| |||||||||||||||
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Fantasyland,
By Smoten (Philadelphia, PA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Aftershocks (Mass Market Paperback)
Former Marine Louis Dorian Kahan raped, sodomized, and strangled seventeen year-old Vietnamese refugee Le My Hanh in Queens, New York, on April 15, 1977. Mr. Kahan called the police the next day, told them what he had done, and led them to the body. At trial, Mr. Kahan was found not guilty by reason of insanity and institutionalized. The psychiatrists for both the prosecution and the defense testified that although Mr. Kahan knew that he was raping and killing the victim, he did so while laboring under the delusion that he was back in Vietnam and using the standard operating procedure taught him by the Marine Corps for interrogating Viet Cong suspects. Clearly delusional, and clearly the correct verdict. The problem with "Aftershocks" is that Mr. Bain treats Mr. Kahan's fantastic ramblings as if they were true.Mr. Kahan served in the Marine Corps as a cook, meaning that the only time he saw the bush was when he flew over it on his way from one giant base camp to another. He was a combat veteran in the loosest sense of the term-he served in secure areas of a war zone. Whatever delusions Mr. Kahan was prone to had their genesis well before his Vietnam service and his already shaky grip on reality was exacerbated by drug use. Mr. Bain gives credence to every one of the unfortunate Mr. Kahan's bizarre delusions, the strangest being that Mr. Kahan was detailed to strangle Viet Cong suspects on the orders of officers, followed closely by his fantasy that rape was routinely used to force suspects to "talk". Instead of taking these tales for what they are, the ravings of a madman, Mr. Bain says that "(t)he pattern cropped up in nearly every unit of the armed forces in Vietnam: systematic rape, looting, destruction of crops and dikes of questionable or no military significance, wanton killing of civilians". That bald statement is made without attribution. There are no footnotes in "Aftershocks" and Mr. Bain relies repeatedly on blind quotes and other stylistic tricks to lend an air of verisimilitude to the book. For example, while listing a parade of horribles allegedly committed by U.S. troops in Vietnam, Mr. Bain writes things like "... a man from Michigan" liked to rip the clothes from civilians, and "...a Marine from New Jersey" gave a Vietnamese child chocolate then set his hair on fire. No names, but the listing of states implies familiarity, implies truth. "Aftershocks" is not poorly written. To the contrary, Mr. Bain has skillfully woven the parallel lives of killer and victim to create a compelling tale. Mr. Bain is a talented and serious writer, as his later works have shown. "Aftershocks", however, is a first book by a young man still imbued with the passions of his anti-war and anti-draft roots. It should not be read as history.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
