Overview

"Thomas Ausa, an obscure but adequately credentialed professor of American International Relations, at the end of his career imagined he might best illustrate what he called the """"themes"""" or """"frames"""" or """"buzzwords"""" of American foreign policy by telling a few stories about typical Americans living through these pandemic times in ways he hoped would illustrate terms like """"deterrence,"""" """"containment,"""" """"asymmetrical warfare,"""" and """"mutual assured destruction."""" The novel fragment he left attempts to do that. Whether he succeeded only future readers, if any, will tell. The afterword by Liv Wells, former U.S. Deputy Chief of Mission at several American embassies, doesn't help much."

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9781666730197

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"""American Foreign Policy is a manic dark comedy about pretentious academic analysis that uses literary narratives to explain American actions in the world. Written in a clever and sardonic tone, the novel sucks the reader into an erotic denouement meant to represent American international violence and mayhem. Whether the wacky, intertwined experiences of the novel's unusual characters actually capture American foreign policy is left to the reader to decide."" --Bland Addison, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, emeritus ""So, you like your humor dark? Here you have it, served up on a tarnished platter, with characters so low that we question the foundation of America. While 'endlessly self-abased' Creighton is the basis for riotously funny stuff, it doesn't seem so funny when we contemplate the focus of the lectures paralleling his own story: the finessing of American foreign policy. Why even think of spreading influence when we ourselves are such a deplorable, crumbling, irremediable mess?"" --Lee Fontanella, WPI, emeritus ""American Foreign Policy is bewildering and labyrinthine; a mad dash into the madness of American-establishment foreign policy acted out by raw human emotion and obscene behavior. Foreign policy is conducted by humans, not institutions, and for Zeugner, these human actions are a metaphor for American foreign policy."" --Bruce Stronach, Temple University, emeritus"

American Foreign Policy is a manic dark comedy about pretentious academic analysis that uses literary narratives to explain American actions in the world. Written in a clever and sardonic tone, the novel sucks the reader into an erotic denouement meant to represent American international violence and mayhem. Whether the wacky, intertwined experiences of the novel's unusual characters actually capture American foreign policy is left to the reader to decide. --Bland Addison, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, emeritus So, you like your humor dark? Here you have it, served up on a tarnished platter, with characters so low that we question the foundation of America. While 'endlessly self-abased' Creighton is the basis for riotously funny stuff, it doesn't seem so funny when we contemplate the focus of the lectures paralleling his own story: the finessing of American foreign policy. Why even think of spreading influence when we ourselves are such a deplorable, crumbling, irremediable mess? --Lee Fontanella, WPI, emeritus American Foreign Policy is bewildering and labyrinthine; a mad dash into the madness of American-establishment foreign policy acted out by raw human emotion and obscene behavior. Foreign policy is conducted by humans, not institutions, and for Zeugner, these human actions are a metaphor for American foreign policy. --Bruce Stronach, Temple University, emeritus

Author Information

John Zeugner, Professor of History, Emeritus, at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and a recipient of a NEA Discovery Grant for fiction, has published six novels and three collections of short stories or short novels.

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