I Don't Know But I've Been Told: A Novel [Hardcover]

Raul Correa (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 26, 2002

Unfolding in the space of one night, I Don't Know But I've Been Told is a mesmerizing novel in which a man recounts to himself a story of a time twenty years past. The story is so precious that he must handle it carefully, use it gently, in order that its power might not be worn out. It is the story of Paola, a woman he met in a bar, and a group of young paratroopers, and a golden time he knew while training in Panama.

He joined the army a poor, kicked-around kid who views his platoon buddies and sergeant with a kind of reverence. He and the rest of the Recon Dogs are fearless; jumping out of planes isn't enough -- they take mescaline to heighten the experience. But they are also naive, and when approached by a man who wants them to steal arms, they are easy targets.

The young soldiers get a temporary reprieve from dealing with the devil when they're sent to Panama for three months of jungle training. It's a time of parachute jumps, the man's first true taste of camaraderie, and his only experience of love, when he meets Paola. The letter he receives from her after returning to Fort Bragg will haunt and protect him as he faces the consequences of his dealings.

Now, twenty years later, that letter is still his talisman. And through its powers, in the space of one night spent walking the streets of New York City, he will relive the story of that time, "the last time it was good." It is a tale both raw and tender, told with a mature and singular voice that marks the debut of a genuinely extraordinary new author.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

U.S. Army paratroopers, armed with guns, drug habits, and a unique sense of patriotism, ramble on about their enlistment in I Don't Know but I've Been Told. First-time novelist Raul Correa gives us a nameless protagonist who wistfully recounts how decades earlier he was part of an invincible band of wild, peacetime soldiers, affectionately called "Recon Dogs." Bored with the routine of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the Recon Dogs (with suspiciously little thought) take over the second job of their beloved "Platoon Daddy" providing "surplus" weapons to the friendly local arms smuggler--before a stint in Panama gives the narrator his first and only love, Paola. Back stateside, a night of drinking helps the narrator see logic in tossing a grenade under a car, summarily replacing his high-flying times with a prison sentence. Now working on tugboats in New York harbor, our hollow man reveres two talismans: Paola's only letter and Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. The good times, for him, stopped long ago. Correa writes with all the macho swagger of his narrator's fun-loving, carefree past, turning in a memorable debut. --Michael Ferch

From Publishers Weekly

Swaggering yet vulnerable, like a cross between Huck Finn and Holden Caulfield, the unnamed narrator of this gritty, darkly comic debut novel joins the army at the tail end of the 1970s. Like his pals, a bunch of misfit "doper scouts," he joins to escape grinding poverty, prison, or both. Their Fort Bragg scout platoon stands in stark antithesis to the gung-ho, overachieving Special Forces teams in training. Under the loose eye of their "Platoon Daddy" the only soldier in the group with real combat experience, the mystique of which maintains his rein over his unruly charges the Recon Dogs, as they are known, enliven their days of peacetime idleness and easy drills by getting stoned as often as possible, burning their paychecks, selling plasma, even burglarizing motels to fund their binges. This leads to trouble when the Dogs are offered cash by a local "entrepreneur" looking to stockpile military ordnance. The story is told in flashbacks by the narrator, 15 years later, following a breakdown and prison sentence. What is ostensibly a story of a young man too sensitive for military life is muddled with its narrator's self-styled comparison with Huckleberry Finn, his mooning over his lost love (a Panamanian prostitute) and his complete inability to come to terms with his situation. What the novel does offer is a frank, often comical look at life in America's peacetime volunteer army; as such, it joins the ranks of stories of military screwups from time immemorial although few of those offer detailed descriptions of parachute jumps on mescaline. (Apr. 4)Forecast: Correa, who spent time in the 82nd Airborne Division, has a real-life story to rival the fictional one he tells. He will embark on a five-city author tour and should be an appealing interview prospect.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers; 1st edition (March 26, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060196114
• ISBN-13: 978-0060196110
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,103,993 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ...Eskimo [something] is mighty cold (end of the Jody call), April 8, 2002

