Dog Soldiers

Rating:
Summary: Struggling with the Despair
Review: "Let smiles cease. Let laughter flee. This is the place where everybody finds out who they are." -Converse

Dog Soldiers is a story laced with despair, paranoia, and several other not so fuzzy moods, and this quote from the main character elegantly demonstrates this mood. The tone of the book was a point of interest and displeasure for me, since this was one of my first experiences with total negativity, it was a fun struggle for me to understand the point or the necessity of such an angry mood. At the same time it made me very uncomfortable, sometimes to the point where I would have to stop reading for the day.

There is a constant stream of action in this story, which makes it rather difficult to process what's going on as it happens. The story rarely drags and it is written so that it feels very real and alive. Slang terms are used often too, which are also hard to understand. But after the first few chapters it seems that most readers are able to get around this and start enjoying the fast paced style in which the book is written. This style also adds to the mood of panic and paranoia that encompass the entire book as Marge, Hicks, and Converse try to flee with their dope.

Marge, Hicks, and Converse are the book's three main characters, and as the plot follows first Converse's activities and then moves back and forth between Hicks and Converse, these two main characters develop into very complicated people. Marge's character isn't delved into as much, but it didn't seem to be that she was usually thinking about much besides the next time she could get high. Some of the things Converse and Hicks did or said still baffle me, just like the characters that are a part of my real life. Because all of the characters are so weak and hurt each other with such frequency and carelessness, I found it hard to like them, but I liked the fact that not many stories center on people of such violent natures.

I had to read Dog Soldiers for a class, and I'm not sure if I would ever seek out a book of such violent and depressing extremity on my own reading schedule, or even be able to get all the way through it without someone else pushing me along. It was hard to get into the story's angst and intensity, but once I was able to let myself enjoy such a gruesome story, I decided that Dog Soldiers is one of the best books I have read all year.

Rating:
Summary: Struggling with the Despair
Review: "Let smiles cease. Let laughter flee. This is the place where everybody finds out who they are." -Converse

Dog Soldiers is a story laced with despair, paranoia, and several other not so fuzzy moods, and this quote from the main character elegantly demonstrates this mood. The tone of the book was a point of interest and displeasure for me, since this was one of my first experiences with total negativity, it was a fun struggle for me to understand the point or the necessity of such an angry mood. At the same time it made me very uncomfortable, sometimes to the point where I would have to stop reading for the day.

There is a constant stream of action in this story, which makes it rather difficult to process what's going on as it happens. The story rarely drags and it is written so that it feels very real and alive. Slang terms are used often too, which are also hard to understand. But after the first few chapters it seems that most readers are able to get around this and start enjoying the fast paced style in which the book is written. This style also adds to the mood of panic and paranoia that encompass the entire book as Marge, Hicks, and Converse try to flee with their dope.

Marge, Hicks, and Converse are the book's three main characters, and as the plot follows first Converse's activities and then moves back and forth between Hicks and Converse, these two main characters develop into very complicated people. Marge's character isn't delved into as much, but it didn't seem to be that she was usually thinking about much besides the next time she could get high. Some of the things Converse and Hicks did or said still baffle me, just like the characters that are a part of my real life. Because all of the characters are so weak and hurt each other with such frequency and carelessness, I found it hard to like them, but I liked the fact that not many stories center on people of such violent natures.

I had to read Dog Soldiers for a class, and I'm not sure if I would ever seek out a book of such violent and depressing extremity on my own reading schedule, or even be able to get all the way through it without someone else pushing me along. It was hard to get into the story's angst and intensity, but once I was able to let myself enjoy such a gruesome story, I decided that Dog Soldiers is one of the best books I have read all year.

Rating:
Summary: I threw it against the wall
Review: A plodding plotline, unsympathetic characters, and a frustrating inattention to relevant details. This book doesn't move. I was bored, bored, bored. I didn't care a bit about the characters, because Stone gives me no reason to. I was eager to start this book. How disappointing. Threw it against the wall.

Rating:
Summary: A unique take on the Vietnam era
Review: After reading Tim O'Brien's "Going After Cacciato", I was sort of in a Vietnam-themed reading mood. I heard that Robert Stone, who had apparently been a companion of Keruoac, had written a dark adventure novel called "Dog Soldiers" that won the National Book Award. After reading the Biography.com description of Robert Stone and his "carefully crafted" books, I decided to give it a try.

For the most part, the book lived up to my expectations. It is indeed very exciting and pessimistic, but I did have trouble with some parts. One of the characters actively practices Zen at great length, but I didn't know much about that subject so much of that character was difficult to understand. Also, much of the discussion of drugs is written in a vernacular I'm not very familiar with, so a great deal of that was also difficult to understand. Aside from these shortcomings (which I know were largely my own), I would give the book five stars.

Rating:
Summary: A unique take on the Vietnam era
Review: After reading Tim O'Brien's "Going After Cacciato", I was sort of in a Vietnam-themed reading mood. I heard that Robert Stone, who had apparently been a companion of Keruoac, had written a dark adventure novel called "Dog Soldiers" that won the National Book Award. After reading the Biography.com description of Robert Stone and his "carefully crafted" books, I decided to give it a try.

For the most part, the book lived up to my expectations. It is indeed very exciting and pessimistic, but I did have trouble with some parts. One of the characters actively practices Zen at great length, but I didn't know much about that subject so much of that character was difficult to understand. Also, much of the discussion of drugs is written in a vernacular I'm not very familiar with, so a great deal of that was also difficult to understand. Aside from these shortcomings (which I know were largely my own), I would give the book five stars.

