- Paperback: 323 pages
- Publisher: Vintage Books; 1st Vintage Contemporaries Ed edition (Mar 1994)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0679742034
- ISBN-13: 978-0679742036
- Product Dimensions: 13 x 1.9 x 20.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,873,691 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
Set on a luxuriously appointed and hopelessly corrupt Army base in Mannheim, Germany, where the soldiers prefer real-life race riots to mock combat, Robert O'Connor's viciously funny novel is conclusive proof that peace is hell and the U.S. Army is its ninth circle.
In that hell, Specialist Ray Elwood is the ultimate survivor: a high-stakes drug dealer, bureaucratic con artist, and shrewd collector of other people's secrets. Elwood is contemplating cleaning up his act, although doing so will require one last, epic heroin deal. But of course it's then that his life will careen totally out of control. With its impeccably rendered cast of sycophants, drug burn-outs, and uniformed sociopaths, Buffalo Soldiers give us a scabrous, haunting vision of a military idled by the New World Order—and at all-out war with itself.
In that hell, Specialist Ray Elwood is the ultimate survivor: a high-stakes drug dealer, bureaucratic con artist, and shrewd collector of other people's secrets. Elwood is contemplating cleaning up his act, although doing so will require one last, epic heroin deal. But of course it's then that his life will careen totally out of control. With its impeccably rendered cast of sycophants, drug burn-outs, and uniformed sociopaths, Buffalo Soldiers give us a scabrous, haunting vision of a military idled by the New World Order—and at all-out war with itself.
Book Description
Set in West Germany in 1989 before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Buffalo Soldiers follows the misadventures of specialist Ray Elwood (Joaquin Pheonix), scammer, con-artist and US Army Base Battalion clerk. Elwood runs a blackmarket operation behind the back of Supply and Logistics Commander Lieutenant Colonel Wallace Berman (Ed Harris), that is until the military brass send in battle-hardened Commanding Sgt. Robert Lee (Scott Glenn) to close down Elwood's illicit operation. Things become still more complex when Elwood learns that his new love Robyn (Anna Paquin) is Sgt. Lee's daughter. The novel deals with the issues of warfare when there is no war and peacetime casualties. In the tradition of MASH it is funny and dark, exciting and thrilling. 'This book may well find a place on the shelf with Joseph Heller's Catch-22... It takes a fine novelist to tell such a sordid story so beautifully - and a brave one to hold out no hope for redemption but the jolting effect of a cold-eyed look at the truth' New York Times Book Review
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
O'Connor's book revolves around the idea that peace can be as deadly as war. Paradoxical though it sounds, the book, which is fictional, but based on real events, supports that idea, and both the book and the recent film it inspired quote Nietzche: 'When there is peace, the warlike man attacks himself.'
The central figure is antihero Ray Elwood, a con artist, heroin dealer, and a soldier with nothing to fight except the system. The book follows Elwood, wheeling, dealing, freefalling and freebasing his way through an army base in peacetime Germany. The book is reminiscent of 'Catch-22', and the film, when it was made, had its release date postponed for over 2 years because the studio was worried that the anti-military tone would be poorly received by an America which was about to lauch a 'war on terrorism'. Probably a legitimate concern, given how unlike it is to the typical propaganda of the cohesive brotherhood of the army.
Fans of Joseph Heller, Michael Moore, 'Platoon' and Tarantino films will probably like this book.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I pray that with the release of the film based on this book that more people will discover O'Connor's amazing (and only) novel. Set at an U.S. Army base in Mannheim, Western Germany, in what appears to be the mid-'80s (based on the TV shows mentioned), the story follows Specialist Elwood. A classic antihero, this clerk/personal assistant to the battalion CO knows just what papers to push in order to get things done and build up piles of owed "favors". This comes in very handy since his main concern is to maximize profits from his slice of the camp drug trade.
The base comes instantly alive a place of very real danger—rather like a prison—with its racial separate gangs, drug wars, and general mayhem. As Elwood explains, in the peacetime Army there are two kinds of people: the MFers and the MF'd—and he hustles daily to stay in the first category. He's a great dark character, an amoral piece of total scum who you somehow end up liking and hoping will get straightened out. In that respect he's very much like Monty, in David Benioff's excellent novel The 25th Hour. As the book progresses, there a shift develops inside Elwood and the tension starts to build as he sets up one big final score before getting out of the Army. The fly in the ointment is that Elwood is being very closely watched by Master Sgt. Lee, a veteran of three Vietnam tours and a many with an unerring ability to detect BS.
Awash with dark subject matter (drugs, racial fights, exploitative sex), the book is remarkably funny and hard to put down. O'Connor, a writing professor who apparently never served in the Army, manages to infuse his writing with crackling Army slang and idiom specific to the setting. It's hard to overemphasize just how good the dialogue and wordplay is throughout the book. Throughout the book people are telling stories over other people's conversations, and it's all pulled off with dazzling dexterity. And perhaps the greatest testament to O'Connor's skill is that the ending is not unexpected, and yet is still incredibly powerful.
This novel is a piercing depiction of the underbelly of peacetime Army life and invites instant comparisons to Catch-22, while its somewhat unusual second person narration invokes Bright Lights, Big City. Many will find this depiction of peacetime Army life to be deeply offensive and unpatriotic, but it's hard to know just how far from reality it is. In any event, the reality of it doesn't matter, 'cause the book is less a satire of the Army than a dark portrait of a lost soul. Great stuff which leads one to wonder why O'Connor hasn't published anything else in the last ten years.
Format:Paperback
I bought this book after loving the film. The book is just fantastic, for a start it tells the story as YOU are the lead role,(like: you think, you see, you do) which was a first for me. The books darker and far funnier that the film and there is some seens you really feel you are in. TOP BOOK, ENJOY
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