It does not include any information that appears in the yellow sidebars, information on the Current Issue page which provides links to each of the articles, or links, book covers, photos or graphics that appear on any of the pages. Nor does it include listings from “40 Years of Peace Corps Writers: The Tour, ”archived copies of RPCV Writers & Readers, any bibliographic listings or "Links of Interest."

Peace Corps Writers – March 2002

Contents — click on title to jump down to read. Or just print the whole thing.

Front Page

A Writer Writes — The Loneliness of a Peace Corps Volunteer

Tales of Wisdom and Cunning — The Calabash Princess

Talking with Peter McDonough

Literary Type — March 2002

Recent Books by Peace Corps Writers — March 2002

Review — Lessons from Afghanistan

Review — My Mother's Island

Review — Taj Mahal: Autobiography of a Bluesman

Review — Tales from the Jungle . . . a Gringa in Nicaragua

Peace Corps Writers — March 2002

40th Anniversary Celebration redux


Writing workshops at NPCA Conference
In this issue, you will find a list of the 11 writing workshop panels that PeaceCorpsWriters.org will present at at the June 20 to 23 National Peace Corps Association Conference in Washington D.C. at the Omni Shoreham Hotel. If you haven’t heard about this celebration of the 41st (nee 40th) anniversary of the Peace Corps, and would like to attend, check out the NPCA website at www.rpcv.org/pages/celebrate.cfm.

Writing awards
PeaceCorpsWriters.org will be presenting its annual awards for outstanding fiction, non-fiction, poetry and travel books written by Peace Corps writers during 2000 and 2001. Also, an outstanding piece of short writing that best captures the Peace Corps experience will be recognized.

Peace Corps Readings
PeaceCorpsWriters.org will provide an opportunity for RPCVs to read from their journals, poems, fiction or non-fiction about a Peace Corps (or other international) experience. Each reader will be limited to 10 minutes. If you would like to participate in the readings, please contact our Readings Coordinator, Joe Kovacs, at joewriter@earthlink.net.

Buying and selling books
Washington independent bookseller Politics & Prose will have a booth at the Conference Bazaar where they will sell books by Peace Corps writers. This will present readers with an opportunity to purchase many of the books that you learn about here. The Bazaar, which will be in the Regency Ballroom of the Omni Shoreham, will be open Friday, June 21 from 9a.m. to 7p.m. and Saturday, June 22 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Writers of books distributed by wholesalers — Politics & Prose will sell your books at it’s booth. To have your book sold at this booth, please send to Marian Beil at mhbeil@rochester.rr.com by June 1.:

• your name
• your country and years of PC service
• book title
• publisher
• book ISBN
• book wholesaler
• your mailing address,
• your email address
• your phone number

Writers of books NOT distributed by wholesalers — Because Politics & Prose does not handle most self-published books, print-on-demand books, chapbooks, small press books, or out-of-print books (i.e., books that are not distributed by wholesalers), PeaceCorpsWriters.org will have a booth at the Bazaar that will provide the opportunity to authors of such books to sell them at the conference as well. The selling of these books will be handled entirely by the individual authors (or their representative). Additionally, authors will be responsible for getting their books to the conference, storing them, etc.
     If you would like to sell (and sign) your books at the PeaceCorpsWriters.org booth, you need to let us know what times you will be at the booth doing so. We will post when the selling/signings will take place, as well as announce the information at our workshops. Please send the following information to Marian Beil at mhbeil@rochester.rr.com by June 10:

• your name
• your country and years of PC service
• book title
• your mailing address,
• your email address
• your phone number
• the time(s) you will be selling/signing your books at our booth.

Book signings
Those writers who will be selling their books at the PeaceCorpsWriters.org booth will be available to sign them at the same time.
     For those authors whose books will be sold at the Politics & Prose booth, you are certainly invited to have book signings at our booth as well. To have the time posted that you will be available for a signing, send that information to Marian.as well.