Rating:
Summary: Dog Soldiers...Who Let the Cynics Out?
Review: DOG SOLDIERS is a good, but typically overrated (NATIONAL BOOK AWARD!) novel by Robert Stone. Stone is the literary Left's (I am being hyping here) enfant terrible. His agenda of bitterness, pessimism and God-got-lossed-at-the-Mall nihilism is characteristically trumpeted in this almost-Conradian, almost adventure of punks playing outlaws for fun and profit. This seems Stone's assessment not only of the morality of America's involvement in Vietnam, but into what the American national experience has devolved ( Don't cf: "Children of the Light"). DOG SOLDIERS unrelentingly manifests Stone's morally vacuuous, often totally unlikeable characters. ( He loves symbolic charades with character names. Cf: Christopher Lucas...Christ LIGHT... get it?..."The Gates of Damascus") His protagonist, John Converse (JC) is a pathetic weakling. He wants to be a "hippie marine". This theatre-of-absurdity is not explored merely implied with the inanity: "Nam was the place where elephants were slain" (by un-hip crypto-fascist marines, and assorted American military brethren. Call out The Elephant Liberation League!). " Therefore, PEOPLE needed to get high!" With this Dostoyevskian motivation under his belt, Converse and his "real" marine buddy Ray Hicks decide to smuggle a key or two of Golden Triangle Special back to the USA.

The plan is a screw-up from the jump because, as Stone makes clear, his bogus hippies are. A bent DEA agent...along with an ex-prison, booty buddy narco team...is ready. Ready to "LIBERATE" the heroin from them for their own nefarious purposes as soon as the Converse-Hicks (& Converse' dippy drug abusing, feckless Flower Power wife) Connection delivers the goods in San Francisco. If this sounds more like (Karl) Marx Brothers than TRAFFIC it is. Stone's only sympathetic character is Marine Ray Hicks (Stone insists on hanging a sign on his anti-hero: Hicks reads NIETZSCHE). The most powerful scene in the novel is when Hicks decides to treat some pre-yuppie Yuppies to an all-time high heroine overdose. When one of these former Woodstockers is groveling at the point of death, Hicks scowls: "They're Martians! I've spent my whole life defending Martians. F...'em all!" Here Stone metastasizes burnt-flag, burned-out 60's poser theme... to corruption and violence bred and glorified by a NATION OF DOG SOLDIERS. I do not accept radical cynicism. Stone's efforts are worthy... he writes novels not Post-Modernist tracts. But, as John Updike's exploration of middle-class angst amidst prosperity gets tedious, so does Stone's insistent shrillness. One note authority devolves into mere footnotes. Everyone is not a Dog Soldier (or a Rabbit Angstrom). Whoever lets the Cynics out...needs to put them back-in perspective. That is what great enduring literature does.

Rating:
Summary: Bizarre book!
Review: Drugs and corruption are the themes of this novel by Robert Stone. In a disjointed way, Stone shares his feelings during the time of the Vietnam War. He tells a story of a journalist, a strung out wife, and a dealer. There is not a single person in this book who is "normal" -all of the characters are addicted to drugs. The writing is so real and descriptive that I felt like I really was living with Converse, Marge and Hicks. The bad part was that their lives were so out of it! There is a great deal of profanity in this book, which sometimes gets in the way. The book is very complicated because there are so many characters and each character is different. If you can keep the characters straight, this is a good book.

Rating:
Summary: Great Book, Great Movie
Review: Find another Book/Movie that comes close to telling it like it was. I thought not.

Rating:
Summary: Bleak portrait of emptiness
Review: Framed in a story of drug smuggling gone wrong is a bleak portrait of America in the 1970s and of the people living then, specifically the subcultures. The underlying message appears to be how pointless things actually seemed (the Vietnam War, relationships, justice, life), and yet all the characters (and us as well) just keep soldiering on through the drudge and misery in the hopes that things get better. This is a sometimes difficult read that gets easier as the reader adjusts to the rhythms of the story. As the would-be drug smugglers end up on the run, the storyline picks up speed to its unexpected end.

Rating:
Summary: Dog Soldiers
Review: I felt that this book was an in-depth look on the crime and corruption in America in the 1970's during the Vietnam War. This book was about a drug deal gone very wrong because the main character, John Converse, was very inexperienced and wanted to deal drugs for the thrill of it. He gets a friend, Ray Hicks, who is in love with Converse's wife, to transport the three kilos of heroine from Vietnam to the US where Converse's wife, Marge, is supposed to take care of it. Unfortunately, the woman Converse was having an affair with and who he got the heroine from, Charmian, tipped off a CIA agent, Antheil. That led to Ray Hicks and Marge running away to New Mexico where Ray Hicks' insanity starts appearing as he gets very possessive over the heroine. All the characters and continuous switching of points of views from Converse to Ray and Marge made this book a little hard to understand at times. The explicit sex scene seemed a little unnecessary as did some of the "getting high" scenes in the book but overall, I think the author, Robert Stone, did a good job of representing the underground workings of the U.S. during the Vietnam war in the 1970's. He did an extremely good job with the dialogue when the characters were high. I could really get involved in what was going on because I felt as if everything was really happening. Dieter, a friend of Ray Hicks, said a quote in the book that I really liked. I think it really sums up what these people in the book were feeling. "There's such a thing as personal necessity. Maybe it's beyond moral areas." These people were doing anything and everything to get money from the heroine and it shows how evil people could really be.