Country: USA
Genre: Noir/Drama
Pages: 342
"How's your need?"
She blinked and scratched herself; she had been scratching in her sleep most of the night.
"I don't know yet."
I've been chasing this book around the internets for a few years now. It had very high expectations to live up to, partly because it's been such a tease. You know when you tell people you're looking for a book and they tell you: "I've read it, it's SOOOOOOOOOOOO good, but I gave my copy away moons ago. I have no idea where you can get one now ." Yeah, that. I'm sure it happened to you too, at some point. You can't live up to this sort of hype just by being great. Many books are great. Well, ladies and gentlemen, DOG SOLDIERS found a way to live up to its urban legend status. Not only it's great, but it's great in all the ways I would've never expected. Robert Stone's National Book Award winning novels is "Advanced", according to Chuck Klosterman's theory of artistic evolution *. By the way, did you know this was made into a movie in 1978? WHO'LL STOP THE RAIN, starring Nick Nolte. So Robert Stone was somewhat of a big deal before falling off the map.
The story starts in Viet-Nam, as the war is winding down. Journalist and playwright John Converse is over there, trying to find the next big story for the magazine he's working for. Being desperate for status and fame, he does something very stupid. He sets up a heroin deal. This is a very organic process, implicating family, friends and acquaintances and as little organized crime as possible. The deal backfires as Converse's slightly paranoid courier Hicks decides to disappear along with his wife. Oh and did I mention Marge, the said journalist wife in question, is addicted to painkillers? Yep. Beautiful portrait, isn't it? So Converse is going after his paranoid Viet-Name vet courrier and his junky wife to get his drugs back...wait for it...because there's a rogue federal agent on his ass. Talk about being neck deep in doo doo.
If DOG SOLDIERS is such an "Advanced" novel, it's because it aged very strangely and to a certain extent, it can explain why it's currently out of print **. The world (and especially the drug trade) has changed SO MUCH since then, that it reads like somewhat of an historical document. This was before the Freeway Ricky Ross events of the eighties and the heroin market was pretty much up for grabs. Not unlike Hunter S. Thompson's immortal FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS, DOG SOLDIERS is a testament to the disenchantment of the United States in the seventies. The Nixon years and the post-Manson paranoia. Marge is a delicious character in that regards. She was a hippy in the sixties, but motherhood and domestic life caught back to her and all that there is left of her carefree youth is a powerful addiction to prescription drugs. Ray Hicks (another amazing character) insists on dragging her along, carrying her as if he wanted to prove to himself that he's not such a bad guy after all.
Hicks drove on speed. His fatigue hung the desert grass with hallucinatory blossoms, filled ravines with luminous corrals and phantoms. The land was flat and the roads dead straight; at night, headlights swung for hours in space, steady as a landfall - and then rushed past in streaks of color, explosions of engine roar and hot wind.
That's some spectacular description if I've ever seen some. Evocative and yet spare. I had issues with DOG SOLDIERS, but very minor stuff. I thought John Converse to be a little too bland and blasé to my liking as if he was tired with life. I suppose it's fitting the mood of the novel very well, but I didn't care as much when he was on the page as when Hicks was. Also, while it captures the zeigeist of the seventies admirably well, it's also a little hermetic. You have to have the necessary point of reference to understand all the dread and the looming tension in his bad boy. But point is, it's a singular novel that is almost impossible to copy. It's very dark, but it has an innocence when you put it in perspective, because it had no idea of the terrible turn the world would take in the Reagan era. Do yourself a favor and get truck load of seventies America with DOG SOLDIERS. It's one of the most pertinent books about the era.
FOUR STARS***
* In a nutshell, "Advancing" is when your artistic progression tells any linear or logic path to go fuck itself. It's something unexpected. It cannot be the exact opposite of what the artist used to do, that would be being "Overt". For example, if Metallica would be doing hip-hop, they would be "Overt", but let's say they hire a keyboardist to complement their songs, they would become "Advanced" as long as they have any artistic intent behind it.
** Or about to be. I'm not sure of the actual state, but the books are hard as hell to get a hold of. It's fascinating, but not exactly sparkling with actuality.
*** I have not let go of my standards, it's just that the books I've been reading lately are THAT good.