Table of Contents
Part One – The Source: The seminal years
Part Two – Midstream: Against the current
Part Three – The Estuary: Muddy waters
Part Four – The Open Sea: In hindsight
Part Five – Treading Water: Onward to the past
Postscript – The Name of the Game: Learn your lines
A Paler
Shade of
Red
Memoirs of a Radical
W. E. GUTMAN
CCB Publishing
British Columbia, Canada
A Paler Shade of Red: Memoirs of a Radical
Copyright ©2012 by W. E. Gutman
ISBN-13 978-1-927360-97-2
First Edition
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Gutman, W. E., 1937-
A paler shade of red [electronic resource] : memoirs of a radical / written by W. E. Gutman.
Electronic monograph issued in PDF format.
ISBN 978-1-927360-97-2
Also available in print format.
Additional cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada
Cover design by the author.
Photograph on the front cover is in the public domain.
Extreme care has been taken to ensure that all information presented in this book is accurate and up to date at the time of publishing. The publisher cannot be held responsible for any errors or omissions. Additionally, neither is any liability assumed by the publisher for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the express written permission of the author.
Publisher:
CCB Publishing
British Columbia, Canada
IN MEMORY OF IONEL
Also by W. E. Gutman
JOURNEY TO XIBALBA:
The Subversion of Human Rights in Central America
Reporter’s Notebook, ã 2000 (Out of print)
NOCTURNES -- Tales from the Dreamtime
Fiction, ã 2006
FLIGHT FROM EIN SOF
Fiction, ã 2009
THE INVENTOR
Historical fiction, ã 2009
ONE NIGHT IN COPÁN -- Chronicles of Madness Foretold
Short stories, ã 2012
ONE LAST DREAM
Screenplay (Registered with the American Writers’ Guild), ã 2012
UN DERNIER RÊVE
Screenplay (French-language version), ã 2012.
WHEN THERE’S DOUBT THERE’S HOPE
DON’T BELIEVE ANYTHING UNTIL ITS’ BEEN OFFICIALLY DENIED
John Pilger
FOREWORD
By Alan Riding, author of
And The Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris
W. E. Gutman’s life has been so crammed with twists-and-turns -- some unwelcome, many unexpected, a few stubbornly pursued -- that his moving and lyrical memoir has the punch of an epic novel, both fast-paced and reflective. Driven successively by a need to survive occupied France, by an intense curiosity, by an instinct for rebellion and a taste for adventure, Gutman has collided all too often with the shortcomings of humanity. But in A Paler Shade of Red, he finds solace in the power of words, free at last to display the idealism that explains his simmering fury with the world.
PROLOGUE
Say what you will but not all rivers run to the sea. Only those whose beds are deep and wide, whose waters swell with winter snows and summer rains will ever stream unhindered into Mother Sea’s embrace. Nor do the fountainheads from which they spring share common beginnings. Some come to life in silent majesty where ice-encrusted granite reaches for the sky. Others dribble out of a mossy cleft or scatter from a rocky crevice like strands of quicksilver. Brook, rivulet and creek merge at random. Tributaries join the headlong race and carve mighty waterways. They will all return to the source one day, transmuted by nature’s alchemy, ready for yet another cycle of endless self-renewal.
Some would-be rivers are stunted at birth. Their channels lack depth or vigor. Others bubble and billow for a while then vanish, never to be seen again. Exhausted, disheartened, others yet die of thirst along the way on some arid plain. A few meander without cause. They don’t seem to know where they’re headed, or why. They just obey their own life force, rushing heedlessly toward an estuary and surrendering at last to the rapture of the deep.
*
You are about to embark on a journey brimming with reminiscences. Reflected in its paces is the deepest dimension of self. Revelation is the fruit of foreknowledge. It entails a sense of déjà vu. It also evokes an anticipatory awareness of life’s looming exactions. Yet,