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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
40 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
More than just "the best Vietnam novel",
By
This review is from: The Short-Timers (Mass Market Paperback)
In a note of "Atrocity Exhibition" James Ballard - referring to the act - said that "no kinaesthetic language has yet been devised to describe it in detail, and without one we are in the position of an unqualified observer viewing an operation of brain surgery". "Atrocity" was Ballard's attempt to devise such language. And Gustav Hasford's "The Short Timers" (the basis for Stanley Kubrick's movie "Full Metal Jacket") is much more than a deeply personal portrait a soldier's life in Vietnam: it's the successful effort to give us a prose adequate at describing the world of battle and fear - "like you've really seen beyond". As every great writer, Hasford was a language's creatorWritten over a period of seven years (Hasford started collecting notes while he still was a Marine in Vietnam, as combat correspondent for the First Division), "The Short Timers" is divided into three chapters. The first ("The Spirit of the Bayonet") covers Private Joker basic training at the Marine Recruit Centre in Parris Island, circa 1967. This is the part of the movie everyone remembers, ironically thanks to the performance of real life DI Lee Ermey - a guy who reportedly embodied everything Hasford hated - as Sgt. Hartmann, the ultimate drill instructor. While Kubrick approach to the subject was admittedly enthralling, Hasford's original is an object lesson on how to forge words into a butcher's knife. The prose is lucid, almost bitterly simple: Private Pyle's now famous downfall is recorded without even a glint of mercy. Joker (and Hasford) recognise that this is not the "I'm-only-rough-on-'um-because-I-love-'um" cliché of Hollywood movies, but we see that this ritual debasement is working on him as well. More than a simple condemnation of military "dehumanising" this is really a cold-blooded statement on the power of collective, ritualised violence. It's unfortunate that Kubrick used the rest of this book just loosely. Part two ("Body Count") has Joker serving as a combat correspondent (just as Hasford) in Hue during the Tet Offensive. It's a very complex piece of writing - new readers will be fascinated by the twist and turn of the plot - and the fact that you never lose sight of "what's goin' on" is another demonstration of Hasford's talent. "Body Count" is engineered as a network of images punctuated by Joker's wit, culminating with a bloody head-on assault to the walls of the Citadel (the French-built XVIII century fortress in Hue where the NVA made a stand during the American counteroffensive). At the end of part two, Joker run afoul of some red-tape colonel, is demoted to infantryman and sent to a besieged Khe Shan. While in "Body Count" Joker was the detached observer of disjointed events, in part three ("Grunts") he's back into the heart of the narrative - the story of a patrol in the jungles near the combat base. What happens is simple, straightforward and extremely disturbing - with a denouement much darker that FMJ's end. "The Short Timers" works very well as a realistic text on the Vietnam War, but Hasford challenges our notion of realism. If (as me) you've never been in Vietnam, never been under fire or never killed anyone - and is symptomatic that all acts of killing in the book aren't conventional "combat" kills - no amount of written (or visual) realism can give you a substitute for the real thing. The first 20 minutes of "Saving Private Ryan" makes for an exciting and a fairly accurate reconstruction, but when the movie was over the audience could get out of the theatre and back into the "normal" world (maybe planning to see the movie again because it was very good). Hasford seems to tell us: reality may look like a motion picture ("Short Timers" includes dozen of references to Hollywood) but there's people that, sometimes, get TRAPPED IN THE MOVIE. For them what you see on TV or read in the books is the real life, and they can't get out of it. They have to live trough it and somehow survive. This may also hint the reason why Michael Herr's "Dispatches" became much more popular than this far more relevant book. Herr's Vietnam is really the "Lonely Planet Guide to an Asiatic Theatre of War and How To Get the Best Out Of It". It's all flash and excitement and adrenaline - I've at least two friends who travelled recently to Vietnam just because they read "Dispatches" and they wanted to "relive the experience". It's also dated, bleeding of nostalgia for "that" era and "that" place. While, with all its references to the American pop icons like John Wayne, Mickey Mouse or Coke, "The Short Timers" has a timeless, universal quality Herr was (in Hasford words) a "perceptive tourist", and his book is a book for people that wants the thrill of the ride, but also wants to decide when and where to stop. But for the others, those locked in combat (they can be veterans or parents of kids with a severe, lifelong, disabling disease - a battle isn't always a battle with guns, and fear isn't always fear for your own life), "The Short Timers" speaks the strange and terrible language of an unknown truth, "the truth that civilians don't want to know". To have clearly seen and stated clearly these truths places Gustav Hasford, along with names as Primo Levi, as one of the truly great XX century writers.