In this issue of Peace Corps Writers
Talking With
Years ago, when I was a student at Saint Louis University, one of the really smart undergraduates was a kid from Brooklyn, Peter McDonough, who, with his brother Tom, were the Irish literary geniuses on campus. Peter then became, if not the first, then one of the first graduates of that urban Jesuit university to join the Peace Corps. He went to Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) in mid-1961. Peter, who is now a professor of Political Science at Arizona State University, has co-authored a new book on the Jesuits and we interviewed him about Passionate Uncertainty that traces the transformation of the Society of Jesus.

Tales of Wisdom and Cunning
In this issue, we are also publishing the first (of many, we hope) folktales collected by Peace Corps writers over the last forty plus years. This tale comes from Melanie Wasserman (Niger 1994–96), who is now a doctoral student in health policy and administration at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, focusing on immigrant health. In the Peace Corps, Melanie worked as a nutritionist. It was in the village of Azerori where she first heard the tale of “The Calabash Princess.”

And more
In addition to the list of Recently Published Books by Peace Corps Writers, reviews of four new RPCV books, Literary Type, etc., this issue has an essay by Bill Coolidge who recalls his time in Bolivia. The essay is entitled “The Loneliness of a Peace Corps Volunteer,” and can be found in A Writer Writes.
     To read . . .

— John Coyne
Editor

A writer writes

by Bill Coolidge (Bolivia 1966–68)

“RAP, RAP, RAP, RAP!” I thought it was a campesino, filled up on a Saturday night with sheep brains and homemade chitcha beer wanting a respite from the cold wind swirling along the dirt streets.
     Cathy and I were in bed, dressed in quilted long underwear. The heavy Bolivian blankets pressed down on our cold bodies. Our one room adobe apartment smelled of oil. It was our first winter as Peace Corps Volunteers in Oruro on the Altiplano, about 200 miles south of LaPaz, the capital.
     "Rap, rap, rap, rap, rap!" Insistant. I was tired after working all day at the orphanage with the sons of tin miners. These miners died at the age of 30, their wives too poor to care for their children handed them over to the Hogar para ninos. We played fobito after dinner — a small size soccer match — back and forth we ran along the hard packed dirt court. I dragged home, still adjusting to the 12,000 feet above sea level and shivering. The biting cold of a Bolivian winter in this desert was already taking away my youthful enthusiasm. I didn’t want to open the door.

     Being of draft age in the mid-1960s was like living in a pot slowly simmering. I had signed up for both the Navy and the Peace Corps. I always liked to have options. In a downtown Detroit armory, I shucked my pants, pulled my jockey shorts down to my ankles, along with a few hundred other recruits. First the physical examination, then a “gung ho” lecture and demonstration by a second lieutenant on his way to “Nam.”
     That weekend, I purchased a diamond ring, gave it to Cathy. I told her of my terror. Innocents, we agreed to have commitments now rather than to wait. Wait and see seemed like a deadly option. The television already had pictures of body bags flown back to the United States.
     My draft board surprised me. “If you are married and join Peace Corps, we will count that as service to your country.” The letter of acceptance came in February and I was assigned to what is now Tanzania. A second letter came in March signed by the Director of Peace Corps, Jack Vaughn. “You are reassigned to a new project, Bolivia Mines, training begins in six weeks. The government of Tanzania will no longer be a site for Peace Corps Volunteers.” “Bolivia? Was it in Central or South America?” I picked up my atlas and looked it up.

     “Wham, wham, wham! Hey Bill, open up will ya, it’s Gary, let me in!”

     Forty-five of us who had been invited to be in the project had arrived in Seattle; thirty of us completed the cross-cultural and Spanish language training and were flown to LaPaz. I celebrated my ninth month wedding anniversary stuck in the Panama airport. A few of us were married, most were single, and we were all in our mid-twenties. Our in-country assignments had us scattered up and down the Altiplano, often separated by hundreds of miles.

