Roland Menge grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota, and graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1967. For more than 30 years, he was employed as a technical writer in the telecommunications industry. As a literary writer, he has published two historical novels addressing the impact of war on American society. In addition, he is author of a novel and a set of stories based on his experience as a cab driver in San Franciso in the 1970’s. This year (2026), he completed a set of stories on religious behavior called VESSEL OF GOD. On a separate track, over the years, Menge has composed imaginal stories and poems. He also has a set of traditional poems that will be available soon.
Menge’s literary works are summarized below.
AGAINST THE WAR (2013) examines the response of the Vietnam War generation to the Vietnam War. It follows the intertwined lives of four friends, rowing teammates, who graduate from college in 1967, at the height of the war. Two of the friends become involved in the war, as a combat pilot and medic; the other two become involved in the anti-war movement and in the counter-culture that arose from that in the latter war years. Also documented in the story are the four women who become the eventual spouses of these men and who participate themselves in the monumental changes occurring around them. Against the War is built on an exact timeframe of May 1967 to October 1971 with substantial and accurate descriptions of historical, political, and cultural events. The primary purpose of this novel is to facilitate an inquiry into the legacy of these idealistic young Americans, born from 1940 to 1946, who fought in or opposed the war presented to their generation.
Secondarily, but of central importance to the design and range of the novel, Against the War is intended to provide a muralistic, historically-accurate view of American life at this critical juncture in its history, when,—as Richard Nixon is quoted as saying in the epigraph,—America is “caught in war, wanting peace; torn by divisions, wanting unity.” That is why the Apollo 11 moonwalk, symbolic of national hope, is the center event in this novel. Included is this verbal mural are physical, political, and cultural structures and interactions between people representative of the era portrayed,
PUSH TO APPOMATTOX (2021) tells the cross-societal story of the Union’s “national push” in the last year of the American civil war. This novel contains a thorough military history of the transcontinental campaigns,—from Virginia to Texas,—managed by Ulysses S. Grant. It has both historical and fictional characters. The main historical characters are Abraham Lincoln, Mary Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Varina Davis, Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, William Tecumseh Sherman, Philip Henry Sheridan, and Jubal Early. The main fictional characters are members of a Virginian extended family with sympathies and soldiers on both side of the war and with romances spanning the two sides. The novel documents the political events and key groups affected by the war in both North and South in a comprehensive and fair-handed manner.
Thematically, this novel has seven threads: (1) the “national push” as envisioned and executed by Grant; (2) acceptance of “total war” and its psychological effect on Lincoln and his generals; (3) the emerging new status of women; (4) the emerging new status of blacks; (5) national division versus reconciliation; (6) federal versus confederal models of government; and (7) the pacifist perspective and related emergence of existentialist moral values. These threads were chosen because they were harbingers of important issues in our modern era.
By design PUSH TO APPOMATTOX provides a panoramic depiction of American life at a critical juncture in America history. At the juncture portrayed, even amidst this internecine struggle, Americans on both sides of the war are striving for the national unity that will make it possible for the American nation, less than a hundred years old, to “realize itself westward” in its felt “manifest destiny” of becoming a great experiment in democracy spanning the entire continent .
Menge’s realistic San Francisco stories include the following.
A BAD RELATIONSHIP (1978) is a novel portraying a San Francisco cab driver whose life is complicated by intellectual and artistic endeavors, romance fraught with indecision, and struggles with drugs. This novel provides a realistic view of the San Francisco counterculture in the decade subsequent to the “flower child” era, when the Vietnam War was winding down and the city was changing from the beatnik-hippie jewel of the 1950’s and 1960’s to a modern city plagued with modern city problems. This novel depicts the cabbie world of constant motion, night-time lights, and often-carnival-type human interactions, and the cabbie intellectual scene with its authentic, often drug-induced philosophical and spiritual speculations.
SEVEN CITY STORIES(1982) describes the lives of isolated, marginal people in San Francisco in the 1970’s, focusing on their struggles for survival and meaning and their oblique encounters with other people. These stories include:
- “The Blue Jade Heart”: is the tale of a burn-disfigured mulatto who sells flowers in bars and who falls in love with a hooker in a bar on his route.
