Matterhorn reminds me a little of The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead in I had to look up to see if the books were fiction or non-fiction. I found Marlantes’ depiction of war that believable and visceral. While not an expert in any way, I have deployed twice so I understand some of what that means. Unlike the characters from Bravo Company in this novel, I never spent time “in the bush” and if I am being completely honest, they would look down on me […]
Mary Jane-ing the Pacific Theatre, one atoll at a time
There are good war novels, and there are bad war novels. And occasionally, a well-intentioned reader like myself gets saddled with an excruciating mess like Never Too Old to Cry. This is a fictionalized memoir of D. G. McWilliams, a veteran of the 1st Marine Division, which fought in the Pacific Theater of the Second World War. McWilliams’ endeavor was to try to document the war from a very intimate perspective, primarily through the eyes of a small cadre of Marine recruits. Paramount among them […]
Disposable tin soldiers
A child of the 80s, I grew up on a distorted view of Vietnam. Free love was a whispered aphorism that seemed almost impossible in the age of Ronald Reagan, televangelism, and HIV. Peace on earth, a barely remembered dream amidst the bluster of Cold War bravado and the cinematic blood lust of Sylvester Stallone, Chuck Norris, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The 60s were dead. But in its place, like some perverse cosmic satirist with a zeitgeist-altering pen, was a hyper-visualized mirror image that exaggerated its […]