PCV at the Door
Cathy punched me in the arm and shoved me, “He’s speaking English, did you hear him? Go open the door. It’s Gary!” I stumbled into my leather boots and opened the door, just as “Bam, bam” rang out. In barges this tall, bulky man, flamboyant black hair with a mustache. His fiery eyes make me think he has been chased by a bear.
     “Jesus, Gary, are you alright?” Gary went straight for my straw mattress, which served as a couch. He sat there, head in his hands, then he lurched upward and walked around the black trunk that served as a dining room table. Cathy stayed in the bed and watched his circling. I sat down on the mattress and waited. After a couple of minutes, he slowed down and sat next to me.
     “Can’t stand it anymore. No one to talk to, no one to date, no one to drink beer with. Hell, there is no place to drink beer. I can’t speak Quechua and barely any Span . . .” He didn’t finish his sentence. Tears burst out, a rumbling of sobs overcame him, his shoulders started shaking. I put an arm around him; he leaned against me and cried.
     Later, when I headed off toward bed, Gary whispered: “Leave the kerosene heater and lantern on, will you please?”
     In the morning over coffee, the three of us discussed what to do. We had been in-country for only a few months, but Gary’s Volunteer days were over. He intended to take the train to LaPaz and hand in his resignation to the Director, then take the next flight to Los Angeles.
     Gary and I then walked to the train station As we sat against the adobe wall of the station waiting for the train, he reached over, seized my hand, and said, “You saved my life last night.” “Glad I could be there for you,” I muttered, and then we lapsed into silence. The sun was out, the wall was warming us. I wondered if Gary was envisioning the southern California beaches. I began thinking about the northern Michigan lake where I grew up. Summers of intense heat, cool deep waters. Unlike Gary, I was unable to confess to myself or anybody else that I too was unhappy, not yet despairing, but headed in that direction. Unlike Gary I was tethered, I was married. I was being depended on.

Another Vol in Trouble
A couple of months later, about dusk, the telephone rang.
     “Bill, it’s Jim. You gotta come here; I’m not doing well. We’ve got to talk.” Jim was a PCV and, like me, from Michigan. He was a nurse and had been placed in Colquiri, a tiny village, another thousand feet up the mountain from me. More than a half-day’s bus trip away.
     I left early on a Saturday morning joining the chollitos. They carried children and market wares wrapped around their back and herded goats and chickens up into the old run down school bus, called a “collectivo.” Suitcases and crates were tied down on the roof. I could hear them move about as we chugged around mountain curves. I sat on an inside seat so I couldn’t look down the steep drop-off, hundreds of feet to a dry riverbed.
     The inside of the bus was colorful and joyful. Brown, sunburned faces, exposed to the sun for a lifetime, the women smiled and joked, their children content to be physically close. On the other hand, the campesinos and the miners slouched, their shoulders burdened, they barely looked up. Even on Saturday nights, drunk, they did not sing nor dance. They wandered out of town with slumping shoulders.
     “You want a cup of coffee? How about a beer? It’s warm but you already know that.” Jim’s feet were well planted, shoulder width apart. His bald head feathered with some wisps of light brown hair. He looked 35 not 25. We started with coffee, murky, mud like, strong. I took mine with leche. We sipped and I looked around his adobe room, much like ours. A Peace Corps bookcase made of cardboard, (called a “locker”) in one corner. A lantern and kerosene heater plus a kerosene enofe (a little burner).
     “Let’s go for a walk,” I suggested. Jim jumped up, startling me, his 5'7" frame blocking the door.
     “I don’t want to go out there. I’ll have to talk with someone. My Spanish is so bad they can’t understand me. I’m practicing hard but being a nurse up here and not understanding them is a joke. Mostly I hide out in my room.” He purses his lips, his eyes focused on mine, challenging me. I move away from the door.

I gotta go
Jim’ story was a variation of Gary’s. Sadness crouched in the silent corners of his room, his life. As he spoke about his longing for Detroit, the hospital he had worked at, the waterfront, his right hand whisked away the subtle appearance of a tear or two. But I could see it there — honed deep into his eyeballs — a haunting aloneness and I felt helpless.
     “Can you wait until payday and we’ll all go up to La Paz together to get our paycheck?” His head shook, hands sequestered in his armpits, three long words of closure: “I gotta go now.”
     We stood and watched the shadows fall on the adobe building across the street, the sun heading down the mountain. The dark cool shade expanding, my eyes rested there. I leaned against the door to catch my balance.
     “I’ll see you in a couple of days, Bill.” Jim held my shoulders with his hands, then we shook hands, signifying we were in agreement. He was going to leave Colquiri and Peace Corps. We’d have dinner in Oruro and then he would catch the next train to LaPaz, then home.

