Rating: 
Summary: Killing the Messenger...
Review: I really enjoyed this book and respect the author. In the first chapter Swofford clarifies that he wrote "what I know", and there is a bibliography of books consulted for facts pertaining to Gulf War combat and Middle Eastern topography. That being said, he honestly and deftly narrates his education about life, warfare and manhood from his formative years as a "military brat" and then as a Marine Corps sniper deployed to the Gulf War. The book alternates between flashbacks, interspersed, tangentally connected incidents (like a friend's death) and the particularities of U.S. military history, artillery and service. There is a wealth of human grist in this memoir to consume for an intelligent reader. The fact that he shared his front-line account of a war should be applauded. The straightforwardness of Mr. Swofford is a trait I wish I saw more of in our world.
Rating:
Summary: Crude, vulgar, poignant, mesmerizing
Review: As you begin "Jarhead" you immediately begin to find it distasteful. Swofford begins with descriptions of normal, daily human activities that polite people typically don't discuss. And, as you delve further into this chronicle the author describes crude people you wouldn't particularly want to know, much less live next to...lower class, bottom feeders, misfits. Marines aren't trained to be polite people. Swofford's point, throughout the study, is that these are often the people drawn by the allure of becoming a mean "killing machine", or whose social class leaves this as one of the few opportunities for "advancement".While the mainstream propaganda would have you believe otherwise, the men we transform into marines aren't trained to be choirboys or even Eagle Scouts. The author describes how we pander to these men's baser instincts in order to render them brutal, callous fighters willing to do the ugly job of killing and to endure the conditions wraught by war. However, these are also human beings, with hearts and souls who are indelibly affected by their harsh and ugly experiences --despite how much the military might strive to toughen and insensitize them, to get them to unblinkingly obey, or to persuade them of the righteousness of their charge. Swofford doesn't cry, whine, or ask for sympathy. However, after reading "Jarhead" you can't help but be empathetic. The brutalizing of these men is tragic, as conveyed by the crying of his mother after noting the transformation of her "sweet son" into an angry man following basic training, and the opposition of his laconic, marine veteran father to his enlistment. Those caught up in in the "Semper Fi" propaganda will dismiss this as psycho babble. However, the numerous socially disfunctional if not psychologically impaired veterans more than support Swofford's assertions.
Rating: 
Summary: more "and other battles" than combat
Review: This book has polarized more readers than it should. As an active-duty officer, I can tell you that the military experience varies across services, ranks, duy stations, and individuals. Judging from the book, Swofford was one of the bottom 10% guys that drags down the military. Herein lies the only real value of the work--it proves a decent case study of a leadership challenge. Many junior enlisted service members enter the military with the same emotional baggage that Swofford did. Most cope well, but some don't. Jarhead is subtitled "and other battles" for a reason: the Gulf War "combat" plays a minor role in the text. Is Swofford representative of the vast majority of service members? No. Does he take liberties with the truth? Probably. Would I take his writing seminar? Hell no. This book will be quickly forgotten, but it's worth borrowing for a quick read.
Rating: 
Summary: Good writing, but not an action story
Review: Jarhead, according to the front cover, is 'a marine's chronicle of the Gulf War and other battles'. Don't buy this book if you're after bloodthirsty descriptions of battle. Despite being a member of a scout/sniper unit, and therefore likely to be in the front line, Swofford experienced, according to his memoir, very little action. The strength of this book is in its use of English as Swofford explores the 'human condition', especially the condition of being an evidently intelligent man who, for reasons of tradition and ancestry, decided to join the US Marine Corps. Swofford explores the nature of not only the men of the Corps, but also their girlfriends, whores, and wives. Being written in first person the reader is not spared the horrors of the final, brief section where Swofford explores the results of bombardment, the bunkers full of dead Iraqi troops, burnt-out vehicles and mangled bodies. Swofford is a fine writer and has one strength that many male writers lack, bringing a depth of understanding to the emotions of both himself and his comrades-in-arms. If this is really the first book-length typescript he wrote, then it will be fascinating to see his next. According to the blurb, he is working on a novel. As an action-adventure writer myself, I hope it is an action-adventure novel, because there are pitifully few writers that can write a decent action story, and none of them are best-selling authors. Which goes to show something about the book business.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't Buy
Review: This book is an offensive, vile and absurb rendition of the enlisted men of the USMC. Threw it in the trashcan after reading as it is not worth placing in anyone's bookshelf.
Rating:
Summary: The Most Over-Rated Book of 2003
Review: While Jarhead is at times touching and revelatory, it mostly reads like a graduate literature student attempting to channel Tim O'Brien. It is by turns gratuitious, indiscrete, comically maudlin and wildly inaccurate. As a former instructor at the 1st Marine Division's Scout-Sniper School, I unequivocally reject major portions in this book. Swofford's obsession with his penis and use of pretentious throwaway lines, for example where he describes his training in Okinawa, "During moments of high delirium, I thought I heard screaming from the jungle, the voices of Japanese and American dead," also bring his intentions and veracity into question. (He also claims that several key battles in WWII took place in the Marine-administrated Northern Training Area, a contention that is easily dismissed by reading any survey of the Pacific campaign). While I love a rollicking antiwar romp (cf. Hasford's The Short-Timers & Hedges' War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning), Jarhead is simply NOT the genuine article (despite the phalanx of mandarin New York reviewers who claim otherwise). If you want to read a solid, representative piece of the emerging canon of Gulf War I, then turn to David J. Morris's Storm on the Horizon or Joel Turnipseed's Baghdad Express. Don't believe the hype!
