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As Far As I Can Tell: Finding My Father in World War II
Philip Gambone
“Philip Gambone weaves a moving memoir of his family, a vivid portrayal of his travels through the locales of WWII, and a powerful description of what that war was like to the men who fought it on the ground into a seamless and eloquent narrative.”
Hon. Barney Frank, former Congressman, Massachusetts
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Description
Named One of the Best Books of 2020 by The Boston Globe
Philip Gambone, a gay man, never told his father the reason why he was rejected from the draft during the Vietnam War. In turn, his father never talked about his participation in World War II. Father and son were enigmas to each other. Gambone, an award-winning novelist and non-fiction writer, spent seven years uncovering who the man his quiet, taciturn father had been, by retracing his father’s journey through WW II. As Far As I Can Tell, not only does it reconstruct what Gambone’s father endured, it also chronicles his own emotional odyssey as he followed his father’s route from Liverpool to the Elbe River. A journey that challenged the author’s thinking about war, about European history, and about “civilization.”
Praise for As Far As I Can Tell:
About the Author
Philip Gambone is an award-winning fiction and nonfiction writer. He has published short stories in many literary magazines and anthologies. A recipient of artist’s fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the MacDowell Colony, and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, he has also been listed in Best American Short Stories, 1989 (Houghton Mifflin).
Phil’s collection of short stories, The Language We Use Up Here, was published by Dutton in 1991. The book was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award. His novel, Beijing (2003) was nominated for two awards, including a PEN/Bingham Award for Best First Novel.
Phil has extensive publishing credits in nonfiction as well. He has contributed numerous essays, reviews, features pieces, and scholarly articles, to several local and national journals including Bay Windows, Christopher Street, The Harvard Crimson, The New York Times Book Review, Italian Americana, and The Boston Globe. He has also written extensively about China for several publications and has contributed chapters to two high school textbooks about ancient and modern China published by Cheng and Tsui.
Phil’s personal essays have appeared in a number of highly praised anthologies, including Hometowns (Dutton), Sister and Brother (Harper San Francisco), Wrestling with the Angel (Riverside), Inside Out (Purdue), The Man I Might Become (Marlowe), Boys Like Us (Avon), Wonderlands (Wisconsin), and Big Trips (Wisconsin).
Phil’s book of interviews, Something Inside: Conversation with Gay Fiction Writers (University of Wisconsin Press, 1999), was named one of the “Best Books of 1999” by Pride magazine. His book of profiles, Travels in a Gay Nation: Portraits of LGBTQ Americans (University of Wisconsin Press, 2010), was nominated for an American Library Association award, a Lambda Literary Award, and the Stonewall Book Award.
For forty-four years, Phil taught high school English, mostly in the Boston area. He also taught writing at the University of Massachusetts, Boston College, and in the freshman expository writing program at Harvard. At the Harvard Extension School, where he taught for almost three decades, he guided generations of students in the craft of fiction writing. He was twice awarded two Distinguished Teaching Citations by Harvard.
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Praise
Praise for As Far As I Can Tell:
“Philip Gambone weaves a moving memoir of his family, a vivid portrayal of his travels through the locales of WWII, and a powerful description of what that war was like to the men who fought it on the ground into a seamless and eloquent narrative.”
“As Far As I Can Tell is a fascinating mix of autobiography, travelogue, and historical research that not only takes us on a great adventure in search of what World War Two was like for those who fought in the European theater but probes that most difficult of all subjects, the relationship between a father and a son — in this case, a gay son. Extensively researched, highly literate and profoundly thoughtful, the story Gambone tells uses not only soldiers’ memoirs but writers as disparate as Samuel Johnson and James Lord to make this a reader’s delight.”
“In retracing his father’s World War II army service across the U.S. and Europe, Phil Gambone ingeniously uses public records to plumb private mysteries: Who was this “impossibly foreign” man, and what did he have in common with his son, who dodged the Vietnam draft by being gay? This is a travel book unlike any other: across continents but also into the past and toward self-forgiveness. Richly researched and written with unerring grace, Gambone’s journey is an act of witness, of belated connection, and, ultimately, of courage that does justice to his father’s.”
“A single question pulses through As Far As I Can Tell: why didn’t my father talk about his time in the war? With meticulous research, Philip Gambone puts sound to silence, offering us a book-length love letter, not just to his father, but to anyone whose life has been hemmed in by obligation, obedience, and the brutality of the system. It’s also a coming to terms with the unknown in others, which is its own hard grace. A vital, dynamic read.”