character minus Mario Incandenza (I would try and make a point about DFW characters regarding perceptive vs. true goodness but that is a thicket I will not enter.)) Holliwell flails around Tecan (our fictional Nicaragua) - drinking to excess (obviously) and making overall poor life choices. Our last corner in this square of human squalor is Pablo Tabor (named after a 15th cent. Heretical movement in the city of Tabor, Bohemia – Stone really pushes the outsider religion theme, or rather finding your own strain of religion and refusing to yield). When we meet Pablo he proceeds to: a) get high on uppers, b) shoot his two dogs as they were “fucking with his head” and c) nearly kill the mother of his child. So yeah, Pablo is so mentally frayed he’s almost not worth the effort of figuring out, even on a literary level. But, I think the point is that Pablo’s impulse is the same as Holliwell’s and Justin’s – all three yearn to prove a meaning to their existence. The difference is Pablo’s frayed faculties make that yearning dangerous and inchoate. Most characters in the novel think Pablo – a mistake some pay for.
The novel’s title comes from an Emily Dickenson poem; a splendid little piece of literary craftsmanship that combines a desire for a man/wedding with a desire for God/re-birth. This all wrapped in the temporal movement from midnight to daybreak and the spatial movement from West to East. The idea being a rebirth at sunrise (rising in the east at daybreak). Yet the metaphorical imagery can also be a rebirth through Christ (the Bridegroom), and Dickenson, being the wondrous poet that she is, also hints at death preceding the re-birth – with “Angels bustling in the Hall” as “my Future climbs the Stairs”. And at the end when the savior comes she has seen his face – many times actually – when the sun was miraculously reborn every morning. The author takes these same themes and expands them into a larger idea of re-birth through surrender to a larger meaning, yet in Tecan sometimes meaning can only come through sacrifice or death, as each character realizes in her own way. Justin even says “Behold the handmaid of the Lord” in an intense moment of delirium, signaling her deference to her ultimate meaning. This is a mirroring of the Dickinson line “At Midnight, I am but a maid”. The poem continues on, “How short it takes to make a Bride/Then – Midnight, I have passed from thee/ Unto the East, and Victory – “. Using the poem as a key, Justin will transform from ‘handmaid of the lord’ to a bride, just as the day shall pass from midnight to daybreak, and in the east will be re-birth and victory, will be the flag for sunrise.
February 16, 2009
Just re-read this because I assigned it to a freshman literature class with a varying degree of success. I'm not sure anyone loved it, many of them were interested in it, even if it took them a long time to read. For all its knife-wielding drug runners and revolutionaries and reactionary counter-revolutionaries, it's a book that pivots on the questions of faith; not only whether a character has faith (or even if that has any meaning in the world as presented), but how that faith plays out on the narrative. Is this Stone's best book? Maybe. I'd put it above Dog Soldiers just a hair (by general literary community consensus, I'd think, Dog Soldiers remains his 'best' book) and I have a genuine fondness for Outerbridge Reach, which holds up from beginning to end, is more elegantly structured than "Flag" (which has a narrative that feels like 3/4s setup and 1/4 payoff, it's not classically balanced) and feels more mature (for lack of a better word) than Dog Soldiers.
June 3, 2009
This was my fourth attempt to get into this book. My earlier readings were always disrupted by the arch tone of the novel, the dense and (seemingly) over-the-top sentences that one finds in most of Robert Stone's work. Such writing is so out of favor in the contemporary workshop environment of contemporary fiction, that it struck me as old fashioned and even silly. This time, because the subject so closely connects with my current work, I pushed through and soon found that I love this book, that its dense, swirling wildness is not foolish, but in fact an attempt to grasp the violence and chaos of experience in a war-torn third world nation. The novel doesn't reach the dizzying heights of novels like Moby Dick, but it is aiming for them and this is something to admire, appreciate and experience.
January 27, 2015
A dark book of ideas and political intrigue that will kick you in the head, and keep kicking, never stopping until the sun rises over the Caribbean on the book's last page. As a critical picture of American interference in the affairs of other countries, it compares well with The Quiet American. That's not to say it's perfect or entirely original. You will hear clearly the voices of Dostoevsky (deep psychology of evil), Melville (an inversion of Billy Budd, Sailor), and Conrad—particularly Conrad—as Stone weaves his violent tale of good and bad in a small Central American dictatorship. More than anything, it is a retelling of Heart of Darkness, informed by the new evils that have entered the world and the hearts of men thanks to the major wars of the twentieth century; it's sobering to realize that Conrad did not have access to the atrocity of the Vietnam War, for example, and the two world wars, when he wrote his supreme book of colonial racism and cultural misunderstanding.
Yet, I'm conflicted about the book. Like many authors, Grahme Greene foremost among them, he builds up suspense with intelligent, rational characters—most of whom drink excessively—then brings in Religion to judge those characters. For me, it's an easy cop-out, a vast tumbling down of everything at the end as God himself philosophically invades the plot and forces to characters to either submit, and become heroes, or resist and die. Almost a deus ex machina, the plot resolution comes across as a forceful imposition of the author's beliefs. Or, more to the point, he assumes the reader is on-board with him, and naturally will agree, thus automatically feeling the novel's tragedy. This is exactly Greene's strategy for many of his books.
Stone fills the novel with most of the types you would expect: spies, drinking business men, banana republic military, missionaries, clueless American tourists, and more. The characterization of Pablo Tabor, a young half-white, half-Latino Coast Guard deserter, deliciously, malignantly evil, is masterful: I admit to no small measure of attraction to him. My favorite character was Patrick Ventura, a throwaway "catamite" who seems to exist only to highlight the moral degeneration of the Central American intellectual elite. Even more contrary, I had no liking for the intended heroes of the novel, those missionaries who unwisely got mixed up in local politics and paid the price.
Given my absurd reading of Stone's characters, the opposite of what he intended surely, I am perhaps not the target audience for this really quite good book.
Yet, I'm conflicted about the book. Like many authors, Grahme Greene foremost among them, he builds up suspense with intelligent, rational characters—most of whom drink excessively—then brings in Religion to judge those characters. For me, it's an easy cop-out, a vast tumbling down of everything at the end as God himself philosophically invades the plot and forces to characters to either submit, and become heroes, or resist and die. Almost a deus ex machina, the plot resolution comes across as a forceful imposition of the author's beliefs. Or, more to the point, he assumes the reader is on-board with him, and naturally will agree, thus automatically feeling the novel's tragedy. This is exactly Greene's strategy for many of his books.
