Sympathy for the Devil

by Kent Anderson

Book Overview

Kent Anderson's stunning debut novel is a modern classic, a harrowing, authentic picture of one American soldier's experience of the Vietnam War--"unlike anything else in war literature" (Los Angeles... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0553580876
• Release Date: August 2000
• Publisher: Bantam
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 0.48 lbs.
• Dimensions: 6.9" x 0.8" x 4.2"

Customer Reviews

Exquisite and wrenching

This is a truly remarkable book, one that could only have been written by someone who'd experienced the madness of the Vietnam conflict and lived to tell about it. It is the most powerfully authentic of all the books I've read on the subject and succeeds because it takes us along on the transformation process. We are witnesses to how a young man discovers the seeds of primal savagery within himself and, thanks to military training, is set "free" in a fashion, to go to war. Within the context of Hanson's mindset, through his eyes, we see all that is evil and ugly simultaneously externalized and internalized. In Hanson's war there is a scalding justice that is meted out on those who are arrogant, or stupid, or in the wrong place at the wrong time, or who are too young to comprehend the training they've received (or victims of its inadequacy.) Death is everywhere, pointless yet necessary to satisfy a general's need for another star for his epaulettes; to vanquish an enemy it's too often impossible to recognize. The sights, the smells, the reek and feel of torn earth, torn bodies, the melting death of an Agent Orange landscape, invade the reader's senses; with lyrical force we are taken with Hanson through the madness that is his soldier's life and, ultimately, becomes ours.A powerful tour-de-force, this book is peerless, an absolute must-read for anyone with the least curiosity of what too many young men faced eight thousand miles from everything familiar, and what those who survived brought home to relive in their day- and nightmares forever.

A definite buy.

Kent Anderson can really write. I mean, it's good that he's writing from experience, and it's good that he's chosen such important subject matter, but the main reason Sympathy for the Devil is such a good book is simply that Anderson knows what he's doing so completely.This book covers Anderson's Army Special Forces protagonist, Hanson, through boot camp and two tours in Vietnam. The sequel, Night Dogs, is about Hanson in his job as a police offier after the war. I highly recommend them both, but if you don't feel like buying the pair, Sympathy for the Devil stands alone just fine.The only caveat is that the book is pretty well hashed up into a series of anecdotes, incidents, and short-story-length pieces. It's a detailed account, but it's out of sequence and light on context. As far as I'm concerned, that makes it even stronger, but I've talked to people who disagreed, so I mention it here. If you're looking for a Vietnam book that's more orderly and educational, I suggest something by James Webb, who seems to have quite a bit of the journalist in him, or one of the oral-history books, like Nam.But Sympathy for the Devil is really a beauty. It doesn't so much try to be a book on The War, like those others, but it gets ahold of you, it easily keeps you reading, and it really does make you think-- and not about foreign policy or the military's conduct in Vietnam or anything like that. It's more about the things Hanson tries, the lengths he goes to, in dealing with the Army and the enemy.I don't say this often, but this is one of the very best books I've ever read.

Just read it.

Just buy this book and read it. It has real power. Anderson's courage in expressing his Vietnam experience with such relentless truth stuns me. One can only imagine what it must have cost him.

Kent Anderson is the real deal

I was privileged to have attended several of Mr. Anderson's fiction classes while attending the University of Texas at El Paso. During that time I got a chance to hear him read from various chapters of this book as he was writing it. The result is astounding. Read this one and then read "Night Dogs" the sequel and you'll see a clear portrait of a man who has been to hell and lived to write about it.BRAVO!

Kent Anderson knows what he is talking about.

The book, Sypathy for the Devil, is about as honest a book as I have ever read. This is not a book about what a "great Killer I am". This simply tells the story of a man that changed in Vietnam because he had to to survive. Anderson is just telling readers how the war really was. I have read this book six times and highly recommend it for those who have been in the service, are in the service, or who will be in the service.