A Temporary Sort of Peace [Hardcover]

Jim McGarrah (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 7, 2007

Growing up in Princeton, Indiana, during the 1950s, Jim McGarrah spent his days pursuing dreams of athletic glory on the baseball diamond, becoming captain of his high school's baseball team, and winning, for a time, the affections of a blond cheerleader, escorting her to dates at the local drive-in in his 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air. Although he earned a baseball scholarship to college, McGarrah flunked out of school in May 1967 and, on the way home, enlisted for service in the U.S. Marine Corps, causing his father, a veteran of World War II, to warn him he had no idea what he had just done. In his memoir, McGarrah, today a poet and writer from southern Indiana, examines in detail his peacetime life in Indiana, his indoctrination into the cult of the marines as a fledgling warrior in basic training at Parris Island in South Carolina, and his introduction to the life of a combat soldier in Vietnam observing bulging body bags at an air base's morgue in Da Nang and going to his first assignment armed with a malfunctioning M-16 rifle. Many years later, the former private first class, serial number 2371586, realized that for him, home had become "the jungles of Vietnam, the one place where life was at its best and worst simultaneously every minute of every day." The book also includes the author's days with a small marine Combat Action Group trying to win the hearts and minds of Vietnamese in the village of Gia Le, his wounding by shrapnel from a rocket-propelled grenade during the height of the Tet Offensive, and dealing with his war memories back home in the United States. In August 2005, at the age of fifty-seven, McGarrah returned to Vietnam, visiting the sites of his former battles with his son and sharing memories of the past and future with a Vietnamese poet in a graceful peace ceremony in Hue.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jim McGarrah teaches creative writing at the University of Southern Indiana, where he is an assistant professor in the English department. He is the author of an award-winning poetry collection, "Running the Voodoo Down"; the novel, "Going Postal"; and served as coeditor with Tom Watson of the Indiana Historical Society Press collection "Home Again: Essays and Memoirs from Indiana." McGarrah serves as poetry editor of "Southern Indiana Review" and is codirector of the RopeWalk Readers Series.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 251 pages
• Publisher: Indiana Historical Society Press; 1st edition (September 7, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0871952580
• ISBN-13: 978-0871952585
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,594,642 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jim McGarrah's poems, essays, and stories have appeared most recently in After Shocks: Poems of Recovery, Bayou Magazine, The Café Review, Connecticut Review, The DuPage Valley Review, Elixir Magazine, and North American Review. His play, Split Second Timing, received a Kennedy Center Award in 2001. He is the author of two award-winning books of poetry, Running the Voodoo Down and When the Stars Go Dark, a memoir of the Vietnam War entitled A Temporary Sort of Peace, which received the 2010 Eric Hoffer Award for Legacy Nonfiction and the novel Going Postal. McGarrah has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes and a finalist twice in the James Hearst Poetry Contest. He is editor, along with Tom Watson, of Home Again: Essays and Memoirs from Indiana. McGarrah has a master's degree in liberal studies and an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. He taught creative writing at the university level for several years, but he has also been a horse trainer, a janitor, a social worker, and a mailman.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling Page-Turner Warmed with Humor, June 1, 2009

By 

T. McDaniel (OK USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Temporary Sort of Peace (Hardcover)

This was one of the best memoirs I've read yet. Memoir is not my first pick among reads because, in general, I find them tedious and long-winded--what will do in 100 pages is instead done in 300 or 350. I'd rather read a novel and be entertained. However, McGarrah's memoir not only reads like a novel and jaunts along quickly to its end (there are many page-turning stories in this book), but it has the added benefit of a real-life-narrator admitting vulnerabilities and sharing hard-won wisdom with his reader throughout.
McGarrah begins his story in the present moment, as a Vietnam veteran arriving at the VA Clinic. The reader is quickly introduced to the lasting effects of the narrator's experience as a soldier in Vietnam. McGarrah juxtaposes the realities of physical and psychological treatment for war veterans in America with visceral flashbacks of combat. It is a little unnerving but McGarrah swiftly brings the reader back in time to his childhood in Indiana, where we get the beginnings of her story but also a healthy dose of humor. In this way McGarrah balances the horrors of his story with laughter and a sense of shared experienced between reader and writer. This is a hallmark of the entire book and one of the reasons why it was so enjoyable to read.
The first quarter of the book highlights the main developments in the writer's life prior to Vietnam. The mid-section is life in Vietnam--a well-plotted string of stories about the smells and tastes of a new culture, life at camp, frightfully real action scenes of combat, and the psychological tolls that were taken upon the men and women struggling to survive on both sides. Here McGarrah shows his prowess as a poet as well as a man of humor. Describing his mess hall food as "some kind of roasted pseudo-beef with huge globs of mashed potatoes drowned in a dark brown gelatinous substance labeled gravy" offers a necessary respite from the terror of combat and violent death.
But even in these scenes, McGarrah manages to make his prose beautiful, as if to contain the gore and violence in a digestible format for the reader: "The trees dipped and swirled with the monsoon breeze. The bamboo played a tango so hypnotic and hallow I hardly noticed another whistle, the harsh hiss of a RPG ripping through the melody like off-key fusion jazz. Sheep must have heard it, though, because he opened his arms wide and embraced the rocket. It entered him and became him, sending all unnecessary attachments in different directions. Arms flew east and west and his head shot skyward as if it were a basketball some referee had tossed for the opening jump. Damp grit splattered my fatigues and face."
In the final quarter of the book, McGarrah relates his experience in the Tet Offensive and his resulting wounds. He also shares his time in the hospital with other wounded vets, exploring the psychological impact of war, and his return to American life. What is so striking about the last part of the book, though, is when McGarrah returns to Vietnam in 2005. Here he meets the honored Vietnamese poet Vo Que, and together they create a new relationship based on peace, respect, and understanding. The photographs in this book are outstanding, and the last scene in the book will make you gasp.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Timely, Moving Memoir, January 27, 2008

By 

Christy Effinger (Indiana) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Temporary Sort of Peace (Hardcover)

A TEMPORARY SORT OF PEACE is a moving memoir of the author's experience in Vietnam. It is by turn funny, ironic, and tragic as Jim McGarrah narrates the events of his boyhood in Indiana, his naive entrance into the Marines, and his eventual disillusionment with the U.S. government's involvement in Vietnam. McGarrah's reflections on Vietnam and the American culture of imperialism are especially timely. It is almost impossible to read this book without comparing the terribly flawed wars in Vietnam and Iraq. A TEMPORARY SORT OF PEACE is a testament to the devastating effects of war on the individual and an earnest call for change--just the sort of book today's complacent Americans need to read.

5.0 out of 5 stars Gritty and honest, June 2, 2011

By 

Sally "book aficionado" (Peru, IN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Temporary Sort of Peace (Hardcover)

I liked this book so much that I sent copies to my favorite experts on Indiana writers. After reading The Things They Carried, I didn't think I would ever find a Vietnam War memoir which could keep my interest as well. As a Hoosier of the same generation as the author, I was immediately caught by his stories of growing up in the beginning of the book. His memories immediately rang true and evoked my feelings of being a child and teen in Indiana, including being a sick child attended by a doctor who actually made house calls. McGarrah's honesty about his Vietnam experiences are startling in their honesty, not just about the violence, constantly expected yet always surprising and surreal, but also about the repressed fear, the superstition, and his confusion and conflict about why he is fighting and why he sometimes chooses to put himself in more danger than necessary. We see the evolution of a young man who is haunted for years after the war by the feeling that he has lost the essence of his identity. He must make the journey back to find himself again. I highly recommend this book as one of the best Vietnam memoirs I have ever read.