Stone fills the novel with most of the types you would expect: spies, drinking business men, banana republic military, missionaries, clueless American tourists, and more. The characterization of Pablo Tabor, a young half-white, half-Latino Coast Guard deserter, deliciously, malignantly evil, is masterful: I admit to no small measure of attraction to him. My favorite character was Patrick Ventura, a throwaway "catamite" who seems to exist only to highlight the moral degeneration of the Central American intellectual elite. Even more contrary, I had no liking for the intended heroes of the novel, those missionaries who unwisely got mixed up in local politics and paid the price.
Given my absurd reading of Stone's characters, the opposite of what he intended surely, I am perhaps not the target audience for this really quite good book.
December 14, 2011
When I started college, I thought I was going to major in "International Studies" or "International Relations" or some such; I could speak French and Spanish and planned to "pick up" other languages (ah, the arrogance!), and basically become, maybe not necessarily a "spook," but someone who worked in many different countries and would be at home in any of them. Not once did I consider the possibility that maybe I would feel at home in none of them. And now, having read stuff like Greene's The Comedians, or The Quiet American, or, now, A Flag for Sunrise, I feel lucky about my little bureaucratic twist of fate (I didn't make it into the gateway course, which picked its students by lottery).
Stone's main characters, like Greene's, can be world-weary, sophisticated, and oddly ineffectual, like Holliwell or Mr. Brown. Or, they can be dangerously idealistic and ill-informed, like Sister Justin Feeney or Alden Pyle. Either way, they're not too sympathetic. And these characters are easily the biggest strength of A Flag for Sunrise. I felt the same way about Hicks and Converse in Dog Soldiers; that they were fully realized and quite interesting. But as it turns out, Dog Soldiers and A Flag for Sunrise share all the same flaws, but A Flag for Sunrise is longer, with a larger cast, which magnifies the flaws:
(1) Too much buildup. All the characters have their own philosophical axes to grind, and they spend 250 torturous pages doing so before much of anything actually happens.
(2) Too little dramatized action. Not that I categorically hate philosophical novels with lots of talking, but that's not really what this is supposed to be, at least not entirely. From the back: "The country is Tecan, an ancient, complex society about to explode--swarming with homegrown terrorists, revolutionaries, and counter-revolutionaries, as well as American spooks and intriguers from abroad." From that, you'd expect some really interesting action-y stuff. But no. Most of it happens off-screen (off-page? I have no good way to say this). We're informed that a certain character has died, usually far after the fact. We never really see any revolutionaries, although we do see some counter-revolutionaries. And the real spooks in the novel are pretty minor characters. The realization of (2) made me feel very disappointed, and also shallowly ashamed of my disappointment.
(3) Excess preachiness. There are a lot of ways you can try to divide entertainment-style fiction and literature-style fiction, and none of them are particularly good, although some of them are fun. One is to say that literature-style fiction is the sort of fiction with a moral or message, the sort where the author himself has a philosophical axe to grind. I'm not precisely sure what Stone's is, other than general disillusionment with American interference in foreign affairs, but we hear most of the main characters spout variations on this theme for the aforementioned first 250 pages of the book, and then sporadically from then on. Really, Mr. Stone, give it a rest.
Stone's main characters, like Greene's, can be world-weary, sophisticated, and oddly ineffectual, like Holliwell or Mr. Brown. Or, they can be dangerously idealistic and ill-informed, like Sister Justin Feeney or Alden Pyle. Either way, they're not too sympathetic. And these characters are easily the biggest strength of A Flag for Sunrise. I felt the same way about Hicks and Converse in Dog Soldiers; that they were fully realized and quite interesting. But as it turns out, Dog Soldiers and A Flag for Sunrise share all the same flaws, but A Flag for Sunrise is longer, with a larger cast, which magnifies the flaws:
(1) Too much buildup. All the characters have their own philosophical axes to grind, and they spend 250 torturous pages doing so before much of anything actually happens.
(2) Too little dramatized action. Not that I categorically hate philosophical novels with lots of talking, but that's not really what this is supposed to be, at least not entirely. From the back: "The country is Tecan, an ancient, complex society about to explode--swarming with homegrown terrorists, revolutionaries, and counter-revolutionaries, as well as American spooks and intriguers from abroad." From that, you'd expect some really interesting action-y stuff. But no. Most of it happens off-screen (off-page? I have no good way to say this). We're informed that a certain character has died, usually far after the fact. We never really see any revolutionaries, although we do see some counter-revolutionaries. And the real spooks in the novel are pretty minor characters. The realization of (2) made me feel very disappointed, and also shallowly ashamed of my disappointment.
(3) Excess preachiness. There are a lot of ways you can try to divide entertainment-style fiction and literature-style fiction, and none of them are particularly good, although some of them are fun. One is to say that literature-style fiction is the sort of fiction with a moral or message, the sort where the author himself has a philosophical axe to grind. I'm not precisely sure what Stone's is, other than general disillusionment with American interference in foreign affairs, but we hear most of the main characters spout variations on this theme for the aforementioned first 250 pages of the book, and then sporadically from then on. Really, Mr. Stone, give it a rest.
December 22, 2021
Compelling, perfectly written, and bleak. I mean...bleak.
January 18, 2024
we're all the joke
June 5, 2024
Magnificent…
Read
November 20, 2019[From an NPR ALL THINGS CONSIDERED segment entitled "You Must Read This" September 2011)
In 1985, when I was in the midst of a 12-year struggle to write my first novel, I had the good fortune to be invited to the Edna St. Vincent Millay Colony in Austerlitz, N.Y., for a monthlong residency. There, in the colony's curved-roof barn, I happened to pick up a paperback copy of Robert Stone's 1981 novel, A FLAG FOR SUNRISE.
I had not yet heard of Robert Stone, but the precision of his language hooked me from the book's first sentence. It introduces us to a missionary priest at a bleak outpost in Tecan, a fictional Central American nation on the verge of a revolutionary uprising. Stone begins the story with this: "Father Egan left off writing, rose from his chair and made his way — a little unsteadily — to the bottle of Flor de Cana which he had placed across the room from his desk."
That line drew me into a world of treachery and faith, and the book became for me, in those four weeks and afterward, a master class on the art of making a novel.
Since then, I've read A FLAG FOR SUNRISE at least five times, taught it in college courses, and recommended it to countless friends and conference-goers. It has everything I care about in a novel: fresh, gorgeous prose; a vivid setting; an array of original characters.
But what matters most to me is the way Stone manages to weave big ideas seamlessly into his story — ideas about politics and religion and history and addiction; about that old, good thing, the meaning of life.
