Crank

About the Book

Crank was written over a 30-year period, and covers the experiences of 40. Its “fiction” and “non-fiction” mix retains no more purity than does Mann or Conrad or the U.S. News. The settings – Copenhagen, St. Petersburg, Conakry, Brookline, Port-au-Prince and others – gave the props, not the essence of the experiences. Like strophic patterns of the French chanson, they stood the logic upright and sustained the tale, never diving for the observer’s heart but gaining ground on it by inadvertence. The foreign postings brought fresh news, conspiracy, javelins into the unsuspecting heart, then succeeded one another like lovers decamping before dawn.

About the Author

Whitman has worked as a State Department official in Denmark, Spain, South Africa, Haiti, and Cameroon. In Washington he has served with the African and European Bureaus, and the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. Topics of his forty articles range from current affairs, African Studies, travel profiles of Europe, and of cultural leaders on three continents. His books are Kaidara, a presentation and study of a 1000-year-old African folk epic; Madrid Inside Out, a guide to residence for foreigners in Spain; One Step Up, a manual for buyers of stringed instruments; and A Haiti Chronicle, the Undoing of a Latent Democracy 1999-2001.