American Romantic

by Ward Just

American Romantic Hardcover WardS.Just HoughtonMifflin

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Book Club, Novels, Historical

265 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Ward Just was a war correspondent, novelist, and short story author.

Ward Just graduated from Cranbrook School in 1953. He briefly attended Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. He started his career as a print journalist for the Waukegan (Illinois) News-Sun. He was also a correspondent for Newsweek and The Washington Post from 1959 to 1969, after which he left journalism to write fiction.

His influences include Henry James and Ernest Hemingway. His novel An Unfinished Season was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005. His novel Echo House was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1997. He has twice been a finalist for the O. Henry Award: in 1985 for his short story "About Boston," and again in 1986 for his short story "The Costa Brava, 1959." His fiction is often concerned with the influence of national politics on Americans' personal lives. Much of it is set in Washington, D.C., and foreign countries. Another common theme is the alienation felt by Midwesterners in the East.

Reviews

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

With American Romantic, author Ward Just hits another one out of the park for me [in the interest of full disclosure: I won this book from Goodreads Giveaway; this review represents my own opinions].

Just once again wins me over with his exquisite prose, and gentle, almost melancholic, atmosphere. I'm not that easily won over-I have an unfair aversion to white, male writers, especially those who appear to be affluent members of New England society. (The last is purely my prejudice; other than knowing he lives in Massachusetts, I have no knowledge of Mr. Just's background). He's not especially edgy. Although overtly political, his writing is hardly subversive. It's political primarily in that he often writes of that world. In this book, the lead character, Harry Sanders, is a diplomat. At the opening of the book, he is assigned to what was French Indochine, soon to become Vietnam, America's first lost war. Harry's world is that of gentle Connecticut villages, Sunday lunches with friends of his family around a table too big for his home, a table that brings the world to Harry and which, in turn, entices him to go out into it, abandoning his small world for the larger one in which America becomes a major player.

Harry is a romantic-pursuing the dignified calling of diplomacy in a world where the ugly truth is power and its brutality. During his time in Vietnam, Harry is forced to confront himself as part of that power. He is both drawn to it and wary of it. He is not a man of direct truths but of subtle gestures (unless of course the pretenses have to be dropped for some reason; then he shows himself as the power he represents).

Into the jungle of southeast Asia and Harry's career comes Sieglinde-a woman from as different a world than Harry's as can be imagined. A child of the German war, abandoned, orphaned, on the run from life, Sieglinde falls into Harry's life and the two of them, old devastated Europe, young rising America haunt each other's lives after a brief affair.

The symbolism, if I'm not imagining it, is not heavy-handed. Nothing Just does is obvious or clumsy. He is the most graceful writer I can imagine. Just's writing is pure pleasure, rhythmic, balanced, with the beauty of poetry. Reading Just is one of my favorite things to do in the world. Where most of the writers I love are positioned outside the structures of power, critiquing, responding, Just is writing from within. Critiquing, responding, gently, with wit and intelligence and lovely, lovely prose. I loved his book as I have loved the others I have read so far (An Unfinished Season, The Weather in Berlin, Forgetfulness, The Translator). His people are real but also, more than that. They are dreams of desire, wanting more than exists, seemingly grounded but also gestures of yearning.

Have I said I love Ward Just? And, just to be clear, let me say I loved American Romantic. It's a wonderful novel, deceptively realistic, totally accessible but, like the world he portrays, in the final analysis, elusive and resistant to grasp.

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

First, a big thank you to Goodreads FirstReads and to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for enabling me to be one of the early readers of this powerful new novel.

Ward Just has been writing books for over 40 years now and they just keep getting better and better. There’s a ring of authenticity to his books and insights that, for me, call to mind Graham Greene. For me, American Romantic ranks among his very finest.

Foreign services officer Harry Sanders is at the beginning of his career, yet realizes that his “fate was to witness events I didn’t understand and would never understand.” He is the American Romantic personified, clear-eyed enough to recognize the shifting reality of his role and yet pursuing it anyway. Early on, he is tapped for a potentially dangerous and sensitive mission, to meet with the enemies who may or may not be ready to begin a dialogue. The ensuing events could only be written by an author who is in-the-know and can carefully craft the intricacies of a diplomatic mission and its nuances.