In the midst of Tecan's political upheaval, its fictional people struggle to find that meaning, or abandon the struggle and indulge their basest instincts.
The radical nun turns out to have a saintly compassion for the oppressed, while the Guardia officer — who suspects her, lusts after her, and ultimately takes her to the torture cells — displays an almost pure evil. But they and the cast of characters that lie between these two on the moral spectrum — an alienated American anthropologist, a fervent revolutionary, a soulless arms dealer, a treacherous businessman and spy, a lascivious yachtswoman — are beautifully crafted.
The book, a kind of literary velvet, has both weight and texture, exactly what I was trying for in those early days, and what I'm still working toward — in Stone's shadow — 10 novels later.
I'm a fan of all Robert Stone's work, but A FLAG FOR SUNRISE stands tallest on the shelf for me. I still go back to it at times when I want to re-experience the power created by a combination of elegant prose and a profound consideration of the human predicament.
Perhaps my favorite line in all of literature comes when Father Egan is asked why he's stopped saying his daily office. "I consider it wrongly written down," says the hard-drinking priest.
First line to last, I consider A FLAG FOR SUNRISE correctly written down, a masterful literary thriller that helps us appreciate the moral complexity that is the living of a human life.
In 1985, when I was in the midst of a 12-year struggle to write my first novel, I had the good fortune to be invited to the Edna St. Vincent Millay Colony in Austerlitz, N.Y., for a monthlong residency. There, in the colony's curved-roof barn, I happened to pick up a paperback copy of Robert Stone's 1981 novel, A FLAG FOR SUNRISE.
I had not yet heard of Robert Stone, but the precision of his language hooked me from the book's first sentence. It introduces us to a missionary priest at a bleak outpost in Tecan, a fictional Central American nation on the verge of a revolutionary uprising. Stone begins the story with this: "Father Egan left off writing, rose from his chair and made his way — a little unsteadily — to the bottle of Flor de Cana which he had placed across the room from his desk."
That line drew me into a world of treachery and faith, and the book became for me, in those four weeks and afterward, a master class on the art of making a novel.
Since then, I've read A FLAG FOR SUNRISE at least five times, taught it in college courses, and recommended it to countless friends and conference-goers. It has everything I care about in a novel: fresh, gorgeous prose; a vivid setting; an array of original characters.
But what matters most to me is the way Stone manages to weave big ideas seamlessly into his story — ideas about politics and religion and history and addiction; about that old, good thing, the meaning of life.
In the midst of Tecan's political upheaval, its fictional people struggle to find that meaning, or abandon the struggle and indulge their basest instincts.
The radical nun turns out to have a saintly compassion for the oppressed, while the Guardia officer — who suspects her, lusts after her, and ultimately takes her to the torture cells — displays an almost pure evil. But they and the cast of characters that lie between these two on the moral spectrum — an alienated American anthropologist, a fervent revolutionary, a soulless arms dealer, a treacherous businessman and spy, a lascivious yachtswoman — are beautifully crafted.
The book, a kind of literary velvet, has both weight and texture, exactly what I was trying for in those early days, and what I'm still working toward — in Stone's shadow — 10 novels later.
I'm a fan of all Robert Stone's work, but A FLAG FOR SUNRISE stands tallest on the shelf for me. I still go back to it at times when I want to re-experience the power created by a combination of elegant prose and a profound consideration of the human predicament.
Perhaps my favorite line in all of literature comes when Father Egan is asked why he's stopped saying his daily office. "I consider it wrongly written down," says the hard-drinking priest.
First line to last, I consider A FLAG FOR SUNRISE correctly written down, a masterful literary thriller that helps us appreciate the moral complexity that is the living of a human life.
February 10, 2015
I originally picked up Robert Stone's 1981 novel A Flag For Sunrise, because I enjoyed his first novel, 1975's Dog Soldiers-a haunting novel about a Vietnam vet caught in a drug deal that goes bad. I decided to read it as an homage to the author when I learned that Stone died in January of 2015. This one was equally promising-a political thriller set in Central America. Stone has set the story in a fictional country called Tecan and alternates narration from a compelling and colorful cast of characters. These characters are: Frank Holiwell, Vietnam vet, anthropologist and spook seemingly with his heart in the right place, Father Egan, a spiritually lost whiskey priest, Justin Feeney, a radical nun who has lost her faith, Pablo Tabor, a psychopathic Coast Guard AWOL speed freak, and to add some color there's gun runners, a child serial killer, and a sadistic policeman among many others. All of these characters seem damaged, adrift and headed toward destruction as if by their own devices. Since this novel is so obviously born from the policies of the US in the 1980s I am reminded of the novels set in Central America by Joan Didion and stories set there by Deborah Einstein. However, I can also see where others see similarities between Stone and Graham Greene and Joseph Conrad. The thrilling plot is often slowed down by the philosophical musing of various characters that gives the book added depth. it is a truthful portrayal of another baffling era of American intervention in another third world country.
July 21, 2007
Bloated scenes and characters lecturing each other. Very disappointing.
January 20, 2024
A very good book by a very talented author.
And yet at times it was a slog. A chore. Real work.
Stone’s writing is so creative and unique. I love his word choice (and thanks to my kindles dictionary function I can understand it too) and the way it fits into description. He plays with words to convey meaning and most of it lands, but my troubles are when it doesn’t.
A lot of Stone’s prose just doesn’t make sense to me. It could be I’m too young, missing references that others wouldn’t, but when this happened I’d spend so much time backtracking just to still miss the point. The clearest case is the later chapters of the Priest with his flock and his campfire sermons—whole mini chapters flew right over my head because they were too esoteric.
A positive point are his characters; everyone is immoral, dirty, drunk, and strung out. He writes desperation and the fall to insanity well, just like in *Dog Soldiers*. Whether they’re on speed, narcotics, or just boozing, Stone’s characters don’t just take drugs, they live lives of addiction and withdrawal.
Stone is lauded as one of the great American authors and I can see why, but I don’t think I’ll put myself through the chore of reading his work again anytime soon.
And yet at times it was a slog. A chore. Real work.
Stone’s writing is so creative and unique. I love his word choice (and thanks to my kindles dictionary function I can understand it too) and the way it fits into description. He plays with words to convey meaning and most of it lands, but my troubles are when it doesn’t.
A lot of Stone’s prose just doesn’t make sense to me. It could be I’m too young, missing references that others wouldn’t, but when this happened I’d spend so much time backtracking just to still miss the point. The clearest case is the later chapters of the Priest with his flock and his campfire sermons—whole mini chapters flew right over my head because they were too esoteric.
