The Phantom Blooper

I discovered this novel the same day I found that Gustav Hasford, "unreconstructed Vietnam veteran" and author of "The Short-Timers" (the basis for Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket") died in 1993 in a Greek motel, forgotten except by few friends and - even if he never knew it - by me. The inescapable sense of sadness and loss almost became anger when I realised that "The Phantom Blooper" was in every way as good as "Short-Timers" - if not better. I'll spell it differently: it's masterpiece, one of the most amazing piece of war literature ever written. Briefly released in 1990 by Bantam - just to be killed by a nervous publishers - this novel is "The Short-Timers" (and thus "Full Metal Jacket "!) sequel, even if written before FMJ was filmed, and as its predecessor it's divided in three parts. The first ("The Winter Soldiers") finds Joker on Khe Shan, in the very last day of the combat base's life. Most of his friends are dead, back in the US or missing, maybe captured by The Phantom Blooper, a legendary Marine who has defected to the VC. Even if all the events are apparently compressed in less than 24 hours, as usual in Hasford's narrative there's a lot of overlapping violence (including the rough welcome to a New Guy). I'll not spoil anything, but you'll be treated with one of the most original, visceral, epic descriptions of a war action ever committed to paper. It's a sequence that begs to be filmed - but I can't really figure out who could do it.Some American reader will be outraged by part two ("Travels with Charlie") but it's really here that Hasford raw genius does shine. Joker is captured by the NVA: instead of being shipped to the Hanoi Hilton, is brought back to a VC village "near Laos". It could have been easy for Hasford to transform Joker stay with the enemy into a cardboard horror story or in the Vietnam version of "Dance with the Wolves". But he (somehow working with the Viets, thus becoming "the white front fighter" - and The Phantom Blooper!) becomes a detached, but almost sympathetic observer of the village's life and the combat routine in the NVA. He even comes to look at a Green Berets compound "with the eyes of an attacker". He's not converted ("Communism is boring and doesn't work", he observes, too disillusioned to fall from a political claptrap to another one) but he's deeply affected: if you give the enemy a face, it ceases to be the enemy. The balance with which Hasford invest Joker's reaction to what he sees is superb, and Joker sharp humour never disappears. "Travels with Charlie" is packed of great vignettes, including a paradoxical moment of voyeurism, the strangest reference to Dale Canergie in the annals of literature and the description of an Arclight bombing run from the receiver's end that will give you shudders. The shocking violence typical of Hasford's prose is still here, and some graphic detail will repel the squeamish. But reality was never meant to be a Barbara Cartland romance...Finally Joker is "rescued" an

Gus Hasford's first novel, The Short-Timers, was the basis for Full Metal Jacket, and this is its sequel. More powerful and personal than its predecessor, The Phantom Blooper takes readers into the world of the NVA when Private Joker becomes a prisoner of war. It is a haunting portrayal of a previously faceless enemy. If you've only read The Short-Timers or seen the movie version, you don't know the whole story!