freecounterpoint: post-mortem: Pint-sized Jewish fireplug, "Nobody calls my dog a faggot!"

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Tecumseh said...: The Naked And The Dead was a great novel -- I read it twice as a kid (both times in French!) But after that, he went downhill. Oh, well, happens to all of us, one way or the other.; 11/15/2007 11:31 PM
My Frontier Thesis said...: I'm putting that one on my Christmas list.; 11/16/2007 1:49 PM
Tecumseh said...: I'm not 100% sure how the novel stands the test of time, but when I read it (and it was my very first book about WWII in the Pacific), it just blew me away. It's tough, gritty, irreverent. I think George Orwell was right -- it was the best WWII novel up to that time. There may be 2 or 3 in that class written since then -- which ones?; 11/16/2007 4:55 PM
My Frontier Thesis said...: It'd be difficult for me to rank other books without having first read Mailer's. It looks as though it's standing the test of time.

Have you checked out Michael Herr, Dispatches (first published in 1977, regarding Vietnam)?; 11/16/2007 6:50 PM