A positive point are his characters; everyone is immoral, dirty, drunk, and strung out. He writes desperation and the fall to insanity well, just like in *Dog Soldiers*. Whether they’re on speed, narcotics, or just boozing, Stone’s characters don’t just take drugs, they live lives of addiction and withdrawal.
Stone is lauded as one of the great American authors and I can see why, but I don’t think I’ll put myself through the chore of reading his work again anytime soon.
October 18, 2021
An epic masterpiece. One of the grand reading experiences of my life. There can be no question that Robert Stone is one of the finest writers the world has produced in the last 100 years. "Page-turner" doesn't even begin to describe it. An important novel with massive geopolitical and human implications. No one can touch this guy. Holy shit.
May 2, 2024
I've been a little stuck writing a review for this title that I read almost two months ago. Although, until now, I've only read one of his books since I was an undergraduate (the superb memoir Prime Green), I have long regarded Robert Stone with something resembling reverence. I was a big fan (latter day - I was two in 1966 when it was published) of his first novel, A Hall of Mirrors, like so many stars in my personal firmament, a
Catalog of Cool
recommendation. The Vietnam War-themed follow-up, Dog Soldiers, remains one of my all-time favorite books. Because I'm a painfully slow reader, I don't generally re-read books - I just can't spare the time. I've been known to obsessively revisit movies, though and I've watched WUSA and Who'll Stop the Rain, the respective film versions of those novels, more times than I care to count. All of this is to say that I approached reading A Flag for Sunrise, a first edition of which has been sitting on my bookshelf for thirty years, with a little trepidation.
I needn't've worried. Most of Stone's novels are very much in the Joseph Conrad/Graham Greene mode, political thrillers with pretensions to literary quality,. In fact, while I have not read aNostromo, it is my understanding that A Flag for Sunrise is a direct homage. Published in 1981, when the U.S. was waist deep in the Big Muddy of Central American insurrection and regime change, it is set in the fictional nation of Tecan, a thinly-veiled simulacrum of El Salvador, and it traces the intersecting fates of three Americans who become involved on both sides of a nascent revolution: a lefty nun, a petty criminal Coast Guard deserter, and an anthropology professor who dabbles in agency-adjacent intelligence "favors" as ancillaries to his fieldwork.
Sentence by sentence, Stone is a superb, highly quotable stylist. Enjoying this book, I had the self-satisfaction of reading "literature," but without the confusion and arty longeurs that that sort of choice frequently entails. There was not a single impenetrably vague and significant sentence of the sort that Denis Johnson was so fond of in Tree of Smoke, a book which tried really hard to be a Robert Stone novel but couldn't pull it off. I was a little surprised at how very Catholic this book is, or, maybe, more accurately, it made me wonder if I had missed an important element of the other books. I'm not Catholic, but, in my twenties, when my Stone-fan identity was formed, I professed, among many similar intellectual affectations, a keen enthusiasm for gloomy Catholic fiction, so how could I have missed Stone's mile-wide, God-haunted streak?
Excellent. I should not have stayed away so long.
I needn't've worried. Most of Stone's novels are very much in the Joseph Conrad/Graham Greene mode, political thrillers with pretensions to literary quality,. In fact, while I have not read aNostromo, it is my understanding that A Flag for Sunrise is a direct homage. Published in 1981, when the U.S. was waist deep in the Big Muddy of Central American insurrection and regime change, it is set in the fictional nation of Tecan, a thinly-veiled simulacrum of El Salvador, and it traces the intersecting fates of three Americans who become involved on both sides of a nascent revolution: a lefty nun, a petty criminal Coast Guard deserter, and an anthropology professor who dabbles in agency-adjacent intelligence "favors" as ancillaries to his fieldwork.
Sentence by sentence, Stone is a superb, highly quotable stylist. Enjoying this book, I had the self-satisfaction of reading "literature," but without the confusion and arty longeurs that that sort of choice frequently entails. There was not a single impenetrably vague and significant sentence of the sort that Denis Johnson was so fond of in Tree of Smoke, a book which tried really hard to be a Robert Stone novel but couldn't pull it off. I was a little surprised at how very Catholic this book is, or, maybe, more accurately, it made me wonder if I had missed an important element of the other books. I'm not Catholic, but, in my twenties, when my Stone-fan identity was formed, I professed, among many similar intellectual affectations, a keen enthusiasm for gloomy Catholic fiction, so how could I have missed Stone's mile-wide, God-haunted streak?
Excellent. I should not have stayed away so long.
March 24, 2013
Robert Stone is the author of "Outerbridge Reach" -- a superbly probing psychological novel of three interacting characters (two men and one woman,) based on the background to and carry through of a single-handed round-the-world yachting race. The people involved are imagined vividly, the plot is taut and unpredictable and the focus of the book is credible and sharp, even as it raises fundamental human questions and dilemmas. It is an excellent novel, that I rate very highly.
So I expected "A Flag for Sunrise" to be similar, not necessarily as good, but very strong. Instead I found it a major disappointment. The plot centres around the move toward revolution in a Central American country, and it becomes quite compelling in the second half of this book. But the characters in this novel are cliches, caricatures made of cardboard, rather than the nuanced personalities of "Outerbridge Reach." Frank Holliwell is a disappointed idealist and recreational alcoholic haunted by Vietnam. Father Egan is an even more alcoholic priest, half-deranged. Justin Feeney is a young nun shifting her love of Jesus to love of a revolutionary. And Pablo Tabor is a drug-addled paranoid.
These extreme characters inevitably collide, amid a brutal series of murders and torture scenes that, again, are a long way from the subtle conflicts of "Outerbridge Reach."
"A Flag for Sunrise" did keep me reading -- but in the end it was only partly to find out how the plot would finish -- it was also to finish as quickly as I could with such an unconvincing group of over-the-top characters.
So I expected "A Flag for Sunrise" to be similar, not necessarily as good, but very strong. Instead I found it a major disappointment. The plot centres around the move toward revolution in a Central American country, and it becomes quite compelling in the second half of this book. But the characters in this novel are cliches, caricatures made of cardboard, rather than the nuanced personalities of "Outerbridge Reach." Frank Holliwell is a disappointed idealist and recreational alcoholic haunted by Vietnam. Father Egan is an even more alcoholic priest, half-deranged. Justin Feeney is a young nun shifting her love of Jesus to love of a revolutionary. And Pablo Tabor is a drug-addled paranoid.