23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
GET SOME!!!,
By
This review is from: The Short-Timers (Mass Market Paperback)
I first read this book when I was a Marine ('81-'85). It remained with me then and it remains with me now. I've now read it at least three times and I had forgotten what a wonderfully powerful novel Mr. Hasford crafted. I heard that it took him seven years effort and though it's only a brief 180 pages, it's simple, yet dense. You can read and re-read passages for the pure mastery of the english language Mr. Hasford has so painstakingly done here.Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket" is a wonderful film, but reading the "Short-timers," I came away with a different vision. Nowhere is this more true that the recruit training sequence ("The Spirit of the Bayonet") where the training Joker and Cowboy go through is particularly sadistic. I only thank God that my own boot camp experience wasn't anywhere near as harrowing. One last thing, some reviewers say that the novel's ending is even more bleak than "Full Metal Jacket" and they are right. To tell more would, I think, spoil the book's effect. If you can find this, read it. I got lucky and found a copy for very cheap. If you're a former Marine, don't be surprised if you find many similarities between the Corps of '68 and whenever you served. Don't be further surprised and find yourself rereading it again and again. I've since found out that Mr. Hasford died in 1993. What a shame. While he has co-authored the screenplay as well as wrote two other novels, none has ever approached "The Short-timers." At least with this masterpiece, he wrote one for the ages. Get some Mr. Hasford. Ooorah!!!
22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Flawless novel of the Vietnam War,
By Joe Kenney "buttergun" (Dallas, TX) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Short-Timers (Mass Market Paperback)
This must be the best Vietnam War novel I've read. It's a perfect piece of literature. The writing is incredible. Poetic, sharp, and to the point. I've read great things about Stephen Wright's "Meditations in Green" and O'Brien's "Going After Cacciato." I've read both of those books. They're excellent, but neither of them hold a candle to Gustav Hasford's The Short-Timers. The irony being, of course, that this novel is little-known, and not even in print. Written from the point of view of combat journalist Corporal Joker, the book reads as if it's narrated by one of the Marines Michael Herr followed around in "Dispatches." That same dark sense of humor is in place, that same tone of voice that one moment is expounding on something profound, the next joking about something mundane. Hasford was a vet, he was a Marine in the middle of it all, and his words drip with realism. But there is a surreal aspect to the book as well, as is expected from any Vietnam novel worth its salt. The fate of Rafter Man, as well as the delusional sequence in which Joker believes he's been killed, are macabre bits of surrealism that leave a lasting impression. The book is spilt into three connected novellas. The first two, "Spirit of the Bayonet" and "Body Count," were adapted by Stanley Kubrick for his film "Full Metal Jacket." However, the final novella in the book, "Grunts," which details Joker's experiences in the besieged Khe Sahn base, rivals the Do Lung Bridge sequence in "Apocalypse Now," and it's a shame Kubrick didn't include this section in his movie. To increase the impact of the prose, Hasford writes in present-tense. His sentences are lean and mean, making the book a quick read (it's also very short). All of this just makes me scratch my head. Hasford was obviously a talented writer. The novel reminds me of Golding's "Lord of the Flies," not due to content, but due to the quality of writing, a perfect mixture of modicum and depth. So why did Hasford die in obscurity? There's just no justice. The only recent author I could compare to Hasford would be Thom Jones, who includes several excellent Vietnam short stories in his three collections (i.e., "The Pugilist at Rest," etc). Jones, though, mostly writes character pieces; with Hasford, you not only get that, but also extremely realistic and bloody action sequences. Simply put, he's a great, forgotten author, and his books need to be put back into print, as soon as possible.
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