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Product Description
Product Description
In Saigon during the last stages of the Vietnam war, a small-time journalist named John Converse thinks he'll find action - and profit - by getting involved in a big-time drug deal. But back in the States, things go badly wrong for him.
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THERE WAS ONLY ONE BENCH IN THE SHADE AND CONverse went for it, although it was already occupied. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
THERE WAS ONLY ONE BENCH IN THE SHADE AND CONverse went for it, although it was already occupied. Read the first page
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I think that the fact that a passage is lifted from the pages of Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" gives the reader a fair warning of the bleak story. Robert Stone introduces the reader to an American named John Converse who plans to make quick money with three kilograms of uncut heroin. The first third of the book describes in vivid detail the country of and the state of the country of Vietnam, with characters including a missionary, a prostitute, American G.I.'s, and more. The story cuts to the United States when Converse's friend (I lack the vocabulary for a better term for this relationship) named Hicks acts as courier. Sketchy characters enter the scene who, being utterly without conscience, commit horrifying acts, including burning Converse's ear on a stovetop. I don't want to give too much of the action away, so let me just say that it ends on a sad note and requires the reader to endure a couple hundred cheerless pages. The storyline and fascinating characters alone make this story worthwhile; the strong message adds a nice but often absent bonus to the novel.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
49 reviews
31 of 32 people found the following review helpful
A masterpiece! The best novel I've ever read!
24 May 1999
Format:Mass Market Paperback
If you came of age in the late 60's and early 70s (as I did) and found yourself at the center of the counterculture (in my case, Madison, Wisconsin), you'll recognize all of the characters who people this extraordinary story. In no book I've read are they rendered with such precision and invested with such uncanny life. Charmian, the heroine dealer, is the most sensuous femme fatale in American Literature. There's Danskin, the hippie narc, turned by the feds to surveil the counterculture -- a far more convincing psychopath than Hannibel Lecter. There's Smitty, the jailbird 'muscle', for Antheil, the 'bent' DEA agent. There's Converse's own mother, nursing home-bound and lost in paranoid dementia -- and my personal favorite, Eddie Peace, the wheeler-dealer who supplies drugs to the Hollywood film community. And these are only the supporting cast. Converse, Hicks and Marge are the richest, deepest, most dimensional protagonists in recent fiction. The story is at once twisting, turning action-adventure (it was made into the wonderful movie, 'Who'll Stop The Rain,' with Nick Nolte, Tuesday Weld and Michael Moriarty, all perfectly cast) as well as a dark parable of the Manson-flavored decline of the Woodstock Generation. Briefly, John Converse, a playwright, has decided to escape a degrading job (he writes for his father-in-law's skin magazines ('Woman Impaled by Falling Skydiver!')) and failing marriage and becomes a freelance journalist in Vietnam. As his tour draws to a close, he has a brainstorm: Buy two kilos of pure, Golden Triangle heroine, smuggle it back into the US and reap the enormous profits. For the smuggling, he calls on old friend Ray Hicks, a merchant marine who's a student of Nietsche and Zen, and 'cultivates the art of self-defense.' Hicks agrees to carry John's skag when the USS Coral Sea departs Vietnam for San Francisco. Trouble is, Charmian's tipped off Antheil, the crooked DEA agent, and he (in the persons of Danskin and Smitty) are waiting for Hicks when he delivers the heroin to Converse's wife, Marge. A page-turning chase ensues that takes Marge and Hicks into the dark netherworld of the Los Angeles drug scene (circa 1970) and ends at a New Mexico commune very like Ken Kesey's own psychedelic ranch. (Stone was one of the drivers on Kesey's bus, 'Further.' Imagine, Ken Kesey, Robert Stone and various Beat poets (Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, et al.) on the same bus! An astonishing time and place!) I can't overstate the excellence of this masterpiece. More than any since Conrad's and Hemingway's (writers Stone's often compared to) this novel confirms that classic quality and rivetting story are not mutually exclusive categories. His two subsequent novels, 'A Flag For Sunrise' and 'Children of Light' are both excellent -- as was his first novel, 'Hall of Mirrors.' ('Flag' may be as good as 'Dog Soldiers.') If you found his last two novels, 'Outerbridge Reach' and 'Damascus Gate,' a bit slow-going and overly 'philosophical,' be advised that early Robert Stone had a much better balance between story and theme.
Also recommended: The 13th Valley by John M. Del Vecchio The Short Timers by Gustaf Hasford The White Album by Joan Didion Rads by Tom Bates Famous Long Ago by Ray Mungo The Stoned Apocalypse by Marco Vassi Ringolevio by Emmett Grogan Going Away by Clancy Sigal
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful
yes, a masterpiece,etc -- but READ ON:
2 Mar 2001
Format:Paperback
Stone's DOG SOLDIERS is a fine book, but if you happen to see this without exploring the rest of the reviews on Amazon -- access them. The novel was assigned as a high school project in Iowa, and the kids who had to read it seem to have flocked en masse online (perhaps part of the project) to review it. I found reading these reviews very entertaining, and recommend the experience to anyone, though it won't tell you much about the book. I like kids, what can I say. Now that that's out of the way, Stone is one of the most important (and most strangely neglected) writers of the 20th Century. I think comparisons with Hemingway and Conrad are a bit off the mark; this novel is far more reminiscent of COMEDIANS-era Graham Greene, in his troubled Catholicism and concern for the decline of religion in the 20th Century. While Stone is hardly interested in promulgating any particular religious point of view, he IS a moralist, and a scathing critic of what we've become without a sense of God. This novel can be read, I think, as a crucifixion myth of sorts, made relevant to the 20th Century. It IS dark, but it's brilliantly paced and written, and a fairly accurate look at the time it deals with. Stone, by the way, talks of a recurring dream he has, where he's bringing drugs or contraband into a country, usually on a ship, and knows that he is about to be caught. This motif informs the paranoid tenor of the novel. A final point: the title has nothing to do with Lakota warrior societies, and is a bit of a misappropriation. It appears to be a reference to the proverb "better a living dog than a dead lion," which Converse muses on in the text. The outstanding performances by Michael Moriarity as Converse and Richard Masur (who usually seems to have a limited range) as Danskin are two really good reasons to see the film...
19 of 21 people found the following review helpful
good good good
28 Mar 2002
Format:Paperback
I read this book for a college course on the cold war. I couldn't believe my professor. He actually apologized for putting it on the curriculum! He said that it was perhaps too gross, or graphic.... or something. How insulting!...How are we s'poseta learn about the cold war if the teachers teach with sterilized kid gloves. This book is, to Vietnam, a more accessible version of what Gravity's Rainbow is to WWII. It's harsh but not without redemption. Dog soldiers is goods good good...
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