We see Harry not only though his own eyes, but through those of his lover, a young German woman, Sieglinde, who is far more advanced in knowing what the world is all about. About Americans, Sieglinde says, “They take pride in their makeovers, a nation of actors, or should I say playwrights, each examining her own story. That’s the myth, anyhow. A nation in an eternal state of rewrite.” Although she views Harry as “a lovely man”, she knows instinctively that he is limited: “He was not as interested in his history as I was in mine.”

Put another way, Harry is incapable of a certain perceptiveness. When Sieglinde tells a fellow German that Americans are romantic, he counters, “I would not say romantic. I would say optimistic. Yet it is true that optimism is a precondition of the American temperment.”

In the second half of the book, set in the present, Harry has taken his place in the diplomatic community as an ambassador. He has married an attractive woman from Vermont named May (the only character who did not ring quite true to me) and has begun to recognize what he cannot recognize: “American was a parallax universe, powerful, hypnotic in its own way, quarrelsome and petulant, and irrelevant to him. His birth country had become thing of curiosity; the farther away from it, the more dangerous it seemed. A matter of optics.”

American Romantic is, at the same time, accessible and dense, with disquieting and acute observations of how our romanticism and optimism doom us to repeat scenarios – from Vietnam to Afghanistan. It’s a brilliantly written book and a strong indication that Ward Just – who is close to 80 years old – is far from slowing down.

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a big Ward Just fan thanks to Nancy Pearl and this is one of the more enjoyable ones I've read.

[Joe · Rating 2 out of 5]

Our protagonist, Harry Sanders, is a well to do east coast, (Connecticut), liberal, career foreign officer – bordering on stereotypical or at least typecast. Harry is also a familiar – and almost stereotypical - Ward Just character; an articulate, intelligent American, who spends as little time as possible in the US, and to put it mildly, is emotionally detached as he meanders through life.

In this novel the reader follows Harry’s life and times; specifically his State Dept. foreign postings and to a much lesser degree his stints back in Washington, DC; as well as his romances including a marriage. Harry’s first assignment in late ‘64/early ’65 is in Indochina, i.e. Vietnam, where two things happen. First Harry falls head over heels in love with a young German woman. And second our young inexperienced hero volunteers for a diplomatic foray which implodes and taints his career. Both of these “events” – professional and personal - haunt him for the rest of his life.

Unfortunately this opening of the story – the first two chapters – is the high point of the novel. Much like the previous Just novels I have read – and enjoyed – there are many threads exposed with this beginning to the story. Unlike the previous Just novels I’ve read, not only do these threads not lead anywhere – they simply didn’t hold this reader’s interest. (The book also became predictable – a phenomenon I would never associate with a Ward Just novel.)

On the plus side – the language and descriptions of “time and place” are excellent as one would expect from this author. The down side – the characters and story-line just never developed to any significant level – even taking into consideration this author’s “style”.

Great author – so-so book.

[Manray9 · Rating 3 out of 5]

American Romantic is not among Just's best work, but I was impressed with:

He was eager to read the newspaper's accounts of the presidential campaign, now in full October flower. A black man running for the presidency! Harry had lived outside the country for so long he could not fathom how such a thing could happen, yet here he was, a graduate of both Columbia University and Harvard Law, a white man's pedigree. He was a marvelous writer. The last time a writer had occupied the White House was the time of the Civil War, and what a writer he was. Teddy Roosevelt wrote, too, but not very well; and nothing at all from that time to this, except Wilson and Jimmy Carter. Some caution warranted there. Probably a writer's temperament would not fit well in the modern White House, too much time given over to the shape and music of sentences while all around him clamored for action. A writer required repose, moments of stillness wherein an angel might speak. However, angels did not always bring benevolent thoughts, and they were not always angels. Sometimes they arrived in disguise.