     Two good friends leaving within a couple of months shook me up. After Gary left, a Peace Corps psychologist had come to visit the Bolivian Volunteers. I had lied to him. I told him, “Everything is fine, except my Spanish, and I’m working on it.” I didn’t tell him about my long bike rides out into the campo during siesta time where I would stop, get off my bike and stare into a horizon that had no end, no colors, no buildings, nothing. Riding my bike back, I would think of something to tell Cathy about what I saw so I wouldn’t blurt out, “I’m so lonely here! I can’t even tell if the work I’m doing is helping anybody!” I couldn’t imagine uttering the deeper truth: “I’m not happy being married. Something is missing.” Gary and Jim leaned on me while I held tight to this self-portrait: “Doing good, being successful, happily married.”

     The collectivo came at dusk. I climbed on. I walked straight to the back of the bus, unimpeded by goats and chickens. Circling and circling, down and down. Darkness came on fast. I was tired, not from a lack of rest but something more, something draining me. I leaned my arms against the seat in front, cradling my head, much like I had done on the bus home after losing an “away” basketball game. Then I started crying. The coughing, sputtering, backfiring bus hid the sounds of my sobbing. Jim and Gary’s suffering was a ladder down into my own pain. The isolation, the hint of a marriage already growing apart. I leaned into that empty space between my arms and felt the only comfort available, my own.

Life After the Peace Corps
I haven’t seen Gary or Jim since 1967. After Peace Corps I went to seminary and became an Episcopal priest, owned and ran a retreat center, lived in an AIDS hospice, became an AIDS caseworker, a manager of a homeless shelter, and finally, after twenty-five years, I managed a divorce. A few years later I remarried, moved to San Francisco then back to the coast of North Carolina.
     Most mornings I sit in my chair at dawn and observe Bird Island, Shackleford Banks and beyond, the Atlantic Ocean moving out to a point of invisibility. The fear of a boundless future occurs infrequently now. The horizon of blue in front of me is an invitation to explore, to dream, to sail.

Solitude and Loneliness
Would I do it again? Choose Peace Corps over the Navy? In a time of crisis, get married as some kind of protection, hope? You bet I would. What I learned in that wilderness time on the Altiplano was the necessity of solitude. Even with the fullness of a day: working with a hundred orphans, hanging out with José and Javier, going home for dinner with my wife, solitude could still call, urging me to go for a walk or a long bike ride. But it has taken me twenty-five years to understand the difference between solitude and loneliness.
     This morning, a gale force wind brought a hard rain, sweeping west to east. As I write, the old forlornness grabs me with the same old tired question: “Where is your life going? You’re spending too much time alone; you’re not being productive!” “ Better check the want ads, get a ‘real job,’ stop writing, quit the part-time maintenance position.”
     Gary and Jim taught me that in being vulnerable, often a horizon opens up or a new threshold appears. For many years I have sat in hospital rooms, attended the dying, dug the cold earth for a burial, brought hot food to worn out bodies. There are many ways to be in the wilderness. I am Gary, I am Jim, I am the one sitting next to me in the clinic, waiting for a “t-cell” count. Fear of being alone, fear not being good enough, fear of an uncertain future can still has sway over me.
     “Maybe I better go for a walk or go for a ride on my bike, ” I say to myself. I see a few seagulls and a solitary pelican gliding sidewise, tacking into the wind. I put down my pen and let the anxiety ooze in and through my body. I stay in my chair. The pelican makes her way up to Gallant’s Channel, turning right to the Newport River and flies on until I can no longer see her. Eventually the fear leaves and I am alone. I pick up my pen and write the next word.

