Dog Soldiers (1974)

I started reading this because I heard that this was a cross between Raymond Chandler and Hunter S Thompson. While I haven’t read anything of Thompson (I will soon) I am a huge fan of Chandler; this is more neo-noir than hard-boiled but that’s ok. Dog Soldiers follows the story of a war journalist, a marine and the journalist’s wife as the plan a smuggling deal. Converse (journalist) plans to ship heroin from Vietnam on a marine vessel with the help of Hicks (marine). When Hicks gets to America he meets up with Converse’s wife Marge but they are been followed. Hicks and Marge go on the run trying to save the heroin, unsure whether he has been double crossed by Converse or the Supplier.

While Marge is dealing with a growing painkiller addiction she is also coming to the realization that, her life wasn’t a life she thought it was but she was just a junkie. Hicks is still dealing with issues of Vietnam and becoming paranoid and a growing attraction to Nietzsche. As for the heroin, it is become more and more apparent that things have changed in America; no one cares about heroin anymore, it’s all about LCD in the 1960’s.

While this book deals with the many different aspects; from the war and its effect on America to drug and even the corruptibility and mistrust of authority. Dog Soldiers can be a little difficult to read but in the end it is well worth the effort.
( )

Did not like the begining, after that this book takes off and keeps going. ( )

Beautiful book even despite the relentless depravity depicted in the desperate lives of drug smugglers set against a bleak, gritty backdrop during the waning years of the Vietnam War. So many hard drugs got smuggled out of the Sixties. Too bad peace and love couldn't have been smuggled out of the decade too.

Published in 1974, and winner of the National Book Award, Dog Soldiers served as a nice dark bookend to the fractured dreams of Woodstock's generation. It's a black denouement to dashed hippie ideals, a twisted paean to the power of heroin and hash, covert-ops and coverups. But Dog Soldiers is not dated. Nearly forty years out, its sordid story still resonates. For as long as lies, lust, disillusionment, addiction, exploitation, small-time dope dealer's schemes, greed, murder, betrayal, embezzlement, military corruption and law enforcement hubris, remain en vogue in the shadier realms of our already wrecked humanity, so will Dog Soldiers remain universally relevant. The novel's social realism rings as sadly true today as it did in the smashed Seventies, mirroring a now cracked nation's spiritual demise, its indefatigable decline of optimism and immanence, when its hopes metastasized into something less lovely than freedom or flowers. ( )

When somebody says that a book is "a product of its time," it's not usually meant as a compliment. The great achievement of Robert Stone's novel, on the other hand, is to capture the sense of cultural malaise that followed the end of sixties idealism. Another reviewer here has pointed out some philosophical overtones in this work, but I tend to think that he reads too deeply – this book's characters, most of whom are self-serving hustlers or wannabe hustlers, have perverted sixties-era ideas and language for their own selfish ends. These characters have chosen to sustain themselves on pretty but hollow rhetoric and a pharmacy full of controlled substances, and the overall effect is unsettling in the extreme. Stone's writing is also perfectly suited to his material, capturing both his subjects desperation and a bit of their desperate humor. As the book draws to a close and things start to go off the rails, the entire thing starts to feel like a particularly heavy, particularly bad trip. "Dog Soldiers" is built like a noir – I wasn't surprised to learn that it'd been adapted for the screen – but a seductive junkie haze hangs over the entire thing, too, giving the book a softer, more beautiful edge. Don't try any of this at home. Highly recommended. ( )

I began this book thinking it would be about the Vietnam War told from the perspective of an in-country reporter named John Converse. I came to find that, while a few early scenes were set in Vietnam and Converse did occasionally reflect on his time spent there, the focus of the book is a drug deal that goes wrong--horribly, horribly wrong. However, I still loved the book. It has a bit of a Pulp Fiction or Guy Ritchie film feel to it. None of the characters are likable people and they have the moral sensibilities of a gnat, but they're entertaining and a reflection of the shifting values embodied by the time period (when asked why he tried to move heroin from Vietnam to the U.S., Converse replies, "You hear stories over there. They say everybody does it. Being there f***s up your perspective.") Like most Vietnam novels, the novel is liberally sprinkled with black humor (for those who can find and appreciate it). I would read the novel all over again just for Converse's remembrance of being fragmentation-bombed in Cambodia--a particularly harrowing and well-written scene of self-realization. ( )