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THE GREAT IRAQ WAR NOVEL
Review Date: MARCH 12, 2004
Category: NONE
Classification: ONLINE EXCLUSIVE
Where are the great Iraq war novels? It's been a year since American tanks rolled into Baghdad, and we have yet to see the first roman a guerre.
Way back when, in the pre-TV era, war novels took forever to appear. Stephen Crane, for example, didn't publish THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE until 30 years of silence fell over Appomattox, just in time for the Spanish-American War.
Must we wait that long for the Great Iraq War Novel? After all, we Americans have a voracious appetite for war fact and fiction—and sometimes both at once, to judge by that Jessica Lynch thing—plus we've got high-speed printing technology on our side. SO eager are we to see the celebrating of the fall of Saddam and the rise of—well, whatever is rising on the Euphrates—that we offer the following plot summaries in the hope that ambitious writers will fill publishers' catalogs in time for Christmas:
In THE OIL MAN AND THE SEA, an Iraqi fisherman helps cap a gusher in the Persian Gulf, then, ironically, runs out of gas on the way back to shore and winds up battling sharks all the way to Sri Lanka.
Psychedelia-loving Iraqi exchange students, armed to the teeth but content to spin Grateful Dead records in a Basra bunker, notice their numbers mysteriously thinning. To bestsellerdom: WHAT A LONG, STRANGE ATTRIT IT'S BEEN.
A Tarzan double inherits an alligator farm on the banks of the Tigris in JOHNNY GOT HIS SCUD. Johnny saves the day for his village when retreating Republican Guards leave behind a piece of choice ordnance.
In LOVE SORTIE, a gay British airman falls for his wing commander, only to discover that he's really a she who has disguised herself in order to get in a few bombing missions over Baghdad. When she's taken prisoner, the plot thickens.
In AS I LAY FRYING, A Marine squad is sent out with full packs on a mid-April desert patrol. You'll see a lot of self-discovery in these pages.
A Bedouin draftee is terrorized by his sadistic drill instructor in FULL METAL BURNOOSE, only to be assigned to the base newspaper. The DI, meanwhile, stars in a spinoff novel of his own, 120 DAYS OF SADDAM.
Wackiness reigns in PHANTOM OF THE AIR OP, in which a masked aviator using a portable satellite dish belts out show tunes, revealing the location of his airfield to every MIG within a hundred kilometers.
On the lighter side, there's TWO MULLAHS FOR SISTER SARA, in which a stern nun shares a slit trench with two Islamic fundamentalists. The trio passes the time by arguing theology, hiding each other's gas masks, and staging uproarious falafel fights. As the good sister is fond of remarking, "Shi'ite happens." And in FLYING CARPET BOMBERS, the ghosts of Laurel and Hardy, thinking it's the French Foreign Legion, enlist in the Iraqi air force. Laughs ensue.
It's high time to pound out the next generation of war classics. Do we hear keyboards clacking, or is that machine-gun fire?
-- TOM MILLER & GREGORY MCNAMEE
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Copyright 2005 Kirkus Reviews
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 | Talk Like a Man: Robert B. Parker Tribute
January 15, 2010 - I still remember the first time I heard Spenser's voice ring out in the opening chapter of The Godwulf Manuscript (1973), as he razzes the college president who's trying to hire him. What's this guy's problem? I thought. Why does he have such an attitude? The attitude, I soon learned, had deep roots...Part of it was a temperamental similarity to Spenser's creator, Robert B. Parker, who died on Jan. 18th at age 77.
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