Bill Coolidge has recently moved from his sailboat on the San Francisco Bay to an apartment overlooking the Atlantic Ocean in Beaufort North Carolina. There he writes essays and poems, sails and crabs, and keeps track of dolphins, black skimmers and the quality of the water in the Pamilico River Basin.     

Tales of Wisdom and Cunning

“The Tuareg people told me this tale,” says Melanie Wasserman (Niger 1994–96), who worked as a nutritionist in the village of Azerori. “The Calabash Princess was the only tale that I heard in Azerori. It was told over and over again while drinking tea under the starry sky. This story shows that in a small community, you can’t afford to treat anyone badly. You may get away with your bad deeds for a while, but eventually, they will catch up to you.

ONCE THERE WAS A HANDSOME YOUNG PRINCE who refused to marry. Although his parents, the king and queen, searched throughout the land for the most beautiful women for him to meet, the prince was unmoved by their charms.
     One morning, as the prince was wandering in the bush, he noticed a vine wrapped around a tree. The vine held the most beautiful calabash he had ever seen. The skin of the calabash was smooth and clear, the color of fine, fresh butter. “This would be a fine calabash to drink hura from,” he thought, as he plucked the calabash from the vine.
     The instant the prince touched the calabash; it hit the ground and split in two. Out popped a beautiful young woman wearing a shiny, indigo dress and silver jewelry. Immediately, the woman threw herself at the prince’s feet.
     “Do not tell anyone you have seen me!” she cried. She then told the prince of her miserable past. Her father was a king, and her sisters, jealous of their father’s love for her, threatened to kill her. Rather than lose her life, she chose to live out her days inside a calabash.
     The prince held the calabash princess in his arms and dried her tears. He promised to keep their meeting a secret, and to visit her again the next day. She climbed back into the calabash’s cool interior. Every day after that, he would walk through the heat of the day to see her. Each time he would call out, “Here I am,” and the princess would pop out of her cool calabash to greet him. They would talk about clouds and trees and stars until long after the sun had set. Near midnight, the princess would crawl into her calabash and the prince would return home. But neither one could sleep very well. They were in love.
     The king and queen had noticed that each day their son was disappearing into the bush. As he was heading out one morning, they confronted him. Much to their relief, however, the prince announced that he was in love and wished to be married. “I would like to bring her home with me tonight,” said the prince.
     That night, the king and queen anxiously waited to meet their son’s bride. A sumptuous feast was prepared, and a special seat of honor was set-aside for the woman who would one day be queen. At dusk, the prince arrived at the feast with the calabash in hand. “I am going to marry the calabash!” he exclaimed with great joy.
    “My son has lost his mind!” the queen cried out before she fainted.
     Although his parents pleaded with him to be reasonable, the prince was adamant. He ordered all the wedding arrangements to be completed within three days. Then he asked that two dinners be sent to his hut. “We prefer to dine alone,” he said as he left his parents’ sumptuous house, carrying his calabash.
     The king and queen thought this was strange, but since he wouldn’t change his mind, they finally agreed to their son’s wishes. From that day forward, the prince and calabash princess lived very happily together. While the prince was away during the day, the princess would hide in the calabash. At night, the prince would return to his hut and, there, away from all prying eyes, she would step out from the calabash and lie beside him. At dawn, she would slip back into the calabash.
     The king was puzzled. What kind of satisfaction could the boy possibly obtain from being married to a calabash? One night, he decided to find out for himself. Hiding outside the prince’s window, he watched as the princess climbed out of the calabash. The king was greatly smitten by the young woman’s beauty. “I see that my son is no fool after all,” he said to himself.
     For weeks, the king could think of nothing else but the sweet face of the calabash princess. His passion for her became so great that he could not eat or drink or carry out his royal duties. “I must have her as my second wife,” he thought. He would allow no one to stand in his way.
     One night, just as the prince was about to enter his hut, the king approached his son, saying, “My son, I hear there is an evil spirit out in the forest who has been terrifying our people. I need your help. Let us go and chase it away tomorrow at dawn.”
     The calabash princess overheard the king’s words and shivered with fright. “Something is wrong,” she warned her husband. Before the prince left his room the next morning, she wove into his hair a string of dates and said, “Be careful.”
     The king and the prince rode their camels through winds full of sand, going many miles into the bush, until they reached an old, abandoned well. The king handed a rope to his son and said, “Fasten this rope to your waist. I will lower you into the well. See if there is an evil spirit at the bottom.” The prince did as he was told. When he got to the bottom of the deep, dark well, the king cut the rope and left.
     Although the prince tried desperately to scale the walls of the well, they were too smooth. Every time he tried, he fell back into the pit, where snakes and scorpions gnawed upon his hands and feet.
     Meanwhile, the king returned to the palace. Walking into the prince’s room, he split open the calabash with his sword. The frightened princess stepped out.
     “Your husband fell down a well and died while we were out in the bush. But do not worry. Marry me and become my second wife. I will take care of you.”
     The poor princess was unconsolable. Although the king tried to soothe her, she wrestled herself from his arms.
     Every day the king asked her to marry him. Every day the princess refused. She cried until her eyes were red and her face was chapped. Her beauty all but faded.
     For twenty years, the prince remained in the well, surviving on water and the dates that his wife had woven into his hair. Luckily, one of the date pits took root in the bottom of the well and, as time passed, a tree began to grow. When its branches had grown to the edge of the well, the prince climbed out.
     Immediately, the prince ran back to his village. Once there, he found the calabash princess weeping in his father’s courtyard. As soon as she saw him, the princess rushed into his arms. She was overjoyed! The queen, too, was very happy to see her son after so many years. The king pretended to be pleased.
     “Allah is great!” said the king. “My son, I thought you were dead when you fell in the well, but Allah has restored you to us!”
     “I am happy to see you again, too, father,” replied the prince. “So happy, in fact, that I would like to have a feast. I will roast a sheep in your honor.” The king accepted. To prepare for the feast, the son killed a fat sheep and roasted it on a spit. Then he dug a very deep pit. He built a roaring big fire in it, and then laid a sumptuous rug over the top of the pit, with colorful leather cushions on top.
     When the king arrived, he smelled the crisp, tender meat, and his mouth began to water.
     “Please, father,” said the prince. “Sit on this rug I have prepared for you.” The king smiled, stepped onto the rug and fell straight into the fire, where he died.
     Well, it wasn’t very nice of the son to do what he did to the father. But it also wasn’t very nice of the father to leave his son in a well for twenty years, and try to steal his wife!