These extreme characters inevitably collide, amid a brutal series of murders and torture scenes that, again, are a long way from the subtle conflicts of "Outerbridge Reach."
"A Flag for Sunrise" did keep me reading -- but in the end it was only partly to find out how the plot would finish -- it was also to finish as quickly as I could with such an unconvincing group of over-the-top characters.
December 29, 2015
Stone is a very good conventional novelist, according to some very old conventions: pre-Hemingway, Faulkner or Dos Passos, inter alia. Vocabulary is excessive and too flowery for Hemingway, psychology too primitive for Faulkner, narrative too linear for Dos Passos. Plot stars Frank Holliwell, middle-aged, tall, athletic, an alcoholic with a sinister past with the CIA in Vietnam, married to an independent professional whom he appears to love and is now a professor anthropology in Delaware, also with mysterious past (CIA? anthropological? both?) in Central America. Holliwell is an implausible concoction, a mix of James Bond, Leamus & Walter Mitty (or Miniver Cheevy). Somehow they find themselves in a country like Nicaragua, where there's a mystic, 60-ish alcoholic priest, and a bewitchingly innocent nun who -- most implausibly -- lets herself get fucked by the ridiculously incompetent Holliwell. Pablo Tabor, paranoid speed freak, is a delicious character — unreal as a whole, but with believable episodes. This is because his language (in speech and thought) is recognizable & authentic. Other characters (there are many) are much less successful. Politics: a pox on both your houses, but with more sympathy for the ever-doomed and ever-naive rebels against the tyrants who run this mythical country. (Review written in 1986)
January 24, 2015
I happened to be reading this when Stone died. I started it before a trip to Nicaragua and finished it up afterwards. The book is set in the late-'70s in Tecan, a mythical Central American country somewhat analogous to Guatemala or El Salvador. Revolution is brewing, the CIA is nosing around, and the country is a magnet for lost souls, deluded do-gooders, and opportunists out to make a quick buck off the turmoil. Oh, and a couple of grade-A psychopaths. Stone follows an anthropologist being pressured to work for the CIA, a nun sympathetic to the rebels' cause, a drunken priest questioning his faith, and a Coast Guard deserter who ends up crewing on a boat carrying mysterious cargo. My favorite sections of the book were those dealing with the deadly misadventures of this deserter, Pablo, but all of the characters and their musings held my attention, and I feel a real sense of tension as the narrative ramped up in the final third of the book. It's like a Graham Greene thriller on acid with a shot of good old American outlaw nihilism. Quotable quotes throughout, as these characters ponder their purposes, destinies, and belief in God, and come up with....nothing.
May 4, 2020
Flag of Sunrise is set “on the far frontiers of the Monroe Doctrine,” to steal a phrase from Joan Didion. During the Iran-Contra hearings a few years later, America would get a brief whiff through the manhole covers of what was going on down in the labyrinthine sewers where Stone leads his characters and readers. The literary evolution that brought this to us is: Herman Melville ⇢ Joseph Conrad ⇢ Graham Greene ⇢ Robert Stone.
Pull quote: "The truth was a fine thing, but it had to be its own reward."
I’m enjoying this along with his excellent new book of nonfiction pieces The Eye You See With: Selected Nonfiction and the new bio by novelist Madison Smartt Bell, Child of Light: A Biography of Robert Stone
Pull quote: "The truth was a fine thing, but it had to be its own reward."
I’m enjoying this along with his excellent new book of nonfiction pieces The Eye You See With: Selected Nonfiction and the new bio by novelist Madison Smartt Bell, Child of Light: A Biography of Robert Stone
August 20, 2009
I listened to the audio.com version that is brilliantly narrated by Stephen Lang (Swarthmore graduate with my husband). The novel takes a very philosophical stance regarding Americans that are out of place in places that are out of the way. Set in a banana republic on the verge of a coup, it explores reasons why outside actors interfere in foreign politics. Many of the characters are continuing the interference from their time in Vietnam.
It is very well written and certainly deserving of the National Book Award. Not an easy read (listen), but I can't stress how incredible Lang's reading is.
It is very well written and certainly deserving of the National Book Award. Not an easy read (listen), but I can't stress how incredible Lang's reading is.
October 29, 2020
I liked this novel but did not quite love it as I wanted to, which is the same way I felt after reading Stone's Dog Soldiers. I felt that there was something just a little too unwieldy about combining a re-imagining of Conrad's Nostromo with the story of a psycho drifter/mercenary. And yet sometimes Stone hits it absolutely on the nose:
"We do your dirty work here, gringo. When you go through attacks of cowardice and remorse, it's we who pay, not you. One day if you keep up this way your enemies will put your entire fatuous country to sleep and there won't be many tears, believe me."
September 16, 2017
Well, I found the POV characters in this book utterly unlikeable, and I would have rated this book as 2 stars were it not for this line: "There is a creature in another dimension whose jewelry is dead worlds. When this creature requires more of them, it plants the seed of life on a tiny planet. After a while there are people and then nothing—a patina.” I reread this line several times and found it so thought provoking that I added another star to the book.
October 4, 2022
It went on too long and got more and more depressing, and I didn't identify with any of the characters' motivations, with some I didn't even know if they had motivations, until it all got very irritating, and I was glad when it finished. That cover picture, that was me.
December 20, 2020
Robert Stone first impressed me in 1976, when I read Dog Soldiers, the story of a pair of inept schemers who are in over their heads when they try to smuggle heroin into the US (from Vietnam). What hangs over that novel is the taint of a bad war, which leaches venality and corruption into its characters, even as they try to stay clear of politics. Corruption leads to paranoia, which leads to violence. Through a variety of characters, Stone traces different half-baked illusions about the zeitgeist, and the novel lays to rest day-glo flower-power innocence.
A few years back, I re-read Dog Soldiers, then picked up his first novel, A Hall of Mirrors. It too was saturated with an oozing paranoia that ends by shattering into incoherence the protagonist’s notions of self, power, and politics. What Stone did well in both these early novels was submerge his characters deeply into states of being that correspond to the queasy events around them. Stone engages in a reversal of pathetic fallacy, attributing to his characters states of mind that embody aspects of the imminent violence which will surround them. Or, put another way, Stone intentionally limns everything through a dark and oppressive filter, much in the way the noir novel/movie keeps everything in shadow.
In similar fashion, Stone creates in A Flag for Sunrise an atmosphere of almost claustrophobic dread, imbuing his several disparate characters with uneasy, on-edge thoughts and feelings. As these characters wend their separate ways to converge on the Central American republic of Tecan (Nicaragua?), all of them are in their bones aware that something awful awaits them. Stone has Tecan stand in for all of the countries whose governments the US (and other first-world nations) support, but especially venal is the transformation of the country into a tourist destination, one that presents an opulent face to the world while its citizens are left in poverty.
