“Wrestling with Demons: In Search of the Real Ernest Hemingway”

Retired Chico State business professor Curt DeBerg, now living in Miami and Hendaye, France, is obsessed with unraveling a mystery about Ernest Hemingway.

“Hemingway went through four wives,” he writes, “alienated his three sons, and betrayed more friends than you can count on two hands. The winner of the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature saw the killing of bulls at the corridas in Spain; he gaffed marlin and bluefin tuna off the coasts of Havana and Key West, and he slayed big-game animals in Africa and grizzly bears in Montana. He was self-absorbed, and narcissistic. He told great yarns in the bars of Paris, Pamplona and Havana.”

Hemingway was driven to be seen as a hero’s hero whose own exploits fed his novels. The truth is more complicated. As a young man, Hemingway, working for the Red Cross, was wounded when a mortar shell exploded in a frontline trench during World War I; his fellow soldier, Fedele Temperini, died next to him. 

Hemingway made much of his own (relatively minor) wounds and concocted a story of how he tried to save Temperini, when in reality Temperini, the true hero, shielded Hemingway from the blast. 

In “Wrestling with Demons: In Search of the Real Ernest Hemingway” (publication information available on DeBerg’s website, curtdeberg.com) the author identifies five “demons” that shaped Hemingway: “his parents’ disapproval, remorse, chronic pain, anguish, and a deep-seated sense of rivalry with other writers and war combatants.” Fear of being found a fake pushed him on.

The book is unique. Each section begins with a letter to Hemingway as DeBerg explores Hemingway’s favorite haunts; that’s followed by a fictional conversation with MDH (“modern day Hemingway”), a biographical essay and finally a warts-and-all memoir in which DeBerg draws out similarities with Hemingway (DeBerg survived a debilitating light plane crash; Hemingway survived two).

This is Hemingway: “Safaris, deep-sea fishing, booze, Europe, women, sex, adultery, plane crashes, betrayals, injuries, illnesses and, finally, suicide.” For DeBerg, “This book has allowed me to address, and even exorcise, some of my own demons as I refer to a famous, larger-than-life man who is, in a very personal way, my kindred spirit.”

“Dangle Him Purposely: An Autobiographical Novel”

“I admit I spent three decades practicing law,” Chicoan T.B. O’Neill says on his website (tboneill.com). “Trial work did allow me to fight the old battles of my youth (primarily against authority of any kind), and it provided a treasure trove of material that writers search for tirelessly.”

But he also finds treasure in the story of his early life. His poverty-stricken grade-school years, in the 1950s, with a dysfunctional family always on the move, are narrated in “Timmy: A Boy, An Era, A Family’s Desperate Journey,” part of the “A Mile Beyond” series.

The second in the series, “Dangle Him Purposely: An Autobiographical Novel” ($13.99 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle), brings Tim into the 1960s and the Vietnam War era as his family settles in Chico. Told in the third person, the story divides sharply in two; hijinks, fistfights, and sexual escapades fill Part I, “Vignettes of Adolescence.” 

Ah, Chico. “By 1959, the year Tim’s family arrived, a smug optimism pervaded the town. A big election filled the airwaves with Camelot approaching, Y.A. Tittle and John Brodie were throwing for the 49ers, and rock and roll rumbled over KPAY and KHSL.”

Part II, “War and Ruminations,” brings Tim to a strange battlefield; though he yearns for direct combat, his work with psyops means befriending local villagers and showing them cartoons and John Wayne movies. In this part the hijinks, fistfights, and sexual escapades are shrouded in Tim’s first-hand experience of the idiocy of the war. Friends die trying to make inconsequential gains. Locals plead with the Americans not to abandon them; Tim knows they will.

“Then came snapshots of recent memory—of the legless ARVN’s belly oozing, of dead American boys laid out like lumber, of ducking from crackling AKs, of . . . emotions at full throttle, colliding like atoms in a particle accelerator. His reaction was swift and uncaring.”

O’Neill cautions readers not to look for a happy ending, though toward Tim’s time of discharge he is reading the classics and mulling some kind of legal career. In elegant, riveting, sometimes graphic prose, O’Neill chronicles how he became himself, the result of all that dangling.

"Running From The Fire"

"My parents emigrated from Ukraine and wound up in East LA, where I grew up in the '40s and '50s." Little Phillip I. Elkins, "a skinny Jewish kid who needed glasses," learned to "pass" as Latino in order to survive in an area "rapidly becoming the largest Latino community outside of Mexico City."