- “Three Musketeers”: follows a father with his two little children — “Tommy, Daddy, and Jody,” he tells them, “we’re the three musketeers!”– as he takes them in a cab to visit their dramatic, desperate mother.
- “Next of Kin”: describes a family-like friendship between a cabbie and an old woman that he defends from being accosted in an alley.
- “Michele”: tells of the guilt-racked encounter of a young cabbie intellectual with a teen-age hooker who claims she enjoys her work. This story is about the cabbie’s presumption of an artistic license that, as he interprets it, allows him to venture into this world.
- “A Brief Affair”: tells of an encounter between a cabbie and a hooker who enlists his help to drive her home to take care of her kid.
- “Ruby Ellington”: is a story of more than 100,000 words, told in a continuous flow without breaks, as the central character, a dancer on the Broadway Strip, struggles to overcome a sense of inner dryness, centered in her womb, that she associates with an inability to find spiritual meaning.
- “John Grafton”: describes a sexually tortured aspiring artist who falls in love with someone he thinks at first is a biological woman, but who turns out to be something he cannot accept, turning his world asunder.
Menge’s imaginal works include the following.
EX TERTIO QUARTUS (1976) is a short-novel-length, first- person apology written by a medieval monk, Brother Erato, an inscriber of scrolls and maker of stained glass windows. His reason for telling the story, this monk makes clear, is to defend his thematic progression from traditional imagery to a vision of beauty subsumed by chaos. For this vision, Brother Erato has been denounced by many of his fellow monks, but defended by cultlike followers, in the medieval-like era, floating in time, in which he lives.
SYMBOLIC POEMS (written in 1976, published in 2025) is a set of nine quasi-imagistic poems reflecting the author’s therapeutic journey through a series of mental states. These are formal poems with rhyme schemes. These poems are currently being illustrated by Susan Menge and will be released when the illustrations are completed.
SYMBOLIC STORIES (currently being collected into a single book) are experiments unrelated in method or style, but with all having in common that they tell of events that could not occur in the real world. For example, “Immanuel Gonzales” describes a peasant who, after falling from a cart, does botched reparative surgery on his own face, and who thereafter refuses offers to return him to a normal state.
Menge has a collection of SELECTED POEMS written throughout his lifetime that are being collected into a single book and will be published when available.
VESSEL OF GOD is presently (2025) submitted for U.S. copyright. It will be published on amazon KDP as soon as that process is completed (probably in about April of 2026).
VESSEL OF GOD is a set of seven inter-related stories exploring the felt relationship of human beings with the perceived superior being that they refer to as God. These accounts of intense spiritual aspiration and behavior take place entirely on the human side of the interaction. If there is a being on the God side, that is never determined for certain within the context of these stories.
The seven stories are: (1) “Emma Flor” is the story of a girl who rebels against the religious dictums of her father and who thereafter, throughout the rest of her life, struggles with the results of her rebellion. (2) “Faye and Ernest” tells of a single, middle-aged woman who cares for and nurses her brother as he declines due to a stroke and dementia. (3) “The Altar Boy” describes the coming of age of a 13-year-old boy who tries to use prayer to advance his efforts in track. (4) “Vessel of God” is the life story of a young woman who contracts multiple sclerosis and who tries to perfect herself as a “vessel of God” to safeguard herself and her children. (5) “Mulkie’s Path” follows the self-defined “path” of a former Catholic seminarian who seeks to participate in the refinement of creation through cosmic consciousness. (6) “Uncle Lar” tells of a lonely man who fails to establish the familial connection he yearns for while engaging in a silent communion with God through the beauty of city lights he observes on his night-time walks. (7) “Thanksgiving” describes the holiday activities of a devoutly religious grandma who reflects on the heritage and traditions of her family
Roland Menge is currently working on a family saga that takes place in the mid-20th Century, spanning the Depression, World War Two, and the war in Vietnam. It is a story of the “great generation.”
Menge has a website at againstthewarnovel.com dedicated to the AGAINST THE WAR novel. This website that you are reading now is rolandmenge.com. It provides downloadable PDFs of most of Menge’s major works plus downloadable project plans, self-evaluations, compositional notes, resources, reviews, and responses to reviews.
December 2025