I think Caputo has not written book-length nonfiction specifically about Sudan. He did some reporting for National Geographic in 2000-2001 from Somalia and Sudan, including covering some interesting UN-umbrellaed cargo flights which may or may not have carried only or exactly what was on the manifests, etc., etc. He does have some memoir-based work out, some of it a mix of fiction and personal recollection, about time spent on military service or jobs in Vietnam, Africa, Middle East. He has reported on the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and about the ebb and flow of immigration-related chaos at the US-Mexican border.
Caputo’s accounts of experiences in Beirut are chilling, and when encountered by a reader in more recent times, unavoidably call to mind what happened to Daniel Pearl later on, except that Pearl didn’t get out. Those near-miss experiences were apparently enough to set Caputo to thinking about his own mortality and to turn down a few offers to report again from Afghanistan, recalling that just the terrain nearly defeated him when he was 38, so how great could it be trying it on again at 61. He splits his time now between Arizona and Connecticut.
In general I’d agree with your post on the not always successful transition to fiction from journalism. In Caputo’s case what carries the writing --past the flaws I had noted in the earlier post-- is that he writes from such a keen eye for physical detail. Could be the way grass or sand moves in the wind or the way wrinkles fall in different clothing in different environments, or how someone stands while leaning against a railing or a wall. You can imagine it, sure. If you are about detail and have been there, it shows.
Somehow that does keep at least key characters from being “cardboard”, to the point where those misses on dialogue matter less, and I’m drawn into the reality that Caputo is trying to project. Not too shabby for a number of scenes where people are just standing around talking... which as I’m sure you know can seem to be a lot of what goes on “forever” in countries subject at once to erratic or organized violence, interventions by assorted levels of local or tribal rule, foreign governments and NGOs, all layered over people simply trying to get from a dawn to a nightfall in a place where nothing is simple, nor easy.
There’s no attempt by Caputo to make anyone or any concept -- particularly the net value of NGOs struggling to help pick up the pieces of endless wars-- play out on a higher plane than those we manage in reality, even in unruffled places and times. His characters are out there dealing with each day as an entity with a mind of its own and however it seems to choose to unfurl. That he creates that sense of randomness of life arising to destroy its own plans is part of what helps hold the novel together.
So, we get glimpses of special graces and capabilities, along with unadorned observations of selfishness, sexism, racism, duplicity, generosity, bravery, humility, pride, regret, bragadoccio... and true acts of faith for good or evil, depending on who’s looking. Another pass through that book by a good editor (and probably a more compliant Caputo lol) could improve it but I did enjoy it enough to keep it instead of putting it in the hand-along basket.
I loved a brief scene where a character was inquiring of --ribbing, actually-- a female flight engineer (who was also an experienced bush pilot and the owner of the plane they were about to board) about whether instead of just continuing on as air transport for hire and putting up with the uncertainties, the dangers of sub-Saharan Africa, she hadn’t just dug in and built up that little private airline company because she figured the ongoing strife in Sudan was going to let her retire in good style someday?
How Caputo described her look then, and the beat of silence, might have been typical characterization as response for that sort of insult. So those were there, but then Caputo threw in something I hadn’t expected: the guy’s gesture extending the silence: arms half outspread, palms up. Not apologetic; annoyed she had tried to call him on it without answering, and so challenging her silence.
I liked that it was up to me to decide who really called out whom there. In real life, we know both parties can walk away from that stuff and call it a win but mostly because we cannot truly know each other’s interior motives. In Acts of Faith, the moment was a microcosm of operations in the cynical, altruistic, opportunistic environment generated in conflict zones amid the sufferings of vulnerable populations. It was also, in an entirely casual segue from one scene to another, a glimpse at the engines of the entire novel.
You raised a good point about sexism. I'll sometimes give a pass to what seems a sexist characterization of opposite gender. But: only where it seems like it’s the fictional character doing the describing, not the author’s attitude as overlay. Where it’s more clearly the latter, and it’s recurrent throughout the book, well, that can cause me to flip the book into my recycle box on the back porch.
I hasten to say I can feel this way about books written by women as well, with respect to the way they write about men, or have a female character relate to a male. The latter can lend realism if it’s sexist but suits the character being drawn, the former is a sign of “cardboard city” and doesn’t usually send me looking for more books by same writer.
