Black Sheep Books
Five and Ten Press
3814 Livingston Street N.W.
Washington, D.C.
20015-2803
(202) 244-9163
6. "Innocents of the Latter Day: Modern Americans Abroad." 98 pages. Published in May 1997. $10.
By Ambassador James W. Spain,
a retired American Foreign Service Officer, resident of Sri Lanka, and writer of distinction.
Eleven stories about the Foreign Service of the United States. Set in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Iran, Turkey, Greece, Kenya, Tanzania, and Switzerland. They tell of the ups and downs, ins and outs, problems and passions of the American diplomatic service,
using wit, insight, satire, irony, and nostalgia to beguile the reader. They concern exasperating VIP visits, egomaniacal officials, missionaries with a mission, American exiles and lost souls, consular predicaments, spooky encounters, generation gaps, obnoxious host governments, and eccentric ambassadors. This is the Press's first work of fiction.
Table of Contents
1.Going Home
2.A Most Important VIP
3.The Right Way to Make Bricks
4.A Question of Justice
5.Counting on the Consul
6.The VP Makes a Point
7.The Younger Generation
8.Living Dangerously
9.The Art of Persuasion
10.Copping a Plea
11.The Girls from Mkubwakuwa
As in Mark Twain's time, Americans still go abroad.
They meet the local people and their fellow expatriates. They
have fun. They get in trouble. With amazing frequency and
poignancy, they die.
Some of them come to feel like Kipling's cat:
"He walked by himself and all places were alike to him." Yet they
are capable of larger-than-life-size acts. Kindness that would
never be conceived in St. Louis is common in Cairo or
Singapore. Malice and egoism that would be beyond the pale in
Portland are casually accepted in Bangkok or Vienna.
The stories told here are pure fiction. The names are not
real. Many of the localities have been shifted. However, every
one of them was inspired by something that actually happened.
Most of the characters have a quality of innocence about
them. Sometimes it leads to good, sometimes to evil. But
innocence is not to be despised. There are worse things
Americans could take abroad with them.
My profound thanks go to Robert V. Keeley, long-time
friend and fellow Foreign Service officer, whose Five and Ten
Press polished and published these stories, and to his daughter,
Michal Keeley, who edited them.
James W. Spain
Colombo, Sri Lanka
May 1997
{ INTRODUCTION }
{ PUBLICATIONS OF THE FIVE AND TEN PRESS 1995-2005 }
{ ORDER FORM }
{ROBERT KEELEY'S BIOGRAPHICAL DATA}
{D.C. GOVERNANCE: IT'S ALWAYS BEEN A MATTER OF RACE AND MONEY}
{ANNALS OF INVESTING
STEVE FORBES VS. WARREN BUFFETT }
{ THE FILE: A PRINCETON MEMOIR }
{ESSAYS FAST AND LOOSE: A CHRISTMAS MISCELLANY }
{LETTERS MOSTLY UNPUBLISHED}
{ INNOCENTS OF THE LATTER DAY: MODERN AMERICANS ABROAD }
{ ESSAYS COLD AND HOT: A NEW YEAR"S POTPOURRI}
{ MSS REVISTED }
{ THREE SEA STORIES }
{CREATURES OF THE EARTH AND THE MIND}
{MY COMMUTE}
{SIC TRANSIT}
{THE GREAT PHELSUMA CAPER - A DIPLOMATIC MEMOIR}
{THE PORT OF MISSING MEN - A NOVEL}
{ POETRY MOSTLY OFF THE BEATEN TRACK }
{ PARTING THE CURTAIN }
{ ESSAYS NEAR AND FAR: AS A NEW CENTURY DAWNS }
{ RANDOM THOUGHTS, ANECDOTES, AND MEMORIES OF A BOYS' LATIN SCHOOL OF BALTIMORE THAT IS NO MORE }
{ FROM THE HEARTLAND }
{ ONE OF THE VERY BEST MEN }
{ A STORY GOES WITH IT }
{ LOW CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS IN HIGH PLACES: John Mitchell and Watergate. }
{ THE WORLD ACCORDING TO WHITBECK. }
{ AN AMERICAN SOLDIER IN WORLD WAR I. }
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