[Kasa Cotugno · Rating 5 out of 5]

We first meet Harry Sanders in Indochina in the early 60s. Young, somewhat idealistic, given the eponymous title by a lover. Harry could be a stand-in for American hubris, thinking diplomacy can make everything all right. Later, a more jaded Harry, likens his life in the diplomatic corps to Sisyphus and his rock. His wife, more pragmatic, objected to that point of view, "arguing that nothing was more idealistic than the pursuit of a doomed objective." Such is the baserock of this immersive novel. A surface reading could raise similarities to Graham Greene, but I found it to resemble one of my favorite books of recent years, Jane Gardham's Old Filth, with its similarities in theme, tone, and style. Not the least of which is Harry's relationship with his wife, May, very much like the couple in Gardham's book which evolved into a trilogy. Ward Just is much more economical in his prose, and his character study requires no further exploration.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Harry had killed a man and it set him apart.~from American Romantic by Ward Just

Another TBR shelf book that was waiting for its time was Ward Just's American Romantic. The passing of the author spurred me to take it down to read. My first acquaintance with Just was his Pulitizer Prize-nominated novel An Unfinished Season. I have been a fan ever since.

Just was a war correspondent in Vietnam; his novels explore the disenchantment of individuals who discover the failings of Washington D.C. politics.

The novels are beautifully written, focusing on the internal growth of the characters, not page-turners with gripping plotlines. My favorite kind of novel!

American Romantic begins with Harry's life-altering experiences in Vietnam and his brief love affair with a German ex-pat nurse. Harry's career takes him across the world as an ambassador. He marries a woman who isn't up to the role of ambassador's wife. His war wounds are constant reminders of his time in Vietnam and the boy soldier he killed. He grows old in a foreign land that is less foreign to him now than America and his Connecticut home. But the lessons garnered at his wealthy father's dinner table, with political guests converging on Washington D.C. news, while sidestepping things that can't be spoken, remain the most lasting.

After I read a book I do look at reviews. You can read an excellent review by Jonathan Yardley in the Washington Post here.

Favorite quotes from American Romantic:

We live in a turnstile of lies.

Americans are romantic, she said.
I would not say romantic. I would say optimistic. ..
...They take pride in their makeovers, a nation of actors, or should I say playwrights, each examining her own story. That's the myth, anyhow. A nation in an eternal state of rewrite.

What have you learned, Harry?... What have the years taught you?
At my father's table failure was more instructive, more revealing than success.
...all the stories they told had something missing...To go beyond that certain point might have--would have--undermined faith in the system....they were deep in their memories, pondering what they were unable--not unwilling but unable--to say aloud. The missing piece.

And do you want to know something else? The stakes are not small. This world is filled with mischief, and more than mischief. Time retreats. Time advances. Time is discontinuous. Time is always in motion, like the waves of a great sea. And failure is more commanding than success.

He had the idea that there were rules somewhere and that if you followed the rules things would come out all right...And without warning your world turned upside down. No logic to it.

[Elisabeth Stevens · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ward Just is the author of seventeen novels and has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. It is puzzling then to find that his 2014 offering, American Romantic turns out to be pallid and lifeless.

americanromanticWard Just, obviously, is an admirer of Joseph Conrad’s stories of foreigners in exotic settings. He also loves painters –– Italian Renaissance masters, Goya, French Impressionists, the American, Marsden Hartley –– and refers to them often. Unfortunately through, such preferences add little to his curiously thin story of the life of Harry Sanders, an American foreign service officer from a wealthy Connecticut family.

The central incident of this 265-page story takes place when Sanders is in Indochina in the 1960’s. Assigned to meet with insurgents in hope of arranging peace, he kills a young soldier in self defense. Around the same time, he spends six hours making love in a hammock with Sieglinde, a beautiful German who lost her family in World War II.