Frank Holliwell, an academic making his way to Compestola, is twice beseeched—by a CIA operative and by a Compestolan colleague—to do reconnaissance in Tecan. Each request revives bitter memories of the futility of his “analysis” in Vietnam. Sister Justin Feeney, a dispirited sister at a small nursing mission outside the capital of Tecan, is covertly enjoined to assist in an uprising, and she is so desperately aimless that she agrees to participate. Pablo Tabor, AWOL from the US Coast Guard, kills his two dogs and runs out on his wife and son, willing to do anything to feel himself alive.
In the background are other instances of the darkness that envelopes this tainted paradise. Bedraggled hippies are pursued and tormented by the Tecanan police. Father Egan must, in order to protect Sister Justin from Lieutenant Campos, dispose of the body of a woman he’s killed. Outside the capital of Tecan, in the vicinity of Sister Justin’s mission, an unhinged Austrian Mennonite is killing children. Bob Cole, an American journalist whom Holliwell has met, is intent on serving the rebels, but Holliwell later hears that the rebels could only perceive him as an infiltrator and killed him. Paranoia and too many amphetamines drive Tabor to kill the group of gun runners he is working with.
The revolution is short lived and Sister Justin is tortured and killed by Lieutenant Campos. Holliwell is perceived to be working with the rebels, and the American and English who control the nation’s security as a money-making asset, attempt to capture him. Holliwell and Tabor flee together in a small boat, but before they reach land or safety, Holliwell kills Tabor. Lieutenant Campos, aghast that Justin has died with a blessing on her lips, comes in desperation to Father Egan for absolution.
Stone has contrived to give his story multiple facets, and he brings all his characters together in a momentous climax. But rather than resolve everything, the denouement reveals everything is still muddled, the only thing clear the intractable truth that first-world nations exploit third-world nations. …And that the citizens of those first-world nations avert their eyes.
A few years back, I re-read Dog Soldiers, then picked up his first novel, A Hall of Mirrors. It too was saturated with an oozing paranoia that ends by shattering into incoherence the protagonist’s notions of self, power, and politics. What Stone did well in both these early novels was submerge his characters deeply into states of being that correspond to the queasy events around them. Stone engages in a reversal of pathetic fallacy, attributing to his characters states of mind that embody aspects of the imminent violence which will surround them. Or, put another way, Stone intentionally limns everything through a dark and oppressive filter, much in the way the noir novel/movie keeps everything in shadow.
In similar fashion, Stone creates in A Flag for Sunrise an atmosphere of almost claustrophobic dread, imbuing his several disparate characters with uneasy, on-edge thoughts and feelings. As these characters wend their separate ways to converge on the Central American republic of Tecan (Nicaragua?), all of them are in their bones aware that something awful awaits them. Stone has Tecan stand in for all of the countries whose governments the US (and other first-world nations) support, but especially venal is the transformation of the country into a tourist destination, one that presents an opulent face to the world while its citizens are left in poverty.
Frank Holliwell, an academic making his way to Compestola, is twice beseeched—by a CIA operative and by a Compestolan colleague—to do reconnaissance in Tecan. Each request revives bitter memories of the futility of his “analysis” in Vietnam. Sister Justin Feeney, a dispirited sister at a small nursing mission outside the capital of Tecan, is covertly enjoined to assist in an uprising, and she is so desperately aimless that she agrees to participate. Pablo Tabor, AWOL from the US Coast Guard, kills his two dogs and runs out on his wife and son, willing to do anything to feel himself alive.
In the background are other instances of the darkness that envelopes this tainted paradise. Bedraggled hippies are pursued and tormented by the Tecanan police. Father Egan must, in order to protect Sister Justin from Lieutenant Campos, dispose of the body of a woman he’s killed. Outside the capital of Tecan, in the vicinity of Sister Justin’s mission, an unhinged Austrian Mennonite is killing children. Bob Cole, an American journalist whom Holliwell has met, is intent on serving the rebels, but Holliwell later hears that the rebels could only perceive him as an infiltrator and killed him. Paranoia and too many amphetamines drive Tabor to kill the group of gun runners he is working with.
The revolution is short lived and Sister Justin is tortured and killed by Lieutenant Campos. Holliwell is perceived to be working with the rebels, and the American and English who control the nation’s security as a money-making asset, attempt to capture him. Holliwell and Tabor flee together in a small boat, but before they reach land or safety, Holliwell kills Tabor. Lieutenant Campos, aghast that Justin has died with a blessing on her lips, comes in desperation to Father Egan for absolution.
Stone has contrived to give his story multiple facets, and he brings all his characters together in a momentous climax. But rather than resolve everything, the denouement reveals everything is still muddled, the only thing clear the intractable truth that first-world nations exploit third-world nations. …And that the citizens of those first-world nations avert their eyes.
June 1, 2022
The swirling chaos and violence of human existence converges on a fictional Central American country preparing for revolution and four Americans who find themselves caught up in it. It's Robert Stone so it's propulsive, violent, readable thriller that has been made to serve as the framework for some beautiful reflections on the nature of existence. Sometimes he gets a little portentous with his quotations (a few of which he already used in Dog Soldiers) but if you're willing to put up with that this is a fantastic novel of the late Cold War and all its nastiness. His old hippie Zen reflections on the universe are beautiful and don't bog us down too much, and whenever you get fatigued you know that there's going to be some hideous violence around the corner.
The basic cast is: Father Egan, an alcoholic priest in Tecan (~Nicaragua), who has sort of lost his faith and is degenerating into serious alcoholism; May "Justin" Feeney, a nun working with Egan, a farm girl from Idaho drawn to the idealistic struggle for a better world; Pablo Tabor, a violent speedfreak and Coast Guard AWOL who kicks things off by killing his dogs and threatening his wife before eventually getting into gun-running; Frank Holliwell, an anthropologist dissatisfied with his life ever since he sold his soul to the CIA in Vietnam, invited to give lectures by a subversive friend in a neighboring country of Tecan who has been exiled from left-wing circles for being gay. All these characters encounter the violence and hypocrisy of the oppressive government of Tecan, as well as its bloodthirsty but just rebels. There's also a nasty Guardia lieutenant, a child-murdering Mennonite, an amoral British expat spy/cop/overseer, a suicidal/philosophical Mossad agent, and some party-hearty gunrunners in a sort of open marriage (kind of a theme for Stone if you count Converse in Dog Soldiers and his own somewhat unconventional personal life).