Rating: 
Summary: Good but not good enough
Review: - My overall sense is that Anthony Swofford wasn't ready to write this book. He writes that he had put the war out of his mind, and the people he knew from war out of his life, until 8 years later he came upon artifacts and reminders. At that point he revisits his experience emotionally and, in preparing to write the book, researches facts. Putting a traumatic event out of one's mind for a period of time as a way to remain sane is common and valid. Revisiting it, to be whole or complete or to become more "sane," is valid and common too. However, in making the decision to write a book at that time, what Swofford did not have at his disposal were his [missing] 8 years of memories. He didn't first feel and re-examine, think about and conclude, then tell his story. These omissions of self-examination were too blatant throughout the book, a book of self-examination. The story he told, though, is written as if he does have the decade-later perspective (he tells us that his memoir is from this hindsight). But, he doesn't, having spent the decade shutting out the experience. The result, therefore, is not a grown man writing about 10 years ago, but a man still in the throes of a similar confusion or way of thinking as he was during the war. This is evidenced, very simply, by his use of language. Swofford is now an adult, a writer, a teacher, yet the vocabulary of the narration switches erratically between adult (i.e. "correct") usage and "grunt," "jarhead" jargon. I'm talking about the narrative style of his current perspective, not his description *of* the 18-year-olds in the Desert. So, he is not 18 yet he also does not quite have the distance to tell the story he set out to tell - his perspective today. Valid, as he didn't revisit his story for many years. Psychologically valid, but missing in important detail for the reader, details not yet uncovered, perhaps, by Swofford himself. I did not find this to be the horrific or gruesome story others did. I was not surprised that 17- and 18-year-olds behave like 17- and 18-year-olds. I was dismayed, as another reviewer wrote, that his mates were indistinguishable from one another. All but one or two blend together as a mass of fellow "jarheads" without personality. To him they are individuals he feels deeply for, he tells us (and he dedicates the book to them), but he doesn't show them to us. Sometimes Swofford tells us his emotions and sometimes he doesn't. My complaint here is not that the story-telling is uneven but that I read the book because I wanted to read a memoir - one man's experience. His emotional experience and his actual experience. At times, in the book, we've got detail of actual events, without Swofford's emotional reaction to it. Sometimes they are details of dates or activity, and sometimes these details take up many pages. I wanted more from *him* - his _memoir_. I wanted more about him, and *his* experiences. But, I don't think the author himself has fully uncovered them, as they'd been buried many years before he tackled this very tough thing. This is not his fault; the fact that he wrote the book before he was ready is. Writing the book, itself, may have been cathartic and eye-opening for the author and, as much as I did learn, he just didn't write enough substance. I didn't *see* the desert; I didn't *see* the other men (but for a couple of exceptions); I didn't feel his feelings. That said, I know more than I did before I read the book, and I'm not sorry I did. It was worthwhile, but had someone told me of a more "complete" Gulf War memoir to read, I would have chosen the other. Also, I don't want to be fully critical. Swofford wrote, quite honestly, about personal things. It's the things omitted that this book lacks. Regarding the adult, time-past perspective: I would rather have seen either, 1. an acknowledgement that there's a gap in his knowledge, and fully professional writing, or 2. the "jarhead"-style writing that comes and goes throughout the book be the consistent/only style. The book goes back and forth haphazardly, teen to adult writer, and my own conclusion is that this is where Swofford is, psychologically, with the material. It's not great writing, but it tells a story - be it not the full story of Swofford I'd hoped it would. I want to hear from a guy who experienced the Gulf War and I want to hear all about it; to me, he had the guts to write it... but not quite. I do, though, have to give Swofford kudos for his bravery and for telling us what he did. I do appreciate it, and I did learn from him.
Rating:
Summary: WOW
Review: I'm a woman, and I RARELY read war stories, but someone gave this to me, and wow! I read into the wee small hours.
This guy was a sniper in the first Persian Gulf 'encounter,' and right out of the starting gate - er, bunker, I mean - he's managed to write a battlefield memoir that hold the reader's attention with heartstoppingly terrifying moments interspersed with hysterical gallows humor. And there's not a bit of the hero's usual posturing in the whole book.
Through the memoirist's flashbacks to his childhood in a family with a strong military history, Swofford comes to examine and ultimately question the whole ethos of modern warfare.
Superb.
Rating:
Summary: What is the point?
Review: So what is Swofford trying to tell us? OK he learned how to curse and swear.. So he made a mistake in joining the military. There is no God ?? The last sentence in the book "Dig your holes with the hands God gave you.", is he telling us he has now found God??? I always try to finish a book once I start it, so I did read the entire story, what a waste of time.. Save you money...
Rating:
Summary: why does every book published have to be "literary?"
Review: Swofford is the first writer I've read in a long time who steps away from the codes of genre and tells a compelling story. It's crude. It's shocking. It's imperfect. It's fresh. It's his. Why does it have to be held up by some as an all-encompassing history of the Gulf War? Why does it have to match the next veteran's story? Why does it have to keep up the mystique of the Marines? Why does it have to be an example of anything other than what it is--- the way this particular "jarhead" saw HIS life unfolding and how he felt about. Let it be what it is!
|