Sieglinde disappears, Sanders continues his foreign service career in many countries, marries a Vermont girl who likes horse riding, grows old. A book which, in the beginning with Sieglinde, promises to become a serious examination of the nature of war and its aftermath, drags on through lifeless, obituary-like character summaries. There are too few conversations or interactions between Harry and other important characters to make this novel meaningful –– or sustain interest.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, it certainly lives up to its title, but you have your doubts until the last page. "American Romantic" is the story of the life (and loves) of diplomat Harry Sanders. It begins in the early days of the Vietnam War, and ends on the coast of France. "American Romantic" is the ultimate "Washington" book, with politics, powerful people, and events big and small that make history History. But it's history with a light touch, with Just dropping a name here and there, but keeping his eyes on the story. The settings, conversations, countries, and people with their accompanying moral dilemmas are all so well done that I often thought that it wouldn't take much to move the narrative needle into the shadowlands of le Carre and Greene.

Harry was born to the diplomat's life, a product of Connecticut aristocracy, one populated with slightly boozey Sunday lunches with generals, politicians, and bankers. Harry's first major assignment is in Vietnam. There he meets Sieglinda, a pretty German X-ray technician, and they have a brief fling, which seems to be on the verge of something more. Chopin, colonial Vietnam, and a romantic hammock cast a spell, at least on Harry. But Sieglinda soon, without explanation, disappears on her hospital boat. What next follows for Harry is a dangerous assignment, at the request of the American ambassador, one that involves reaching out to the "other side." It turns out to be nothing much other than a political embarrassment, with Harry, and probably the ambassador as well, probably being pawns in a larger game. While not Harry's fault, one gets the sense that this episode probably damages Harry's career. Oh, he would go on to have a fairly successful career, but the sense is, in Just's highly nuanced style, that future assignments will always be second drawer. But life goes on, and Harry eventually meets, and marries May, a young Vermont woman.

May is portrayed, by Harry and others, as bit fragile for the diplomat's wife's life. That may be true, but this is partly due to May's growing sense, during Harry's many distant moments, that there was another woman. This lingering worry is compounded by a tragedy suffered by both Harry and May, one that May, in particular, can never really recover from. It's not a loveless marriage, but it's an increasingly distant one.

As the arc of Harry's life career flattens out, the story gains a rich texture as Harry reflects, as retirement looms, on his life, his loves, his regrets. He's not a bad man, but one at that bittersweet place in life where he must take stock of past and present as prepares for a past approaching future. Great whiskey, art, and fine music add to the novel's palette (Just has excellent tastes). If you like autumnal novels, you couldn't do better than "American Romantic." It even delivers, on the last page, the possible promise of an Indian Summer. Beautifully written and highly recommended.

[Roger Brunyate · Rating 4 out of 5]

"we will not speak of it further"

I almost titled this Our Man in 'Nam. The first hundred pages or so of this urbane and intriguing novel are reminiscent of Graham Greene's The Quiet American. Harry Sanders, a junior career diplomat, is stationed in Vietnam (clearly, although never named), and is involved in an incident way beyond the normal expectations of his post and rank. There is the same acute sense of foreigners living at ease in a country on the brink of war, and of dangerous forces heaving below the surface. The same feeling for danger that comes out of nowhere, and of snap decisions on which not only lives may turn, but also entire lifetimes. But Just does not attempt Greene's almost religious moral reckoning. Harry does not emerge from the Vietnamese jungle entirely spotless, but any question of his guilt is soon brushed aside, written up by his ambassador after a short enquiry, and buried in the files. Or, in a phrase that comes up more than once in the book, "We will not speak of it further."

For one glorious week during his time in Vietnam, Harry enjoys the company of a lover, Sieglinde, a young German x-ray technician visiting with a medical NGO. It is she who calls Harry "an American romantic," and his memory of her playing of Chopin is something that will stay with him throughout his life. But growing up in Hamburg in WW2, her experience of war is very different from Harry's patrician dilettantism. Their paths separate, but then Just devotes a long chapter to Sieglinde without reference to Harry, almost as though she were the protagonist rather than he. Suddenly we have jumped by several years, and Harry has become an ambassador in his turn, with a posting to Central Africa. Before too long, we have jumped again, and we see Harry in retirement in a corniche cottage in the South of France. There have been diplomatic concerns which Harry handles with consummate skill, though nothing to approach the incident in Vietnam. We will learn as much or more about his wife, May, as we did about Sieglinde, though she too has her secrets. But it is a subtly disconnected novel, a book of ellipses, whose interest lies less in the exquisitely managed glimpses into the later lives of its characters than in those things that are not said. "We will not speak of it further."

