Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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!

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.

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.

A remarkable and earthy narrative in the best traditions of coming of age in the world of the peacetime Army! Boy to man this story tells a tale of confusion and coming of age in a doped up and savage world of men trained to fight and kill, with no place to go but more training camps! Huck Finn as a foil, these unforgettable characters emerge as poster boys for the new generation of peacetime veterans!
I enjoyed reading this book, even if the language sometimes made me cringe.

Finding completely overlooked gems in the back of some bookstore stack wedged between mainstream marketing fair is a true delight. I thought I had stumbled across such a gem in 'I Don't Know'. Unfortunately, the story just wouldn't grab me, in spite of some excellent elements. Mr. Correa's prose for one. Correa's obviously a gifted writer, but the story here, told through a series of seemingly random flashbacks, feels disjointed and meandering and without purpose. I felt at times the story was nothing else but an elaborate writing exercise and these slapped together to form a book. Mr. Correa is a 'writing-school' product, and as with other such efforts, it seems the writing programs place so much emphasis on polishing and shaving texts the authors seem to forget the original emotion that drove them to write in the first place, and all that's left is the craft and prose, and the story is quietly murdered in the process. This is the sense I get with 'I Don't Know'. While the language is powerful and truthful, I feel all emotion has been squeezed from the product and what's left is a finely crafted collection of writings. I might return to it in the future and give it another shot. Until then... I don't know.

One of the easiest books to give five stars to. Another great first time novelist sets the world on fire with this coming-of-age story of the men in the 82nd Airborne unit.

What I thought and could have easily been a seamless barage of cliche's and overworked formulae, Raul Correa takes NO SHORTCUTS in this blockbuster. He spills it all out there for you in his "punch in the face" manner. From the first few pages to the very end, this book will grab you by the lapels and not let you go. Though told in first person, Correa entered new territory by leaving out the main character's name.

This was an exciting walk down memory lane for a former Airborne (11th Group Special Forces) soldier and current Tugboat Captain (UMD Local 333) NYC Tugs.

Thanx for the memories Raul, can't wait for the next one.

Utterly real. One of the best books ever written about the US Army; Put in on the shelf alongide Jones' FROM HERE TO ETERNITY and Crumley's ONE TO CALL CADENCE.

I DON'T KNOW BUT I'VE BEEN TOLD is a dead-on accurate picture of the Army in the bad old days of the late 70's/early 80's. Correa captures the personalities and places, and he has a great gift for language -- the dialogue is perfect.

The plot is basically a series of peacetime war stories -- a Scout platoon from the 82nd Airobrne at Fort Bragg deploys to Panama for Jungle School. The nameless narrator recounts the events years later, looking back on the various ways he has messed up his life. The whole thing is as authentic as having the goofy "pirate ship" Jungle Expert patch sewn on the right pocket of an OD-green permanent press fatigue shirt.

You have to hate how the publisher handled the book. The copy editing was obviously doen by someone with no military background (you get 1/73 and 173 Airborne in the same paragraph), and while the blurbs on the back-cover may be from heavy-hitters in the literary field, the book would have done much better if they could have gotten Nelson DeMille, Dave Hackworth, or someone like that to have given it a prod.

I never thought I would love a book about paratroopers. I never thought a book about paratroopers could be so evocative and romantic--I knew it might be funny. This book just sucked me right in, I couldn't bear to finish it. It offers a reader like me (female) a rare opportunity to feel what it feels like to be a lost young man (you think this happens all the time in books, but it doesn't). The characters are vivid, the settings brilliant (a passage about jumping while high on mescaline no more so than one about sitting on a barstool watching Saturday night take place) and the whole thing is suffused with the mystery and hopefulness that make life so hard to get on the right side of when you're twenty--no matter what sex you are.

This beautifully written book not only provided a fascinating glimpse into a world which I would never have known anything about (army life), but also turned out to be so much more than I expected! It's not just a story about the paratrooper and what happens to him; it's about the nature of memory itself, and how it works. The hero is simple, endearing, and likable, and the story is engrossing--at times hilarious, poignant, bittersweet, and always honest. I couldn't put it down.

This book tell's a story of young men away from home
for the first time , coming of age in a peace time
military. The young men bond together like brothers
and share in there adventures as one.
The young men are fearless and not afraid of anything
or anyone that was in there path.
I know , I was one of them , and I thank Raul Correa for
putting it in writing to preserve these times forever !