January 1, 1999: Headlines: COS - Malaysia: Writing - Malaysia: Mockingbird: Paul Eggers served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Malaysia
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January 1, 1999: Headlines: COS - Malaysia: Writing - Malaysia: Mockingbird: Paul Eggers served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Malaysia
Paul Eggers served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Malaysia
Paul Eggers served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Malaysia
PAUL EGGERS
Fiction writer PAUL EGGERS holds a BA from the University of Washington, an MA from Penn State, and is a PhD candidate at the University of Nebraska — Lincoln. His work has appeared in Sonora Review, The Quarterly, The Washington Post, and elsewhere. Besides writing fiction, Eggers writes interviews, profiles, and political analyses for Inside Chess. He has also published poetry. His novel, Saviors, will is newly published by Harcourt Brace. He served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Malaysia (1976-78) and an Education Advisor for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Malaysia and the Phillipines. In 1997 he won the Merit Award from the Nebraska Arts Council's Individual Artists Fellowships program.
PAUL EGGERS'
SAVIORS
Reuben Gill's fondest wish is to be assigned by the UN High Commission on Refugees to Bidong, Malaysia, where he believes he can recapture his idyllic Peace Corps days. What he finds will change him forever. Written with energy and true wit, this is a novel about how difficult it is to save the world, about doing the right thing for the wrong reasons and the wrong thing for the right reasons. It's a novel about the impossibility — and the necessity — of hope. In the tradition of Joseph Heller's Catch 22, Saviors is a darkly comic look at good intentions gone awry. It's a funny, thoughtful novel of great power.
"Wow! What a debut! Eggers is a masterful writer, and this book positions him to join the ranks of Maugham and Forster and Conrad, Paul Theroux and Norman Rush. Saviors is as funny as Twain and as dark as Stone. I gulped it down, amazed by the deftness of Eggers' style. Saviors is an enormously accomplished and entertaining novel." — Bob Shacochis, author of Swimming in the Volcano
"Saviors is never anything but spirited, funny and, if such a word can be used, wise. It is a lovely book, keenly perceived, original, and wonderful to read." — Craig Nova, author of The Universal Donor
"This first novel is bleak but also steeped in black humor that is reminiscent of MASH." — Booklist
"Paul Eggers seems to have learned from someone that the novelist is allowed to think, so bravo! This is a serious, painful first novel by someone as daring as he is well-informed." — Paul West, author of Lord Byron's Doctor
MR THANH, ORIGINALLY OF SAIGON, conducted his camp-wide rat pogrom so thoroughly that the kids were reduced to throwing rocks at each other. Some boys got beaned, and Mr Thanh, the most responsible Viet I knew in the Bidong Island refugee camp, blamed himself and went around shelfter to shelter, apologizing to all their parents, more than twenty families. This was Mr Thanh's way. Before getting on a boat out of Vietnam, he had been a colonel with the South Vietnamese army. But even now, stateless and dependent, another Viet biding his time on Malaysian soil, he wore a dashing yellow scarf imprinted with the name of his old regiment.
I was the UN education adviser, the camp's English teacher. Mr Thanh was my regugee assistant. I had picked him out myself, struck by his earnestness, and would give him occasional gifts, whatever I could scrounge. Mr Thanh and I were two of a kind. I understood his need to be forgiven — he had let the camp down, he said — and I think I even understood the state of mind that made him, after a day of brush-offs from the boys' parents, walk into the island's Zone C school the next morning and root around the UN educational-supplies closet and, without asking permission, drag a filthy visual aid, a mannequin, down to the beach to wash clean. What I culd not do that morning was clear his supply-closet forway with the camp's Malaysian security fucks. Mr Thanh had acted on his own. If only I had known that he was going to take the mannequin, I could have stopped refugee-camp logic from taking over.
Reprinted with permission
from Saviors
Copyright © 1999
by Paul Eggers
Harcourt Brace
Selected Publications
of Paul Eggers
BOOKS
Saviors, Harcourt Brace, 1998
STORIES
"RPM," American Literary Review, Spring 1999
"Reuben Chained," William and Mary Review, Spring 1996
"Anything You Want, Please," Northwest Review, Winter 1996
"The Year Five," Sonora Review, Fall 1994 (with preface by Jane Smiley)
"How the Water Feels," The Quarterly, Winter 1992
POEMS
"Poem for a Roommate, Another Country," Seattle Times, 26 March 1980
"Old Douglas Coming Out of Wesport, Again," Tendril, Spring 1979
AWARDS
James Fellowship for Novel-in-progress, Heekin Group Foundation, 1997
Merit Award, Nebraska Arts Council's Individual Artists Fellowships program, 1997
First Place, Quarterly West Novella Competition, 1995 (chosen by Jane Smiley)
First Place, Marie Sandoz/Prairie Schooner Short Fiction Award, Graduate Student Division, University of Nebraska, 1993
First Place, Vreeland Award for Creative Writing, Graduate Student Division, University of Nebraska, 1992
Chess Journalists of America Award, 1989
First Place, Centre County Festival Poetry Competition, "At the Refugee Camp on Bidong Island: A Villanelle," July 1984
When this story was posted in December 2004, this was on the front page of PCOL:
 | Our debt to Bill Moyers
Former Peace Corps Deputy Director Bill Moyers leaves PBS next week to begin writing his memoir of Lyndon Baines Johnson. Read what Moyers says about journalism under fire, the value of a free press, and the yearning for democracy. "We have got to nurture the spirit of independent journalism in this country," he warns, "or we'll not save capitalism from its own excesses, and we'll not save democracy from its own inertia." |
 | Is Gaddi Leaving?
Rumors are swirling that Peace Corps Director Vasquez may be leaving the administration. We think Director Vasquez has been doing a good job and if he decides to stay to the end of the administration, he could possibly have the same sort of impact as a Loret Ruppe Miller. If Vasquez has decided to leave, then Bob Taft, Peter McPherson, Chris Shays, or Jody Olsen would be good candidates to run the agency. Latest: For the record, Peace Corps has no comment on the rumors. |
 | The Birth of the Peace Corps
UMBC's Shriver Center and the Maryland Returned Volunteers hosted Scott Stossel, biographer of Sargent Shriver, who spoke on the Birth of the Peace Corps. This is the second annual Peace Corps History series - last year's speaker was Peace Corps Director Jack Vaughn. |
 | Charges possible in 1976 PCV slaying
Congressman Norm Dicks has asked the U.S. attorney in Seattle to consider pursuing charges against Dennis Priven, the man accused of killing Peace Corps Volunteer Deborah Gardner on the South Pacific island of Tonga 28 years ago. Background on this story here and here. |
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Story Source: Mockingbird
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