Anything which is thought or written will contain biases, however, Kluge’s biases are not thinly veiled, nor are they hidden, nor are they attempted to be excused. A problem with critiquing a text such as this is that it is not attempting to be academic. The writer did not write it as such. From the weave of the narrative, it seems more like a diary, a cathartic expression of his loss, regret, and so on.

            However, people not of Micronesia will undoubtedly perceive this text, and so many like it as God’s truth. Micronesia in terms of academic discourse is so small, that as I mentioned before, that everything becomes canonized, and in a gross continuation almost everything is believed.

            It is therefore doubly frightening, that Kluge’s work is not academic, for now he holds now ethical restraints for what he writes. He has no principles with which he must hold on to, in his writing, save for his own emotions. He speaks with the authority of a journalist and his career allows this, however, his narrative is almost an attempted history, from his perspective. It cannot be denied that he was at the center of

            His problem here is in his lack of effort, to understand the other side. His attraction of the mestizo classes of the islands, of course undermines his “once and for all” hippie sensibilities. He did not go to the islands for altruistic reasons, and he did not stay there to mingle with the villagers either. He remains firmly entrenched in the brain trust of these islands. His interview schedules on each of his trips are crowded by the islands elite, often times the politicians or prominent businessman.

            He attempts to excuse this discrepancy early on in the book, by summing up the American influences in a single paragraph;

       Voluntary Poverty did not impress. “Living on the level of the people” came off as naïve, as downright wacky, when it was from that level that the people were trying to escape. We learned local languages while local learned English. We hitchhiked while they shot by us in brand new cars. We wore zoris- rubber thronged sandals- while they aspired to white Bally Loafers. The conflict was basic, classic, poignant. The Peace Corps worried about American military bases while the island’s brightest kids rushed off to Guam to enlist in the very war many of us had come to Micronesia to avoid. We worried about identity-theirs, not ours-culture, ecology, the life giving reefs, the unspoiled lands, dying handicrafts, and the clean lagoons. While locals pondered fast roads, new cars, big hotels, and a ticket to Honolulu (19).

   In a single stroke of journalistic carnage and atrophy, the psyche of all the Micronesians is displayed. But the tone of this section, as well as other with regards to the changes in Micronesia, are not tinged with happiness, or joy, compassion, or hope. They are filled with disdain, with sarcasm. Kluge is neck deep in his Amero-centrism, and the less he struggles in the quick sand of his own biases, the further down he sinks.

            He had come to these islands as a dual refugee. First from his civic life, which as he claims, marked him as a prime choice for Vietnam, and second from his American/ Anglo life.

            Take into account the film, The Beach, starring Leonardo Dicaprio. The story of the film, is that a young man is seeking something more, something real in the world. He is sick, and he is tired of the American way of life, which is all flash, bang and no substance. He finds an island off the coast of Thailand, in which dozens of post industrialized people who have felt the same urge have congregated. They all live together, off the land, in supposed harmony in nature.

            Young men and women of all races and cultures have a desire to “see the world.” From the Herman Mellvile Novel, Moby Dick, Ishmael, the narrator, makes a foolish choice, picking the most demeaning and lowest of labor, as a whaler, in order to “see the world.”

            Even on Guam Chamorro men joined Whaling vessels in the 19^th century in order to see what was beyond Cocos Islands and Ritidian Point. In the 20^th century, they joined the Army or the Navy. Even Kluge exposes this exodus more in the islanders than in himself, or his own race. They were all leaving the island to join the war that Kluge and those like him were hiding out from in Micronesia, and Ethiopia, Turkey and every other 3^rd World Hamlet, they could dump college kids.

            You have to be careful of what Kluge says, he is after all chasing a rainbow in these islands. He is attempting to fill himself with something more, attempting to compensate for what he sees as an empty culture, but living in other, half way around the world.

Part 3

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