TITLE: Jarhead: A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other BattlesAUTHOR: Anthony Swofford
STARTED: November 19, 2008
FINISHED: November 24, 2008
PAGES: 261
GENRE: Military
FIRST SENTENCE: I go to the basement and open my ruck.
SUMMARY: [From barnesandnoble.com] On the surface, Anthony Swofford seemed to be the quintessential "jarhead"; a front-line combat Marine who shouldered 100-pound packs and waded into battle-torn Iraq with little or no hesitation. But, as this harrowing memoir shows, Desert Storm veteran Swofford carried mental baggage far heavier than duffel bags with bed rolls and rifles. Jarhead brandishes the intensity of military life in all its maddening contradictions. By turns, Swofford is presented as terrified, bored, and remorseful; a victim of his own memories and the captain of his own renewal. From boot camp to post-battle doldrums, he struggles through mental minefields and wartime doubts. Unflinching and revelatory (there are frank descriptions of American military behavior during the Kuwaiti campaign that the Pentagon had suppressed), this memoir has become an instant classic.
THOUGHTS: Since I saw the film, the story of this book was not foreign to me. I've also watched one too many documentaries on the Gulf War to think I would actually learn anything new from this book. Despite this, I enjoyed reading Swofford's experience. I actually read this book on my train ride from DC to Albany over Thanksgiving break. Usually any book I read in transit tends to go in one ear and out the other. While the story didn't stick to well, I recall being stunned by the writing.
The prose of this text is gritty and raw. Swofford is so emotional with his story that it almost doesn't matter that structure of the text is somewhat erratic. Swofford crafts vignettes that, in some way, feel personal even to someone who has never been in the armed forces or experienced war. There are sentences and paragraphs in Jarhead that make the reader sit back and feel jealous of the writing the author penned. What I like best about the text is that Swofford pulls no punches. He tells it like it is, good and bad. This means he even takes swipes at himself. It's that type of non-apologetic writing that kept me reading the book and not watching the boats motor down the Hudson River.
RATING: 7/10 [Very Good]
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