Mark PlimsollClick on arrow to listen to the interview  The autodidact Mark Plimsoll's hitchhiking adventures took place across Canada, around the U.S., Virgin Islands, Mexico, Cuba, Hawaii, and in Guatemala where, at twenty two years old, he experienced an Earthquake that killed 23,000 people. Self-educated, he lived in eighteen cities and four countries, mostly underemployed in various jobs such as a maid, hospital orderly, lifeguard, rock guitarist and country songwriter, portrait artist, English instructor, computer technician, educational assistant, system administrator, Ghost writer, translator, programmer, photographer, housepainter, etc., etc., etc. |
WMD Machete
The memoir starts in Michigan, in 1971, with highschooler 'Brandon' as the young Mark Plimsoll, inspired by Guatemala's average income of one dollar per day, trying to convince a rich girlfriend to go with him into Latin America to see how the other half live. (Throughout the novel, excerpts of Meso-American anthropological data provide a counterpoint to the text and accumulate at the end into an indictment of the male gender for the creation of social pyramids driven by greed, which helps explain the title.) On one Guatemalan bus ride, Brandon has a metaphorical dream about a church playground where one clique extorts benefits from all the other children. In the Seventh Section: The Diminished Chord, Brandon flees the earthquake's vibrations, which seem to inhabit his body like the angered voice of God, on a long bus rides through Mexico and up the Mississippi valley. Back home in Michigan, he cannot communicate, and feels no one can understand the profound changes in his knowledge and attitudes. His kidney problems, a brutal kiss-off letter from Yvonne, the news of the death of one of the doctor's sons in the United States, and undiagnosed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder send him into a confrontation with the 1976 Bicentennial, and an insightful and humorous analysis of the lyrics of the National Anthem. Brandon tries to make a living as an artist/musician, slightly bipolar, and distrustful of American foreign policy. He researches the Dulles brother's involvement in the CIA and United Fruit, which led to the 1954 overthrow of Guatemala's president, and begins to respect the Guatemalans' version of history. Fifteen years later, the grandmother that disowned him sends him a letter, because her rich second husband passed away. After she dies, he realizes that only the rich can disown; the poor need each other to survive, and so a globalization of greed threatens the entire global ecosystem, for when we measure progress by the growth of consumerism as a cultural addiction to automobiles and energy of whatever form, most of us will eventually belong to the other half.
|
