The Short-timers

by Gustav Hasford

Book Overview

Vietnam, 1968. A nightmarish landscape blackened by napalm and littered with once-human debris. Where victories are measured in mountains of corpses and ordinary men are transformed into obsessive... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 055313020X
• ISBN13: 9780553130201
• Release Date: January 1980
• Publisher: Bantam Books
• Length: 180 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Amazing

This book was a great read. Held my interest and didn’t let go. 100% recommend.

Short, Sweet and to the Point

For such a short book, this title certainly packs a wallop. In the Nam, you find out where "Rafterman" got his name from as well a few other little details the movie didn't let you in on. The writing is very high school like and juvenile but well worth the read if you're looking for something quick to pass the time. Highly recommend this title.

Flawless novel of the Vietnam War

This must be the best Vietnam War novel I've read. It's a perfect piece of literature. The writing is incredible. Poetic, sharp, and to the point. I've read great things about Stephen Wright's "Meditations in Green" and O'Brien's "Going After Cacciato." I've read both of those books. They're excellent, but neither of them hold a candle to Gustav Hasford's The Short-Timers. The irony being, of course, that this novel is little-known, and not even in print. Written from the point of view of combat journalist Corporal Joker, the book reads as if it's narrated by one of the Marines Michael Herr followed around in "Dispatches." That same dark sense of humor is in place, that same tone of voice that one moment is expounding on something profound, the next joking about something mundane. Hasford was a vet, he was a Marine in the middle of it all, and his words drip with realism. But there is a surreal aspect to the book as well, as is expected from any Vietnam novel worth its salt. The fate of Rafter Man, as well as the delusional sequence in which Joker believes he's been killed, are macabre bits of surrealism that leave a lasting impression.The book is spilt into three connected novellas. The first two, "Spirit of the Bayonet" and "Body Count," were adapted by Stanley Kubrick for his film "Full Metal Jacket." However, the final novella in the book, "Grunts," which details Joker's experiences in the besieged Khe Sahn base, rivals the Do Lung Bridge sequence in "Apocalypse Now," and it's a shame Kubrick didn't include this section in his movie. To increase the impact of the prose, Hasford writes in present-tense. His sentences are lean and mean, making the book a quick read (it's also very short). All of this just makes me scratch my head. Hasford was obviously a talented writer. The novel reminds me of Golding's "Lord of the Flies," not due to content, but due to the quality of writing, a perfect mixture of modicum and depth. So why did Hasford die in obscurity? There's just no justice. The only recent author I could compare to Hasford would be Thom Jones, who includes several excellent Vietnam short stories in his three collections (i.e., "The Pugilist at Rest," etc). Jones, though, mostly writes character pieces; with Hasford, you not only get that, but also extremely realistic and bloody action sequences. Simply put, he's a great, forgotten author, and his books need to be put back into print, as soon as possible.

Unbelievable

Probably the best Vietnam war fiction ever written. Gustav Hasford was a Marine Corps combat correspondent and so was I, just in different times. Beyond this connection, I can objectively say that this book is awesome. It grabs you by the gonads and never lets go. The dialogue, the writing, the descriptions, the concepts, all are top-notch and far outrange and overpower anything else I've ever read. Semper Fi, Gustav! -- JJ Timmins

More than just "the best Vietnam novel"

In a note of "Atrocity Exhibition" James Ballard - referring to the act - said that "no kinaesthetic language has yet been devised to describe it in detail, and without one we are in the position of an unqualified observer viewing an operation of brain surgery". "Atrocity" was Ballard's attempt to devise such language. And Gustav Hasford's "The Short Timers" (the basis for Stanley Kubrick's movie "Full Metal Jacket") is much more than a deeply personal portrait a soldier's life in Vietnam: it's the successful effort to give us a prose adequate at describing the world of battle and fear - "like you've really seen beyond". As every great writer, Hasford was a language's creatorWritten over a period of seven years (Hasford started collecting notes while he still was a Marine in Vietnam, as combat correspondent for the First Division), "The Short Timers" is divided into three chapters. The first ("The Spirit of the Bayonet") covers Private Joker basic training at the Marine Recruit Centre in Parris Island, circa 1967. This is the part of the movie everyone remembers, ironically thanks to the performance of real life DI Lee Ermey - a guy who reportedly embodied everything Hasford hated - as Sgt. Hartmann, the ultimate drill instructor. While Kubrick approach to the subject was admittedly enthralling, Hasford's original is an object lesson on how to forge words into a butcher's knife. The prose is lucid, almost bitterly simple: Private Pyle's now famous downfall is recorded without even a glint of mercy. Joker (and Hasford) recognise that this is not the "I'm-only-rough-on-'um-because-I-love-'um" cliché of Hollywood movies, but we see that this ritual debasement is working on him as well. More than a simple condemnation of military "dehumanising" this is really a cold-blooded statement on the power of collective, ritualised violence. It's unfortunate that Kubrick used the rest of this book just loosely. Part two ("Body Count") has Joker serving as a combat correspondent (just as Hasford) in Hue during the Tet Offensive. It's a very complex piece of writing - new readers will be fascinated by the twist and turn of the plot - and the fact that you never lose sight of "what's goin' on" is another demonstration of Hasford's talent. "Body Count" is engineered as a network of images punctuated by Joker's wit, culminating with a bloody head-on assault to the walls of the Citadel (the French-built XVIII century fortress in Hue where the NVA made a stand during the American counteroffensive). At the end of part two, Joker run afoul of some red-tape colonel, is demoted to infantryman and sent to a besieged Khe Shan. While in "Body Count" Joker was the detached observer of disjointed events, in part three ("Grunts") he's back into the heart of the narrative - the story of a patrol in the jungles near the combat base. What happens is simple, straightforward and extremely disturbing - with a denouement much darker that FMJ's end."The Short Timers" works very well a

More than just the basis for "Full Metal Jacket"

This is a very, very good book. But Stanley Kubrick only filmed the first half. So if you want to know the rest of the story ... Be forewarned however; it's pretty bleak, even by the standards of the movie. This is very nearly the best Vietnam novel I have read, although I think its sequel -- "The Phantom Blooper" -- is actually better. Stunning and revelatory are words that come immediately to mind to describe that one. Certain readers might have trouble with the politics of The Phantom Blooper however. Other books of the same calibre as The Short-Timers would be some of the better items in the Avon paperback series from the early '80's. There are about a dozen books or so. I have not read all of them. The best one I know is Tom Suddick's "A Few Good Men". It comes close to Hasford in quality but not quite. The Short-Timers and the other two mentioned above are all experiential (and presumably autobiographical in large part), told from an infantryma! n's perspective. If you would like a little political background for contrast, try to find a copy of "A Tract of Time" by Smith Hempstone, last reprinted in the Avon series.