[2 articles] American anti-war expats in Sweden in the 1970s, as portrayed in Elliot Krieger's new novel
http://www.examiner.com/x-15514-Albany-Literature-Examiner~y2009m8d9-American-antiwar-expats-in-Sweden-in-the-1970s-as-portrayed-in-Elliot-Kriegers-new-novel-Exiles August 9, 2009 by Harvey Havel There were many in the American Anti-war movement in the 1960s and 1970s who, in fact, did not stay in their own country and continued their fight against their own government and local draft boards that forced young men and women into an overseas war that many soon saw as a never-ending quagmire and a glaring injustice done to a foreign civilian population. They could not possibly stay in a country where serving in a war they didn't believe in was imminent, a war that seemed pointless and had to be stopped at all costs. Many of these protestors dodged the draft and escaped to places like Canada and Mexico for safe haven. Others even went to Europe to escape the madness that was the Vietnam war. Elliot Krieger's new novel Exiles (SoHo Press, 2009) depicts a small community of anti-war protestors, Army deserters, and draft-dodgers living in a small city in Sweden during a tumultous time in our nation's history as they struggle against the American involvement in the Vietnam War but at an international distance where they are safer and more isolated from the long arm of their domestic oppressors. In Krieger's novel, the small city of Uppsala, Sweden is where a young, somewhat naive college student finds himself when the police in his home town in the United States beat him and arrest him for thinking him someone else. Lenny Spiegel looks exactly like the person who has destroyed a local draft board's office, and so after they arrest him, he is rescued by a young law student who is involved with the American Resistance Movement and knows the leader of the movement who actually committed the crime. After Lenny is released with the help of the young law student, he is taken on as the law student's protege and is introduced to the underground activities of the American Resistance Movement. Lenny gets involved enough in the movement to be appointed liaison to a group of exiled anti-war protestors in Sweden who have made a new home for themselves but continue on with the struggle against their own native country. Never does it occur to Lenny that he is secretly dispatched to Sweden to meet a man named Aaronson, the leader of the movement who really ransacked the draft board's office back home. And now Aaronson wants to use Lenny's passport to do his recruitment work abroad, because for some reason, Aaronson and Lenny Speigel look exactly alike. But when Aaronson finally leaves Sweden and Lenny serves as his puppet stand-in, a world of trouble awaits Lenny as he soon becomes the target of the international intelligence community as well as the members of his own movement who want to overthrow his leadership. Eliott Krieger's Sweden is, at best, portrayed as a cold, insipid, and an antagonistic environment for these young anti-war exiles to be in, and herein lies one of the major themes of the novel: that what starts out as a movement to foster and create the innocence and the sanctity of peace and social justice, a movement that challenges the authority of all who defile such a sanctity, slowly turns to insidiousness, as what is created instead of peace and liberation is simply an opposing army of exiles that fights against its oppressors from its perch overseas and involves itself with the real need for money. The exiles are slowly overwhelmed by the powerful international political forces that subvert its original objectives as well. Krieger's tale, while also dealing with the idea of trying to find one's identity in turbulent political times, is a also sad tale that marks the slow, inevitable drift from innocence to sophistication - but a sophistication that turns these anti-war protesters into the very people they had originally resisted against in the first place. The book is prescient and wise in this regard - and no less riveting in how it goes about presenting its story. It leaves Krieger's readers with a sense of loss but also with the sense that they are more knowledgeable than when they first started reading the book. Krieger's work shows how there is always a heavy price to pay for trying to find and inhabit the places where we think we are truly free from the forces that chain us. -------- 'Exiles' follows the lives of Vietnam protesters and deserters in Sweden http://www.projo.com/books/content/BOOK-EXILES_08-09-09_4TF47EO_v11.19c8474.html August 9, 2009 By Sam Coale This beautifully wrought, suspenseful, psychologically astute and conspiracy-haunted first novel by the former books editor of The Providence Journal tackles a fascinating subject which, for me at least, has long been off the fictional table: the intricate and intrigue-ridden lives of American Vietnam War protesters and deserters in Sweden. The novel hinges on a strange circumstance: Lenny Spiegel happens to look like Brian Aaronson, the guy who smashed up a local draft board in The States and fled with his girlfriend Tracy, first to Canada and then to Uppsala in Sweden. The police break in on Lenny's room and manhandle him, thinking he's Brian. Lenny, incensed, decides to go to Sweden to see if he can help the anti-war movement. The plot thickens, as they say. The attractive Tracy gets Lenny to surrender his passport to Brian so that Aaronson can sneak out of Sweden and lure American soldiers from Germany to Uppsala. Slowly Brian's persona begins to take over Lenny's personality not literally, but in the sense that he's viewed as Aaronson by the other deserters in ARMS: "American Resisters Movement Sweden." Lenny winds up on a TV talk show as Brian and gets caught in an anti-war parade that turns into a riot. He beds Tracy at last. Nothing is as it seems, including Aaronson. Plots are afoot. Connections are made with some strange Peace Church, Third World terrorists, China and the CIA. Every action becomes suspect with whiffs of betrayal, double-crossing, embezzlement and more. I don't mean to reduce this formidable and wonderfully written novel to a "mere" thriller, because Krieger a onetime academic who wrote a book about Shakespeare's comedies before becoming a reporter and editor at The Journal, and won an O. Henry Award for his first published short story, "Cantor Pepper" knows how to get into the bones and marrow of his characters, the uneasy sexuality and fragile identities of American exiles in their twenties, the queasy alliances and sudden attractions that flourish and fade. The central focus remains Lenny's self-doubts and uncertainties. He's a bit of an innocent, a bit credulous but intensely likable and sensitive, more thoughtful perhaps than perceptive. Krieger's evocation of the Swedish landscape in all its incarnations and seasons fleshes out his characters' secrets and flaws. There's a lusty Portuguese deserter, his girlfriend and the actress he's drawn to; crude angry deserters; right-wing Swedish politicians; a Swede to whom Lenny is helplessly drawn, and a reporter, determined to figure out who's who. This is a great, gripping book, elegantly styled and provocative with its troubling underplots and psychological fathomings. People die, identities shift and change, the military police and shadowy creatures lurk on the sidelines, lust battles love. And through it all Krieger manages to explore the loneliness and isolation of exiles everywhere, the uprooting and the homesickness, and the burden of solitariness that no matter what happens, none can shake. -- [email protected] . --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sixties-L" group. 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