He did so by "becoming a 'cholo' (or a 'pachuco,' or a low rider or street tough).... I dressed like a cholo and talked with a Mexican accent; I stopped hanging out with the white kids and all my friends were Mexican." His nickname was (and still is) Señor Felipe, who these days hosts "LA Sounds with Sr. Felipe" on Chico's KZFR.org. (Earlier he managed Chico Natural Foods and produced a line of organic salsas.)

How Elkins got from there to here is the subject of a series of autobiographies. The latest is "Running From The Fire" ($16 in paperback, published by Señor Felipe Press, P.O. Box 364, Forest Ranch, 95942; djsrfelipe@aol.com) taking Elkins from his early years through high school and some community college, and then, in 1966, being drafted into the Army at nineteen. As the book ends, he is preparing for Vietnam.

It's a raw yet oddly wistful tale of friendships, fistfights, girlfriends, making out, pregnancies, marriages, screwups and mishaps, seasoned with enough barnyard cussing to fill an oversized duffel bag. "Ahh, the joys of becoming an adult," Elkins writes. "What a long, difficult, complicated, and confusing road that seems to be."

Outside his circle he wasn't much accepted by the Mexican community, but he also didn't "know much about being Jewish" (apart from rampant anti-Semitism). His parents were a presence in his life (mostly his mom) but he leaned to fend for himself, more or less. At times, mostly less.

"All I really got out of basic training," Elkins writes, "was experiencing what it was like to be constantly tormented and threatened with 'going over to the jungles of Vietnam where many of you will die, hopefully as quickly and as painlessly as possible.'" His sadistic drill sergeant did not have a way with words.

But Elkins does. Saucy and savory, they tell an amazing story.

"Watergate's Forgotten Hero: Frank Wills, Night Watchman"

Frank Wills is the only African American associated with Watergate, the political scandal that eventually led to the resignation of Richard Nixon and the jailing of those in his inner circle. Yet while Nixon and many of his henchmen found post-Watergate life financially and culturally rewarding, Wills fared far differently.

Adam Henig, who graduated from Chico State, tells Wills' story, from his life in the segregated South to his job as "the security guard who alerted police to a break-in at the Watergate Office Building," to his death from "an inoperable brain tumor" (and other complications) on September 27, 2000.

"Watergate's Forgotten Hero: Frank Wills, Night Watchman" ($29.95 in paperback from McFarland and Company; also for Amazon Kindle) is based on interviews with family and friends that "explore the fate of Frank Wills, a Black man in 1970s America caught up in a power struggle dominated solely by white men."

Henig's research shows "that Frank Wills' actions in the early morning of June 17, 1972, were not a source of heroic pride, but in the end caused him bitterness and disappointment." Wills was 24, a high-school dropout, and, as with others at the scene, hardly realized "that his phone call to the DC police had triggered what would become the first chapter in the uncovering of the biggest political scandal in American history."

In the Foreword by JaQwan J. Kelly, who portrayed Wills in the last scene of Steven Spielberg's 2017 film "The Post," the actor notes that "even heroes are not immune to racial injustice and exploitation."

Wills was born in Savannah, Georgia in 1948. That year, Henig writes, "when the traveling display of the original Constitution and Declaration of Independence came to town ... Blacks and whites had separate viewing lines." And "even the city phone directory was divided along racial lines. If you were a person of color, there was a 'C' next to your name, indicating you were 'colored.'"

Henig's fair-minded portrait notes Wills' own poor life choices along the way, but his sympathies lie with a young Black man who did the right thing at the right time--and in so doing changed the world.

"Witness: Hearing The Voice Of God: A Spiritual Autobiography"

Chicoan Terry Hunt remembers being at the hospital bedside of a woman who had come to his talks at St. John's Episcopal Church. Dying, she didn't know what to do. "Maybe," Hunt said to her, "it is just like being born: there is nothing you have to do." Then he added: "Actually there is one thing you can do when it is your time to die, you can watch for Jesus and when He comes you follow him."

And then Hunt thanked her for trusting him "because you thought I might have a connection with God. I have wanted so deeply to be His priest, and you have recognized me as His man. Many others have not. Do you see now what a great gift you have given me?"

This spiritual longing suffuses "Witness: Hearing The Voice Of God: A Spiritual Autobiography" ($17 in paperback, self-published; also for Amazon Kindle). The book is at times shockingly confessional as Hunt, now in his eighties, recounts his ordination as an Episcopal priest and the rocky relationships at the churches he served; business choices that went south; the painful ending of his official priesthood; and the divorce from his first wife.