Melanie Wasserman is now a doctoral student in health policy and administration at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, focusing on immigrant health.

Where were you a Peace Corps Volunteer and when?

I was in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) from mid-1961 to mid-1963. Ours was the second group of PCVs; the first was sent to Ghana. I was stationed at the Comilla Academy for Rural Development.

What was your job?

I was an audio-visual specialist. My job involved setting up a darkroom and other photo facilities at the Academy. I also worked on some training films about tractor driving, how to raise chickens — a big step for a Brooklyn boy.

When you returned from the Peace Corps, what did you do next?

I returned to New York and worked for about a year as a staff photographer and house-organ writer for Johns-Manville Corporation. Then I got funding to attend Georgetown University grad school, where I studied politics for a year. Next I got a National Defense Foreign Language Fellowship (in Hindi), which took me to Ann Arbor in the fall of 1965. There I enrolled in the graduate program in political science.
     I received my doctorate in 1969 for a dissertation entitled “Electoral Competition and Political Participation in India.” It was based on statistical data deposited in the University of Michigan. I didn’t return to the subcontinent after my Peace Corps stint until a brief visit during a sabbatical in 1996.

You've published two books about Brazil. Why the interest in Brazil?

The afternoon after defending my dissertation, my wife and I and our baby daughter were on a plane to Rio de Janeiro, where we stayed for four years, until 1973. The Ford Foundation had awarded a large grant to the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, and I became Michigan's “man in Rio.” So it was mainly adventitious. The fact that my wife Josefina is Portuguese did help in learning the language.

Why have you written two books on the Jesuits?