I was engaged throughout, but found it hard to decide what the book was about, if not this: unprocessed truths, and the ways they can shape a lifetime. Towards the end of the novel, there is a mystery of sorts, and Harry is given several opportunities to get to the bottom of it. He takes these only so far, then gives up; at bottom, he prefers not to know. A fellow ambassador, who understands something about his situation, asks him what he has learned in his life. "My father's table," Harry replies. He is referring to the weekly dinners at his family home in Connecticut, whose regular guests included a general, a congresswoman, a couple of bankers, people like that. The conversation (like this book) was full of interesting stories and inside comments on public life. But each of the guests seemed to have some invisible line of secrecy beyond which they would not cross. "We will not speak of it further."

Is this enough framework for a novel? Ward Just writes beautifully and ties it up neatly at the end, though he left me questioning his focus: was this intended as a critique of the American national character as expressed in world politics,* or was is just an interesting character story? I cannot entirely answer, but I do wonder if we are seeing the beginning of a trend of what I might call "After Happily Ever" novels—books about characters whose defining experiences come early in their lives, but who have many decades to live on afterwards? Last year, Sebastian Faulks published a collection of five stories on this principle, A Possible Life, and Richard Flanagan recently used a similar shape for his masterpiece The Narrow Road to the Deep North. It is a strangely oblique way of telling a story, but it also has a quality of truth that is quite moving, especially for older readers. When people like us look back on life, sometimes the ellipses are all we see. Often the things we do not speak about are the most revealing of all.

======

*
A friend of mine has made a very good case for the idea that this is what the novel is all about: taking Harry's optimistic bumbling as par for all American foreign policy. I can see this working for readers who are inclined to take such a view anyway, but it would not convince many who didn't. While the book may leave this point open for inference, it doesn't demonstrate it; after his first adventure, Harry is never involved in anything politically significant again, and all the later American failures occur very much offstage. Indeed, if I thought that this was the only point of the novel, I would have given it only three stars, instead of my original five which I have now reduced to four.

[Varun Singh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although there is not much of romance but more of hardships of life of a diplomat.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Readers who have sampled any of Ward Just’s previous seventeen novels, as I have not, probably do not need my recommendation to read American Romantic. Those who are not familiar with him may want to read my review first because American Romantic is not for everyone.

Our book club was divided. Some didn’t get beyond the initial chapters; others didn’t finish it. Expectations are such these days that some readers have little patience for works that require an investment––i.e., giving an author time to develop her or his story.

On that score American Romantic is not as dense or demanding as many other novels, although Just’s style does take getting used to. He writes in first person without quotation marks, as if dialogue is the narrator remembering as opposed to what’s taking place at that moment, and with first person, you are dependent on what the narrator reports about what he sees and thinks. There’s no omniscient narrator to fill in the background, which puts the burden on the reader to look for clues and to pay attention.

Just balances the story told by his protagonist, Harry Sanders, with the stories of two women––Seiglinde, a German nurse with whom he has a brief romance while stationed in Indochina before it becomes Vietnam, and May, the woman he marries. It’s not until you hear from the women that you truly appreciate Sanders.

One of the benefits of first person writing is the reader is exposed to the narrator’s inner life as well as his or her actions. In the hands of a writer of Just’s capability that adds depth and more fully connects us to the characters. One of the more poignant sections of the novel is Harry’s reaction to the death of his wife. I can’t think of an example of finer writing about a character’s personal loss. It brought tears to my eyes.

American Romantic is an inciteful social commentary as well as a “romance.” It exposes us to life inside the American diplomatic community from the 1950s almost to the present. It is an optimistic story since Sanders’ handling of himself and his duties stand up well in contrast to the standard portrayal of “ugly Americans.”