By 

D. C. Carrad "augustabookman" (Augusta, GA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: I Don't Know But I've Been Told: A Novel (Hardcover)

Ten stars, terrific book. Want to know what enlisted life in the Army is like without leaving your comfortable armchair? Buy this and turn off the phone. Brilliant reconstruction of Army life, that alternate society that too few Americans today know. Shows the love and esprit de corps that a small unit can develop, where it comes from, and what can tear it apart. Plus the author writes prose that is as cool, clear, and swift as a flowing mountain stream. The proofreader needs to spend several months doing PT at Ft. Bragg -- parachute lines are "taut" not "taught" and it is inexcusable to have "173rd" and "1/73rd" on the same page, particularly since the 173rd plays such a major role in the book. This is the real deal; buy it at once. And special thanks to the author from this reader (US Army 1966-69, Vietnam service, 1968-69) for his treatment of the Vietnam veterans in his book -- who we really were. Airborne!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A modern Huck Finn joins the airborne, June 10, 2002

By 

Theodore (WATERBURY, VT, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: I Don't Know But I've Been Told: A Novel (Hardcover)

In case you never heard the Jody chant (Jody is the 4F who gets all the girls while we are off studying war ;-), "I don't know, but I've been told" ends with an unprintable, biologically improbable claim about lady Eskimoes. But that's the kind of thing that makes sense if you are doing close order drill, learning to assemble machine guns by touch, jumping out of perfectly good airplanes, etc.

Back in the Bad Old Days, Jimmy Carter had been mugged by reality, but people like Colin Powell and Norman Scwartzkopf were still doing damage control - my own nerve gas "protective suit" was made of terry cloth left over from the Korean War, and whole batalions of Marines practiced "skiing" in 102 degree sun using barrel staves on sand, the better to deploy in Norway against an Evil Empire with better weapons and maybe a 4-1 numerical superiority.

Correa has the voices and conversations dead-on right.

His narrator inherits a copy of Huck Finn in boot camp, and the narrator's voice has Huck's matter-of-fact, simple eloquence, whether he describes a stick jumping out of an airplane, C rations, a racist thug builing a private army or running field problems with Reservists. The reader reading as he lives and writes should intrigue post-moderns without obscuring a good read for the rest of us.

Without giving away details that surprise, delight and perhaps horrify, imagine Huck - physically and perhaps sexually abused by an alcoholic, violent, racist thug who likely murdered Huck's mother - raised in US poverty, AFDC, government cheese, foster care, group homes and a family struggling with drugs and all the other sad, terrible "social problems," amid all the excluded or marginalized racial and other minorities.

A modern Tom Sawyer might use these people to send-up modern sentimental or quasi-sociological, wannabe-anthropology. Correa's Huck probably states a common view by saying the book gets worse when ever Tom takes over.

Correa's Huck makes them come alive, with the power of simple stories told 'round a camp fire or at a pan cake place, late at night, with all the masks off, the shields down, and listeners whose brand of unconditional love would endanger the bladder control of most psychobblers.

Warning: if you never heard _Coming of Age in Samoa_ debunked (a/k/a meeting a few Samoan men), Correa's Samoans should make Margaret Mead sound like a failed author of Harlequin romances.

These are the folks who probably cannot get into today's military, so you and I would meet them only if we visit detoxes or prisons. In case you've never been, the jokes are funnier and the stories always more memorable, as compared to real cocktail parties or most contemporary fiction.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Man In Full, April 28, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: I Don't Know But I've Been Told: A Novel (Hardcover)

I first picked up Correa's novel because of the review in the Wall Street Journal, which compared him to Proust. Lord, I thought, that's quite high praise, but I found this first novel beautiful, sad, sexy, and totally about memory--how it works, how it doesn't. I recommend it to not only the seasoned reader, but also to any young person struggling to make his or her way through the world. There's a lot to be learned here, beyond just a great story.