Through it all, God was speaking "through events, or through the voice of friends, and sometimes enemies; through dreams, and other strange and luminous metaphors; and I mean He sometimes spoke in a quiet voice: one I heard, not with my ears, but in my mind." But though these "messages were not always easy to recognize or decipher," Hunt calls such moments "spiritual seeds," "opportunities to become more fully self-aware and responsible beings."

Married to Carol Jean since 1975, the couple since 1990 a fixture in Chico, Hunt has found that self-awareness can come powerfully through writing. Teaching workshops in spiritual autobiography, he has invited others to discover God's presence.

A series of epiphanies in Hunt's life (one with rattlesnakes) revealed his deep anger (especially at his father), showing him the wilderness he must go through in following Jesus. It's the way of becoming a disciple, "recruiting people to the union," to "spiritual transformation." 

And, for Hunt, the journey continues.

"10 Years Of Spreading The Dirt!"

Remember when telephones had operators? Chicoan Dick Cory does. "Fern was the operator in our rural community of Alexandria, Nebraska, population around two hundred fifty in the late nineteen forties and fifties. She efficiently kept everyone in touch. Her knowledge of where people might 'hang-out' helped make connections when they couldn't be reached by phone. Ike Bowker and I were hired for a nickel to 'run them down' when an urgent call was waiting."

Cory is a retired junior high teacher, proponent of the revitalization of Teichert Ponds, and long-time columnist for a local seniors publication. The columns form the basis of a massive new collection called "10 Years Of Spreading The Dirt!" ($30, spiral-bound, self-published, available at Made in Chico or from the author at ubangarang@yahoo.com). 

The more than 130 pieces, including poetry, date from 2008 to 2017, dedicated to "Ruthie Crane and our collective merging families" and to "those directly affected by the Camp Fire of 2018." (A portion of the proceeds from the book and Crane's paintings will help the Covered Bridge restoration project.)

About his email address: "Most of my ex-students remember me as the chief preserver of the ficmythicus ubangarang," an endangered species (ahem) that has become his trademark.

About small town cafés: "Many of these rural communities have lost their newspaper.... Stories, gossip, and serious decisions are made hand-to-mouth (excuse the pun) at these cafés. These cafés take the place of town halls and civic centers."

Dirt (he loves dirt!) plays an active role in Cory's life. In the 1970s he created a company to do the dusty job of hand knocking almonds, calling it Knutes Kneighborly Knut Knockers. "Being too clean can be a sign of poor work habits." So there!

He closes the book with tributes to his mother and father. "I am thankful for being born to caring parents late in their lives at a time and place making me a member of the luckiest generation."

Like the telephone operator of old, Cory chases down memories and makes connections, bringing small-town wisdom and not necessarily politically correct observations to illuminate life in the twenty-first century. Readers will find him a genial companion.

"Stutterer Interrupted: The Comedian Who Almost Didn't Happen"

The author's name is "Nina G.," her moniker in the Bay Area comedy circuit. Recently she presented her story to Butte College faculty and staff during the new semester convocation. Nina and husband Ethan live in Oakland; she works at a community college as a counselor for students with disabilities but is also part of a comedy troupe called The Comedians with Disabilities Act.

Though her talk at Butte College was rated PG, the story she tells in her new book is far edgier (she is no stranger to F-bombs). But it's also a poignant journey of a childhood that "took all the negative social cues and internalized them, like a box of baking soda absorbing every rotten odor in the fridge."

"Stutterer Interrupted: The Comedian Who Almost Didn't Happen" ($16.95 in paperback from She Writes Press; also for Amazon Kindle) is half autobiography, half reflection about embracing the person she is, stuttering included. But for supportive parents and counselors, Nina may have remained that "weird kid."

At sixteen she volunteered for the National Stuttering Project in San Francisco. "I was surrounded by well-adjusted adults who could speak without fluency and still lead normal lives." She resolved not to "hide behind the 'weird kid' persona. I spoke in my natural voice and started making peace with my repetitions and blocks."

Later she earned her doctorate in psychology and became "a frustrated dyslexic-stuttering academic" who found real joy in venues like the bar in San Bruno "where a fight breaks out and I have to resort to my dirtiest jokes to distract from the screaming man being dragged out in handcuffs. What other job lets you have all those experiences? To be a comedian, you have to love what you do. And I do love what I do."

There are practical chapters on how well-meaning folks who hear a report on NPR suddenly become experts on stuttering. How Howard Stern helped her find self-acceptance. How she "stopped denying myself a voice out of fear of inconveniencing others. I became upfront about my dysfluency...."

Her dream? To make "the world a more stutter-friendly and loving place." One life at a time.