By Gerald Hausman
Santa
Fe, NM, USA
CHOPPER
BLUES
By Charles
D. Jones
Chopper
Blues is a memoir as well as a memorial to the ill-fated Vietnam War
– a war largely misunderstood and rarely depicted in the visionary and personal
way that this author, and survivor, has written, painted and filmed it.
What makes Jones' book so unusual
is the visceral focus on how human beings, men and women, soldier and civilian,
behave under extreme pressure. In photographs, poetry, prose and journalism,
the author takes us to a time and place that has been both deliberately
remembered and indifferently forgotten.
The reader's ticket to hell, so to
say, comes in hypnotic, multiform images including graphic woodcuts, drawings,
and paintings by Jones whose work is weirdly reminiscent of Goya. As author and
poet as well as painter, Jones takes us through the three years in the Marine
Corps in Vietnam, for which he received the Silver Star.
This is a singular work of varied
artistry that strikes the reader and viewer in so many different places –
emotional, psychological and philosophical – all at the same time.
The villages and schools shown in
the book (as the cover copy states): ...vanished
shortly after the camera's flash. For the first time ever, members of Suicide
Charley tell the story of their time in
Vietnam.
The experience revealed in this
book is like walking through the illusory looking glass of Lewis Carroll. Alternately
touching, endearing, frightful, fearsome, riveting, and always compelling.
One wonders how a platoon commander
could tell and re-tell this tale of a world that, in a hallucinatory sense,
never existed – but for one long hellish moment on earth. By that I mean to
say, it has rarely been seen or said in this illuminating way – as dream,
diorama, dialogue, poetry, prose and some of the finest color paintings of
wartime ever painted by a soldier. I have to say, you must see it to believe
it.
The book is dedicated to the men
who served and it is their story as much as the author's own. He honors them as
he reveals what they saw and suffered. Company C, First Battalion, Seventh
Marines lives on in these pages.
__________________________
BORDERLAND:
A Kyle Dawson Novel
By Peter
Eichstaedt
In all of the suspense mystery
novels I have read there is a point of entry, usually a murder, followed by a
mysterious middle ground where the clues are muddied as much as possible, and
then, when the water clears, a suspect, followed by another suspect, the two
sort of playing off each other. There can be a third or fourth suspect as the
novel deepens.
Between interviews with suspects
there are usually love interests and a scattering of irrelevant details and
eccentricities.
This novel does not follow the
usual pattern. It veers away from formula. Instead it dives right into the
darkness. This is a country of no return. In this case, Juarez, Mexico, and the
El Paso side so temptingly near.
Eichstaedt's provoking way of
handling mystery is to base the whole story, not on narrator rumination, but
icy, interesting dialogue. The reader, this one anyway, feels he is reading a
film script.
I have worked on a few such and it
seems to me the whole trick is in having the dialogue become a series of beats.
Da-dum. Da-dum. You get a beat every time a clue pops up or a character reveals
something salient to plot.
What happens in Borderland is a series of fast-moving,
highly realistic, conversations that come off as the real thing. After a little
while you forget you're reading a novel or a script – you are just listening to
people talk.
The scenes move quickly too. And
the reader doesn't stay in one locale for more than a few minutes before he is
whisked off to another one. Da-dum.
Add to the quick pace the
seriousness of the subject matter, which is the borderland of greased wheels,
politics, poverty, hustle and gristle ... add to this very large sums of money,
tricky bankers and two characters who might very well be the same ones tweeting
and shooting in your neighborhood news, and you have Borderland, the novel.
Only it isn't a novel. I have
reason to believe it's all quite real, the names changed to protect the
guiltless and the guilty.
This is a fun read. But it won't
make you any less restive about the borderline or the denizens and dough that
get shuffled back and forth. And no wall will stop it as long as the money is
good.
Links:
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Gerald Hausman is the author of Not Since Mark Twain and a regular contributor to Stay Thirsty Magazine.