There's so much in this book that at times it threatens to become overstuffed, and most of the non-main characters are only afforded a handful of meaningful scenes. For example, Campos figures heavily at the beginning, but then he's sort of out of the picture for a while until the very end.
Stone suggests that the outcome of the revolution (which seems to initially fail before, based on Campos' appearance in the final scene, finally winning out) is less important than the personal revelations that take place in the hearts of the four primary characters. Justin finally finds her purpose and merges religion with revolutionary idealism while dying under torture at Campos' hands; Egan learns to observe his own decay as well as the futility of others as part of creation instead of the confusions of the Demiurge; Holliwell goes from academic to a blooded and bloody participant in history; Pablo learns to trust someone, just in time to be betrayed (also his cherished diamond was, judging by Holliwell's reaction, a fake the whole time, suggesting that the mindblowing suicide bed revelations of Naftali the Mossad agent were less than the genuine article).
I think that Dog Soldiers (which I just re-read before this) will remain my favorite, because it's nastier and weirder and tighter in a way, but there's just so much great writing in this book. I got some very Malickian meditations on the terrible nature of existence while reading. If that sounds awful...avoid. If you want a philosophical political thriller full of gnarly violence and reflections on the universe, read on.
The basic cast is: Father Egan, an alcoholic priest in Tecan (~Nicaragua), who has sort of lost his faith and is degenerating into serious alcoholism; May "Justin" Feeney, a nun working with Egan, a farm girl from Idaho drawn to the idealistic struggle for a better world; Pablo Tabor, a violent speedfreak and Coast Guard AWOL who kicks things off by killing his dogs and threatening his wife before eventually getting into gun-running; Frank Holliwell, an anthropologist dissatisfied with his life ever since he sold his soul to the CIA in Vietnam, invited to give lectures by a subversive friend in a neighboring country of Tecan who has been exiled from left-wing circles for being gay. All these characters encounter the violence and hypocrisy of the oppressive government of Tecan, as well as its bloodthirsty but just rebels. There's also a nasty Guardia lieutenant, a child-murdering Mennonite, an amoral British expat spy/cop/overseer, a suicidal/philosophical Mossad agent, and some party-hearty gunrunners in a sort of open marriage (kind of a theme for Stone if you count Converse in Dog Soldiers and his own somewhat unconventional personal life).
There's so much in this book that at times it threatens to become overstuffed, and most of the non-main characters are only afforded a handful of meaningful scenes. For example, Campos figures heavily at the beginning, but then he's sort of out of the picture for a while until the very end.
Stone suggests that the outcome of the revolution (which seems to initially fail before, based on Campos' appearance in the final scene, finally winning out) is less important than the personal revelations that take place in the hearts of the four primary characters. Justin finally finds her purpose and merges religion with revolutionary idealism while dying under torture at Campos' hands; Egan learns to observe his own decay as well as the futility of others as part of creation instead of the confusions of the Demiurge; Holliwell goes from academic to a blooded and bloody participant in history; Pablo learns to trust someone, just in time to be betrayed (also his cherished diamond was, judging by Holliwell's reaction, a fake the whole time, suggesting that the mindblowing suicide bed revelations of Naftali the Mossad agent were less than the genuine article).
I think that Dog Soldiers (which I just re-read before this) will remain my favorite, because it's nastier and weirder and tighter in a way, but there's just so much great writing in this book. I got some very Malickian meditations on the terrible nature of existence while reading. If that sounds awful...avoid. If you want a philosophical political thriller full of gnarly violence and reflections on the universe, read on.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 23, 2021
A review of republished novels by this USA writer led me to find the only copy in the stack of my municipal library and so I continue my reading to discover more American writers that I have not yet met in a lifetime of reading. One reason for my ignorance is that Stone was more published in the USSR than the USA so that gave me a significant clue about his chosen topic here, of a rebellion in a decadent, corrupt and poor central American republic which remains incognito under the name of Tecan, ‘a Caribbean place of failure’ and the state next to Compostella, which is only marginally better. Stone’s central character in a large cast, is an American professor of Anthropology, Frank Holliwell, an ex-Vietnam veteran who reluctantly accepts a speaking engagement in Tecan as a disguise for a spying mission for an unnamed organisation.
The scene is set at the Catholic mission where Justin a young nun and a registered nurse, serving the elderly whiskey priest Father Egan, is advised to prepare bandages and medicine for casualties from an insurrection led by Xavier Godoy, a young revolutionary priest, actively gathering forces in the mountains. The Vatican sends orders for the mission to be closed, leaving Sister Justin with the dilemma of one who is losing her faith in a God who does not care but is still driven by those moral beliefs that made her a nun.
Into this milieu, Stone throws Pablo, an ex-US coastguard sailor, high on Benzedrine who shoots his dogs, terrifying his girl friend and leaves her and his six year old son. He describes himself as the son of a whore and the father of a son with a whore and is anxious to pass for white. Ever confident on speed, Pablo seeks work and finds it on a powerboat, disguised as a shrimp trawler on which Americans Negus and Callahan and his wife sail to collect arms for onsale. Stone does not reveal whether the arms will go to the rebels or government.
Travelling to Tecan, Halliwell performs a drunken disaster lecture, noted by the government minister present but is saved by the US consul and his wife who also transport Bob Cole, another American anthropologist who sees through ‘the decorous European veneer’ of the capital to the filth and poverty and asks, ‘Do they live like this so that we can live like this?…Are we vampires?’.
After a series of disasters, Holliwell looks out at that ‘diorama of toil and poverty’ in his easy chair and ‘felt suitably guilty…The final emotion was self pity.’ Has Holliwell found his place, ‘alone and lost’?
After the slow build of characters, situations and tension, the plot moves with the force of a dumping wave. Guns, knives, drugs and deceit mentioned in act one, scene one, all explode in action that leads to a series of climaxes that physically shook me in my comfortable Western chair. One event describing a slow suicide through a drug is absolutely brilliantly written.
All post colonial novels owe something to Greene and Conrad or even LeCarre, who would never have included the whiskey priest, the doubting nun, the cynicism of commerce and tourism nor the mysticism felt by those in the jungle at the archeological temple sites. This is no ordinary spy or war story. Mr Kurtz may have died in the Heart of Darkness Africa but his spirit lives on in Central America in this significant novel.