The project grew out of my interest in the decay of authoritarian regimes, combined with a curiosity about similar changes in Catholicism. By the early ’80s, I had written one book on the erosion of military rule in Brazil and was embarked on another about the transition from Francoism in Spain. The cultural factor in all this, not just the Latin ambience but also the role of the church, fascinated me.
     So I thought I would do something about Catholicism in the aftermath of Vatican II, with a focus on the U.S., because our girls were growing up and I wanted to be at home as much as possible. Besides, I had attended Jesuit schools for a total of nine years, and the workings of the order were at least superficially familiar to me. As it turned out, my first book on the Jesuits (Men Astutely Trained) was about the decades leading up to Vatican II. The recent book covers the period since then.
     By the way, the title of the new book (Passionate Uncertainty) is a garbled version of a phrase from Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming.” Remember that last line from first stanza: “The best lack all conviction, while the best are full of passionate intensity.”
     My reasons for writing about the Jesuits have shifted. I’ve rediscovered something from the days when I dreamed of becoming a writer. Empirical analysis is at the core of social science; many of us would also like to see the results of such analysis used to change the world in one way or another. Both these things matter in ways that differ from what poetry or fiction — “creative writing” — is supposed to do. But you can also reach people emotionally by telling stories about spiritual experience. I get letters and phone calls from readers of the Jesuit books. By contrast, publishing something about, say, democratization can be like dropping a pebble down a bottomless pit. It’s gratifying to get a response. And the Jesuit books sell.

How have the Jesuits operated in countries where you have lived and studied?

Well, in most of Latin America, including Brazil, Jesuit numbers have fallen, as they have in the U.S. In South Asia (mostly India), Jesuit numbers have grown, and that’s just about the only region where growth is the norm. By the end of the ’90s, the number of Indian Jesuits surpassed the American contingent, who had been the largest group since the end of the ’30s (having overtaken the Spaniards). We are witnessing the end of the American era in the Society of Jesus.
     The distinctiveness of the American Jesuits has consisted in their work in education. There are 28 Jesuit colleges and universities and 45 Jesuit secondary schools in the U.S. This commitment is diminishing, because numbers are shrinking; it reflects the agenda of immigrant Catholicism. Elsewhere, the investment of Jesuits in institutional education, though significant, hasn’t been so high.

You have met some amazing men in the order. Looking back, who were the men of genius, sainthood, and character that influenced or impressed you?

Several stand out. I knew Dan Berrigan before he became Dan Berrigan the activist. He taught me Latin and French at Brooklyn Prep, and I still have an inscribed copy of his first book of poetry, that won the Lamont Poetry Award.
     John Culkin was a scholastic (Jesuit in training) who taught me Greek at Brooklyn Prep and went on after ordination to Fordham University, where he arranged for a one-year stay on the part of Marshall McLuhan. He left the Jesuits in the ’70s and continued his media activities in New York; he died of cancer in the ’80s. He is one of three men to whose memory the book is dedicated.
     Walter Ong, former president of the Modern Language Association, taught me English at Saint Louis University. “Nine out of ten of Walter’s ideas are crap,” his colleagues used to say about him, “but the tenth is a humdinger.” An extremely imaginative scholar who set very high standards.
     Finally, there’s Joe Fichter, the pioneer Jesuit sociologist who passed away about five years ago. We never met, but we corresponded a bit. He had to confront a good deal of censorship from Jesuit and other church authorities, but he persisted, paving the way for another priest-sociologist (not a Jesuit) Andy Greeley.

What's the future for the order in the United States, and in the world?

There are fewer than 4,000 Jesuits left in the U.S., down from over 8,500, and their average age is in the low 60s. The projection is for American membership in the order to fall to about 2,000 in ten years. Globally, the Jesuits are down from their peak of over 35,000 in the late ’60s to a little over 20,000.
     The big transition is toward lay-leadership of the schools and other operations, with an attempt to preserve the Catholic identity of “the works.” Even in India, where the Society is growing, the long-term forecast is for decline. There, most recruits to the order come from tribal areas, rural zones, and marginal regions (somewhat as happened in the U.S. during the first part of the 20th century, with applicants to the priesthood coming from poorer Catholic enclaves.) As countries modernize, recruits to “the vowed life” tend to fall off.
     Still, there’s a serious gap between the authority structure of Catholicism, run by clerics, and the “apostolic” structure, that is, the various ministries, run and staffed largely by lay people. This creates tensions, though it doesn’t dictate the utter collapse of the priesthood.

