Robert O'Connor

Gregor Jordan's 2001 film of O'Connor's novel was grimly funny, but the rather darker and bleaker novel is grim first and funny second. It's hardly surprising that the studio had to make Jordan brighten the story up as much as it could. It's even less surprising that September 11 pretty much killed any chance that this movie was going to get release in the US. It premiered at the Toronto Film Festival on September 9th, but after the events of two days later America didn't want a story that show more made its Army out to be ignorant, drug-addled, corrupt, evil, murderous morons.

And the movie pulled its punches in the way the book doesn't. The movie's tag line was a cheery "War is hell... but peace is f*#!%!! boring!". The book's epigraph is a far bleaker quote from Frederich Nietzsche: "When there is peace, the warlike man attacks himself."

O'Connor's novel is black humour with a capital B, as the junkie hustler Elwood struggles to stay one step ahead of the greater forces of violence and corruption around him on a US Army base in Germany in the late 80s.

The absurdity of the armed forces in peacetime evokes echoes of the absurdity of "Catch-22" and the lost generation cynicism is more "Less than Zero" bitterness than "Generation X" whimsy. Elwood sees the world as a battle between staying one of the "motherfuckers" or descending to the level of the "motherfucked" - a battle that he ultimately loses.

The strength of the book is that the absurdity and surreal nature of the drug-crazed, drug-dealing, drug-manufacturing "fighting 57th" doesn't become mere "Animal House" hi-jinks, as they tend to in the movie. Its weakness is where the author's studied efforts for lower and lower levels of bleakness get pretentious. Having Elwood seduce the Top Sargent's one-armed daughter out of a combination of perversity and reckless bravado is one thing - but taking her for a picnic on the ruins of a Nazi concentration camp is simply wanky.

Still, unlike the movie, OConnor spares us any happy endings. It's pretty obvious from the beginning that Elwood is going to join the motherfucked and he inexorably does so in grand tragic style. As much as I don't begrudge Joaquin Phoenix's rather more pleasant Elwood escaping the hell of an army at peace in one piece, O'Connor's Elwood could only exit the Army one way.

But don't read the novel if you're having a really happy day. show less

I only realised that the film Buffalo Soldiers was based on a book many years after first watching it. Indeed, it’s a favourite film of mine: a very dark comedy set amongst bored American soldiers stationed in 1980s West Germany. Joaquin Phoenix and Anna Paquin star. It’s impeccably acted, shot, and scripted, with a brilliant soundtrack. Having finally read the novel that inspired it, I wonder whether I would have bothered to watch the film had I encountered that first. While the film is show more a black comedy, the book is merely grim as fuck. The changes in the film version make for a neater, more meaningful, somewhat less nihilistic narrative. Perhaps the most significant alteration is that in the film Ray Elwood, the protagonist, deals heroin but does not get high on his own supply. In the book, he’s an addict. This is very obviously a terrible idea for a dealer, as literally every piece of crime-related media emphasises. The book spends more time on the US army’s simmering race war and deeply unpleasant soldier banter about women; the film gives more time to the misadventures of doped up tank drivers. Both book and film, I should add, paint a very convincing portrait of chaos in the the US army.

The other major difference is the ending. Spoilers for both book and film: in the film, Elwood throws himself out of the window and lands on his nemesis, surviving to graft another day. In the book, Elwood is thrown out of the window and the book ends, obviously implying that he dies. Another difference that felt gratuitous in the book: Elwood gets his new girlfriend addicted to heroin. As should be clear by now, I prefer the film version. Not merely because it is less grim, but also because it comments more strikingly on the US army and the Cold War. And it’s funny. I might have liked the book more had I not been judging it by the standards of a favourite film. O'Connor writes well and pulls off the difficult second person narration, but can’t equal military black humour like [b:Catch-22|168668|Catch-22 (Catch-22, #1)|Joseph Heller|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1463157317s/168668.jpg|814330] or [b:Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War|543103|Generation Kill Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War|Evan Wright|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1441919496s/543103.jpg|908023]. I recommend watching the film instead. show less