Marlantes’ best-selling book, “What It Is Like To Go To War,” is Riverside Reads 2014 selection
Karl Marlantes
Author Karl Marlantes, whose New York Times best-selling memoir, What It Is Like To Go To War, is the subject of the Riverside Reads 2014 campaign, will speak at 6 p.m. Nov. 20 at the Riverside Municipal Auditorium and Soldiers Memorial as part of Cal Humanities’ statewide initiative War Comes Home.
Marlantes, a Vietnam veteran, will participate in an interview-style conversation with Mary Menzel, director of the California Center for the Book. This free event is part of a speaking tour across Southern California Nov. 16-21 and coincides with California Reads, the statewide reading of What It Is Like To Go To War.
“Karl Marlantes has written a relevant book, and, as a veteran, I am very pleased that Riversiders are reading it as part of the Riverside Reads program,” Mayor Rusty Bailey said. “I look forward to his presentation, and I want to thank Cal Humanities for bringing this to our city.”
The War Comes Home/California Reads initiative, a public dialog about returning veterans, seeks to engage Californians in the tough questions about what it means to return from war and rejoin one’s community. What are the responsibilities toward those who have been sent to war, and how can we bridge the gap of experience between those who have served and those who have not?
“This is an excellent example of how programs like California Reads and Riverside Reads can focus our attention on important issues of the day,” said Riverside Public Library Director Tonya Kennon. “This is an issue that is facing communities all over the country, and we are very fortunate to have Mr. Marlantes join us for that conversation in Riverside.”
Marlantes served as a Marine Corps Lieutenant in Vietnam and wrote What It Is Like To Go To War nearly 40 years after his own tour of duty. The book recounts his experience of going to war and coming home through the lens of time and memory, illuminated by insights drawn from his study of history, literature, psychology and philosophy.
Marlantes grew up in a small logging town on the Oregon coast, attended Yale University on a National Merit Scholarship, and went on to study at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. He served as a Marine in Vietnam, where he was awarded the Navy Cross, the Bronze Star, two Navy Commendation Medals for valor, two Purple Hearts and ten air medals.
Marlantes also is the author of the novel Matterhorn
, which won numerous prizes, including the William E. Colby Award given by the Pritzker Military Library, the Center For Fiction’s Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, the 2011 Indies’ Choice Award for Adult Debut Book of the Year, the American Historians James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical American Fiction, and the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation’s James Webb Award for Distinguished Fiction, The American Library Association W. Y. Boyd Literary Novel Award for 2011, and The Vietnam Veterans of America Excellence in the Arts Award for 2012.
More information about Marlantes’ statewide tour, which also includes stops in Los Angeles, Simi Valley, Bakersfield, Santa Ana and Oceanside, can be found at http://www.calhum.org/news/blog/karl-marlantes-author-tour-begins-in-southern-california.
California Reads is a program of Cal Humanities in partnership with the California Center for the Book. It is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act, administered in California by the State Librarian.