In addition to being romantics, Americans are described as optimists. American Romantic is a romantic, optimistic story. That’s rare in this climate where it’s easy to criticize and blame Americans for tragedies at home and abroad. It’s good to know someone else feels that way.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars
"The bare bones of a well-told story required coherence, ironic asides and a plot as well-knit and tied together as a jigsaw puzzle and somewhere in it a detail as provocative as a cat in a tree.''

That's from Ward Just's new novel American Romantic (Houghton Mifflin, digital galley), a well-told story if ever there was one, complete with such provocative details as a cat in a tree, a meeting in the jungle, a girl in a hammock, a car over a cliff. All play a part in the life of diplomat Harry Sanders, "a connosieur of the counterfeit and inexplicable.''

Just writes about diplomats and foreign affairs with the silky acuity that John le Carre writes about spies and espionage. As his ambassador mentor tells Harry, "our business is not a straight-line affair. We deal with curves and switchbacks, the yes that means no and the no that means maybe. We are obliged to be comfortable with ambiguity.''

Harry's career with the State Department is marked by his first posting to Saigon in the early 1960s when his covert negotiations with a communist leader lead to disaster. The event will follow him to more manageable postings in Africa and Europe, as will his memories of a brief affair with the beautiful, restless Sieglinde. Still, his later marriage to the younger May, eager to escape her stern Vermont roots, is mostly happy, and the two move smoothly in diplomatic circles. They are liked and respected, although Harry is never the high-flyer he might have been, and May has secrets of her own. Over time, Harry's youthful romanticism is tempered by realism, he wonders about America's place in the world and his own. Is the cottage in the south of France a retreat or a reward? Has Harry made history or has history made him?

American Romantic is Just's 18th novel, and one of his best. My favorite novel of the year, so far.

from On a Clear Day I Can Read Forever http://patebooks.wordpress.com

[Claire · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received American Romantic as part of a Goodreads giveaway.

Harry Sanders works in the foreign service in Southeast Asia in the turbulent 1960s. Following a passionate love affair with a German woman, Sieglinde, and a professional catastrophe, he returns home defeated. There he meets his eventual wife, May, while Harry's career continues in posts around the world. Though no matter how far he travels, the two women who populate his past and present continue to affect him deeply.

The writing is very good, though, for it being a character study, I found it somewhat hard to connect with the protagonist Harry. Lots of introspection, but I couldn't muster up that much feeling (either like or dislike) for him. Just's writing about life in the foreign service, both the darkness and the lushness of foreign surroundings, is quite good, though I tend to prefer a bit more plot.

[Jak60 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not the best by Ward Just, in my opinion; I loved Echo House and A Dangerous Friend but this one was a bit of a rambling story, lacking a singleminded focus and cohesiveness.
American Romantic is essentially the story of the life of a diplomat
it meanders from dangerous assignments during the Vietnam war to descriptions of the life of a diplomat, from love stories to rather melancholy scenes from the buen retiro of the old diplomat in south of France.
The prose is always elegant but rather shallow and very introspective here and it did not live up to the initial expectations.

[Rich Goldblatt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ward Just's American Romantic had great potential as it offered new insight into the ramifications of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia. Unfortunately, for this reader, the story sputtered and characters became more enigmatic as the story unfolded. The author rushed[ the narrative and couldn't wait to accelerate the protagonist into old age for no reason other than draw a predictable conclusion.

[Marc · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just is a good novelist. The plot was a good one, but it meandered a bit too much for my taste. I was also put off by his decision not to use quotes with the dialogue. Not sure I understand why he did this. I am sure it made things confusing at times. But maybe that's just me.

[Mary Wallan · Rating 4 out of 5]

In American Romantic, author Ward Just takes on the thorny issue of American interference in the world.

At the beginning of the book, we find protagonist Harry Sanders early in his career in Southeast Asia at the start of the Vietnam conflict. He is dedicated but ambivalent about America's purpose in the conflict and potential positive outcomes.

...You had to beiieve without question in the virtue of the American experiment, the project itself. Not that the nation was blessed by God. God's purposes were enigmatic. At the very most you had to believe that God was not frowning. God did not disapprove. But his thumb wasn't on the scale either.

