First and Last Words

Stuart Friebert’s First and Last Words entwines memoir and stories, shifting seamlessly between first and last person, as memoir in 1949, an American exchange student shipping to Allies-occupied Germany,

“Moonily in love, I was largely oblivious to most of what had happened as a result of Nazi crimes, not to mention the German I was taking in with every breath, trying to navigate its foreign waters.”

A year abroad in Europe changes his life.

“Of course, my year in Germany did bring forces and facts gradually to bear on my cloistered mind, living as I did in a dorm among ‘the walking dead,’ as fellow German students referred to themselves. Many had lost body parts, so watching the men wash in the communal bathroom brought on fits of flinching.”

His memoir becomes back stories in third person, as he remembers his ancestors: Eddie and his spunky fiancé, Gertie, who prepare for their adult lives in Milwaukee, on November 11, 1918, almost out of high school, when Germany signs the Armistice agreement after World War I. Into stories of campus life and fishing,

“The next morning, at the office, David said they cooked the crappie too long, turned it to mush. But the pickerel, in spite of all its bones, that strong gamey odor, the fish almost no one bothers with, was wonderful.”

In Czechoslovakia shortly after The Prague Spring of 1968, Russian tanks invaded Czechoslovakia in a show of force against anyone who wanted to democratize. Stuart is there not long after, working on a book of translations. The times are repressive but, thanks to folks like Stuart, the literature secure. Stuart’s book echoes the early James Joyce and reminds us that war and intelligence continue.