How do you see the Catholic Church changing over the next 100 years? Will the Church be dominated by Latin American politics, for example? Will it become more active, or retreat? Will it survive? And who will be the next Pope?

The internationalization of Catholicism, its spread in countries outside Europe and the U.S., including religious vocations from these former mission territories, is the most significant trend since Vatican II. But the programmatic and ideological implications of this sea change are not self-evident. It’s not clear, for example, whether it will help promote some of the positions favored by American Catholics, such as the ordination of women. The variety of Catholicism prevalent in advanced industrial societies tends to be more progressive than the “third world church”on intramural issues like these.
     Another thing to watch out for is the importance of concentrated funding in a sprawling hierarchy like the Catholic Church. While progressives, including progressive Jesuits, outnumber conservatives on many issues, neo-conservative resources are often more focused, supporting the restorationist program of the papacy. Tight organization has a way of offsetting individualized dissent.
     The next pope? If there’s any smart money on such a bet, it would be on a conservative candidate from outside Europe (and certainly outside the U.S.) To complicate things further, there’s the Nixon or John XXIII factor. It was the conservative Nixon who initiated the grand opening to China. Similarly, it was the presumably doddering John XXIII who inaugurated Vatican II. Given the highly orthodox composition of the College of Cardinals, we’re likely to get a pope with conservative credentials. But once he assumes power, who knows?

Do you see the Catholic Church having a role in the struggle between the Arab world and Israel? Should the Pope use his position to help find peace?

Catholicism is said to be the oldest multinational corporation. The church is one of the few truly transnational organizations, and it has experience in brokering agreements. This makes it a valuable resource. What precisely it has to offer in the Middle East I’m not sure. It carries a certain crusading baggage that hasn’t been forgotten. “Evangelism,” which can be read as an updated crusade, has been a priority of John Paul II, and this offends some non-Catholics.

You're aware that President Bush is seeking to send Peace Corps Volunteers into Afghanistan? Having been a Peace Corps Volunteer in Bangladesh, having been an interested observer over the years, what do you think Peace Corps Volunteers can do to spread peace?

I suppose the basic thing is to be competent at what they do and pass on skills, without condescension. If peace comes out of this, somehow, so much the better. At its best, the Corps represents a genuine innovation in humanitarian aid. The “Peace” in Peace Corps can also be used for political hype, as the good guy side of a good cop/bad cop Realpolitik. It’s hard to think straight about Peace Corps strategy without falling into the extremes of piety or cynicism.

What's next in the way of publishing for you?

Maybe a series of articles or a book about Ireland, where I spent the first half of last year. It’s odd that traditional religious attachments have declined in Ireland but that they, or causes invoking denominational identity, continue to fuel sectarian conflict in the North.
     Another project would involve looking at the future of institutional Catholicism. My first book on the Jesuits examined the recent past of the order, and the second scrutinizes the present. By now I’ve overdosed on Jesuits, so I want to take a break. But the larger question of what will happen with Catholicism as a clerical enterprise and a religious movement remains. The multifaceted nature of the topic requires collegial work. An edited volume may be the way to go. Some observers of the religious scene are awaiting a “charismatic” or “prophetic” breakthrough to restore the promise of Vatican II. But for the moment anyway, I’m convinced that what’s needed is a series of town hall meetings on Catholicism, perhaps leading up to Vatican III. What we have now is a lumpy mishmash of interest groups and dissidents petitioning or ignoring Rome — in effect, a proliferation of mini-regimes and subcultures engaged in a sort of parallel play.

A final question and one about writing with another author. How did you “write” the book with a co-author? Did you rewrite each other or divide the chapters?

There are many mysteries in Catholicism, and this will remain one of them.

Literary Type — March 2002