The scene is set at the Catholic mission where Justin a young nun and a registered nurse, serving the elderly whiskey priest Father Egan, is advised to prepare bandages and medicine for casualties from an insurrection led by Xavier Godoy, a young revolutionary priest, actively gathering forces in the mountains. The Vatican sends orders for the mission to be closed, leaving Sister Justin with the dilemma of one who is losing her faith in a God who does not care but is still driven by those moral beliefs that made her a nun.
Into this milieu, Stone throws Pablo, an ex-US coastguard sailor, high on Benzedrine who shoots his dogs, terrifying his girl friend and leaves her and his six year old son. He describes himself as the son of a whore and the father of a son with a whore and is anxious to pass for white. Ever confident on speed, Pablo seeks work and finds it on a powerboat, disguised as a shrimp trawler on which Americans Negus and Callahan and his wife sail to collect arms for onsale. Stone does not reveal whether the arms will go to the rebels or government.
Travelling to Tecan, Halliwell performs a drunken disaster lecture, noted by the government minister present but is saved by the US consul and his wife who also transport Bob Cole, another American anthropologist who sees through ‘the decorous European veneer’ of the capital to the filth and poverty and asks, ‘Do they live like this so that we can live like this?…Are we vampires?’.
After a series of disasters, Holliwell looks out at that ‘diorama of toil and poverty’ in his easy chair and ‘felt suitably guilty…The final emotion was self pity.’ Has Holliwell found his place, ‘alone and lost’?
After the slow build of characters, situations and tension, the plot moves with the force of a dumping wave. Guns, knives, drugs and deceit mentioned in act one, scene one, all explode in action that leads to a series of climaxes that physically shook me in my comfortable Western chair. One event describing a slow suicide through a drug is absolutely brilliantly written.
All post colonial novels owe something to Greene and Conrad or even LeCarre, who would never have included the whiskey priest, the doubting nun, the cynicism of commerce and tourism nor the mysticism felt by those in the jungle at the archeological temple sites. This is no ordinary spy or war story. Mr Kurtz may have died in the Heart of Darkness Africa but his spirit lives on in Central America in this significant novel.
June 11, 2024
Stone is back with his classic 1980s novel. This was an era when the CIA was busy in Latin America with Banana Republics and puppet regimes. Bananas and American tourism were the main economic interests that Uncle Sam insisted on protecting south of the border, in addition to fighting the scourge of communism.
Stone is an ambitious writer. This novel has a complex setup with three central stories that eventually merge. Although the three story lines are set in the fictional Latin American country of Tecan, the pathway to the intersections meander and are held apart for much of the novel.
A young and attractive nun, Sister Justin, works under the charismatic and influential Father Egan who has become a power broker with the people of Tecan. Egan and Justin are sympathetic to the growing socialist movement that is gaining momentum and coordination. An professor of anthropology, Holliwell, is a CIA plant working to infiltrate and discover potential revolutionary activity. A speed freak, Coast Guard deserter from Miami, Pablo, is recruited by an affluent American couple, the Callahans, to smuggle arms to the socialist faction.
In terms of the plot, there are a number of threads. A serial killer of children is on the loose and Father Egan seems to know who the killer is. Pablo finds himself in a battle of wills with the Callahans as the mistrust between these parties grows to an untenable state. Holliwell becomes disillusioned with his mission to ferret out information for his CIA handlers. Sister Justin finds herself deepening her support for the socialist cause.
Theses various lines of action will culminate with deception, betrayal and violence. Though the characters are tough and often streetwise, they are no match for the faceless and relentless power represented by business interests, governmental politics and military might. The schemes, dreams, love and games of the diverse cast of characters are pawn movements that smash and destroy one another without materially changing the outcome of the game.
Stone is not an easy read. He absorbs massive historical, cultural and political abstractions from 1980s Latin American and develops a complex and raw set of characters to tell a story within that context. Readers who prefer a clear and purposeful plot with clear protagonists and an uplifting resolution need to look elsewhere. Those who are interested in a rich, though dark view of this period in the Americas will find Stone's observations and characters thought provoking and troubling.
Stone is an ambitious writer. This novel has a complex setup with three central stories that eventually merge. Although the three story lines are set in the fictional Latin American country of Tecan, the pathway to the intersections meander and are held apart for much of the novel.
A young and attractive nun, Sister Justin, works under the charismatic and influential Father Egan who has become a power broker with the people of Tecan. Egan and Justin are sympathetic to the growing socialist movement that is gaining momentum and coordination. An professor of anthropology, Holliwell, is a CIA plant working to infiltrate and discover potential revolutionary activity. A speed freak, Coast Guard deserter from Miami, Pablo, is recruited by an affluent American couple, the Callahans, to smuggle arms to the socialist faction.
In terms of the plot, there are a number of threads. A serial killer of children is on the loose and Father Egan seems to know who the killer is. Pablo finds himself in a battle of wills with the Callahans as the mistrust between these parties grows to an untenable state. Holliwell becomes disillusioned with his mission to ferret out information for his CIA handlers. Sister Justin finds herself deepening her support for the socialist cause.
Theses various lines of action will culminate with deception, betrayal and violence. Though the characters are tough and often streetwise, they are no match for the faceless and relentless power represented by business interests, governmental politics and military might. The schemes, dreams, love and games of the diverse cast of characters are pawn movements that smash and destroy one another without materially changing the outcome of the game.
Stone is not an easy read. He absorbs massive historical, cultural and political abstractions from 1980s Latin American and develops a complex and raw set of characters to tell a story within that context. Readers who prefer a clear and purposeful plot with clear protagonists and an uplifting resolution need to look elsewhere. Those who are interested in a rich, though dark view of this period in the Americas will find Stone's observations and characters thought provoking and troubling.
August 1, 2020
When I read Robert Stone I often stop and read passages aloud. Then I think that I wish more than anything in the world that I could write something as well. His books are pot boilers with aspirations to be movie scripts, but what else would a wise novelist write since the 1960s? This book follows a formula established by "Hall of Mirrors" to some extent, and "Dog Soldiers" absolutely. The protagonist has lost his bearings, and drifts into danger he cannot hope to handle because he can't see why his fate might matter. The characters he meets are fascinating, and inevitably a few of them are agents of doom with gifts for violence. The author's Catholic background informs everything he writes, though he does so as an agnostic. His political ideas are complex and well informed, and his conclusions pessimistic. His characters solace for the inability to cope is witty repartee, and Stone write dialogue as well as he writes everything. He writes like a despairing angel at his best. I'm only sure he hit his mark in several of his eight novels, but this is certainly one of them. For my money, this is his best.
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