When it is rumored that the enemy might agree to a brokered peace, Harry is assigned to meet with an envoy, deep in the jungle. The disastrous meeting Harry scars for life.

His career continues at many other outposts, all over the world, realizing that diplomacy is a delicate balancing act that often moves at a snail's pace. But by the time we see him retired to the south of France, he is quite jaundiced about America's role in the world.

...America was a parallax universe, powerful, hypnotic in its way, quarrelsome and petulant, and irrelevant to him. His birth country had become a thing of curiosity, the farther away you were from it,the more dangerous it seemed.

The book is well crafted - very well observed, with excellent atmosphere and well-developed characters. For Sanders, being an American and a diplomat becomes a barrier to his most important personal relationships. At the end, the author nods to Philip Roth's 1998 Pulitzer prize winner American Pastoral. That book deals with the ugly underside of the American Dream, American Romantic finds the same ugliness in its international relations.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. Just is a very good writer. But I appreciate it for more than good prose. I was born 11 years after the protagonist, accordingly I can relate to a few of the novel’s events/situations a little better than a person much older or younger. Also, like the protagonist, I worked for a government in ways that required me to be distant from my home office much of the time. That’s where the similarities end. I’m not as intelligent or wealthy, and I worked for a smaller government. But I was able to relate.

Some reviewers have commented that they couldn’t find much of a story. I was satisfied in that regard by working from the title. American-ness is a recurrent issue. The protagonist’s American wife is not happy overseas. The protagonist recognizes that he is inherently American, and is an instrument of the American government, but can’t imagine retiring in America. The protagonist’s first love has a problem with the American character.

The protagonist is an American Romantic. Just is using “Romantic” in two different ways. There are the modern senses involving the excitement associated with love, and the related remoteness from everyday life. But there is also the medieval sense of a quest by a heroic individual with overdeveloped bravery and sense of duty.

There were multiple mentions of specific works of landscape art of a Romantic character by painters such as the German Romanticist, David Caspar Friederichs and the American Modernist Marsden Hartley.

I can’t help thinking that Just’s title, American Romantic was suggested, perhaps subliminally, by Dreiser’s title, American Tragedy.

[Norman Metzger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ward Just, who died this December, was one of a small group of journalists -- David Halberstam, Neal Sheehan, and a few others -- who told, or tried hard to, of the brutal realities behind the Vietnam War and the lies that somehow propped up its continuance against inevitable disaster. But in time he gave that up and turned to fiction to reveal even more truths about the ways of Washington in all its dimension s-- the venality (again), often moral obtuseness, displays of true patriotism despite against sometimes tough odds. Just observed an American governance where people "speak in low voices without using verbs.” In "American Romantic", Just sets out in lovely Hemingway-like prose the true ways of American diplomacy, across several decades, but having as a North star the Vietnam War and the hopeless efforts to somehow blunt the terrible end results. The central figure is Harry Sanders who rises from junior levels to become ultimately an ambassador. There are many reasons to read this fine book, but for me the central and most telling event is when the US Ambassador to the South Vietnamese government lays realities on Harry Sanders, both before a fraught and ultimately hopeless mission aimed at ending the war and after its total failure.

[Patrick Slavin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my first Ward Just novel. He didn’t like adjectives (or adverbs) and had a direct, wire-service style of writing fiction. Journalists used to brag that Le Monde was their favorite paper because it had no photographs or charts - just words. Just wrote like an old school Le Monde journalist and had the unusual style of exceedingly long paragraphs; in a few places in this mid-size novel (265 pages) both “facing” pages run in the same, single paragraph. Also no use of quotation marks. There’s lots of dialogue, but presented in a whittled-down, “let’s get to it” summary. The novel starts slowly, but Just knew how to hold a storyline and like a good novelist, surprises the reader at strategic points. The narrator is an American diplomat, an expat life Just knew well as a former war correspondent. While far from perfect, the narrator is a good American and to paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, when he dies he will go to Paris. The narrator is also from Salisbury, Connecticut, near one of my childhood homes.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Harry Sanders is a young member of the diplomatic corps stationed in South Vietnam in the early 1960s. One day the American ambassador approaches him with a mission to meet in a secret jungle location with an enemy official to see is a diplomatic settlement can be reached. The mission goes poorly and soon Harry is just trying to get out there with his life. Scarred both physically and mentally, he later becomes an ambassador himself with postings in several remote locations around the world. In addition, we hear the stories of two women in his life. The first was a German ship’s nurse who suffered as a child during World War Two and with whom he a brief affair in Vietnam. The other is his American wife who has an unhappy childhood of her own and whom tragedy continues to befall despite her best efforts. This is a book about a full life with all its ups, downs, and sudden sideways lurches that any reader can relate to.

[Bowdoin]

Reader in group - I'm a big fan of Ward Just, a great American novelist who is not as well-known as he should be. He writes above all about the political world and the people in it-- Chicago in the '50s has been a rich subject for him and Washington. He has also written about Americans overseas, expat. life in Berlin in one book and in Paris in another. American Romantic takes place mostly in Vietnam in the early 1960s place Just knows from his years covering the war there as a reporter for the Washington Post. His protagonist, Harry Sanders, not yet 30, idealistic and from wealthy liberal Connecticut, is a Foreign Service Officer in the embassy in Saigon just at the moment American troops are being drawn into war. Assigned to a dangerous mission, Harry has a harrowing experience in the jungle that changes his life forever. In the latter half of the book Harry is older, retired after a long diplomatic career and living in the South of France. The two women Harry loves both appealing and more complex than even he knew--also play an important part in the story. In American Romantic, as in his other books, Just does an amazing job evoking the various places and time in which his story unfolds. His characters are substantive and so is his understanding of the political world.

[Marvin · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is my third try at a Ward Just novel. He seems like a novelist that I should find appealing. But I just have not found any of the ones I've tried very interesting. Two of the three (including this one) have been okay--nothing to object to--just not that interesting; the other one didn't even rise to that level for me. This one is about a career diplomat. The first half focuses on one life-altering, career-shaping event when he was a young man serving during a conflict in an unnamed country--almost certainly the Vietnam Conflict. The last half follows the rest of his diplomatic career, for some reason focusing much of its attention on his wife, who never finds the diplomatic life a comfortable fit.

[Dana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall this was an enjoyable, albeit rather sad, book. It's a bit slow, but I found the characters interesting--my book club agreed that the female characters were the most compelling. I do not know much about the lives of diplomats despite having friends who do work in such capacities. The book starts in a linear format and then jumps around in time for a bit, but all in all is easy to follow and the structure made the narrative richer. I found Ward Just to be a talented writer and I liked the way he ended the book.

[John Addiego · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a real favorite for me. The style is clean and engaging, cerebral at times, passionate and moving at others. Just has a unique sense of what it's like to be an American in a foreign country. The protagonist has harrowing experiences in Viet Nam, not as a soldier but (before our war there heated up) as a secret government negotiator. These dangerous episodes combine with a love affair to shape the rest of his life as an embassy employee in far-flung and varied places. The overall effect is rich and provocative, especially as we think of our role in the power and politics of the world.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

...would not go higher than a 3.5 here!

This story is about a bygone era where governement service was a noble cause undertaken by an American nobility that is less at the forefront of power as in the stories recounted here.

There is always a nostalgic feel to these types of novels that send you off to a time of greater "innocence", but in this case, it just lacks interesting plot lines...

[Jerry Sattin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ward Just is (was) one of the most perceptive, thoughtful novelists of recent times. If you are looking for a fast moving plot, this is not the book for you. It if you are interested in character and insight, Just can’t be beat. Simply read the early chapter on his encounter in the jungle. Compelling!

[John M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

While not a fan of "fine literature" (dysfunctional families, depressing storylines), I found American Romantic to be quite entertaining. Good solid writing and an astute look at American diplomacy at the turn of the 20th century.

[Jas · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got taken in by the idea that this largely concerns Vietnam. That's just one section.

The best part is a realistic picture of a woman vanishing with no warning after great sex. I've been there more than once. The author gets it just right.