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Fields of Fire (Mass Market Paperback) (Paperback)
by James Webb
| Category:
Novel of the Vietnam War, Historical fiction |
| Market price: ¥ 108.00
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¥ 98.00
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 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
An amazing journey back to a time of confusion and significance when the U.S. was exerting its last gasp into the mutated conflict known as the Vietnam War - through the experiences of a group of diverse, interesting characters. |
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Author: James Webb
Publisher: Bantam
Pub. in: August, 2001
ISBN: 0553583859
Pages: 496
Measurements: 6.9 x 4.2 x 1.2 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA00979
Other information: Reprint edition
ISBN-13: 978-0553583854
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- Awards & Credential -
It's a Pulitzer-nominated book and the author James Webb is an Emmy Award-winning journalist. |
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- MSL Picks -
Despite the fact Fields of Fire was written nearly thirty years ago, the book remains a timely write. James Webb is a superb writer, with most of his works fiction or historical fiction composed around Military themes. Since Fields of Fire was written, Webb has added handsomely to his repertoire of fine books.
Fields of Fire exposes the raw and ugly aspects of war. Those ugly realities are not confined to Vietnam. The brutality and gruesomeness of war may be exacted with various themes, but it is always human life that suffers the toll. This Pulitzer-nominated book borrows brilliantly from authors such as Norman Mailer, Stephen Crane, Ernest Hemingway, and draws from the author's own experience as a Marine rifle platoon and company commander in a hell known as An Hoa Basin. Fields of Fire provides the reader with a very good insight into Military life, despite the book's backdrop being the Vietnam War. Clearly, if Webb did not personally experience everything he writes about in Fields of Fire (Webb did serve in Vietnam), he certainly came close enough to what is depicted to personally resonate with them.
Throughout the book, Mr. Webb painstakingly leaves political discussion out of the picture, and instead, focuses on a Marine rifle platoon in one of the fiercest battlefields of Vietnam where the American civilian value has no relevance, and the platoon, consequently, is pitted in a struggle for survival. Eventually, the entire platoon is wiped out during a regimental operation against the North Vietnamese regulars. Ironically, it is the crippled Harvard undergraduate - a misfit who is dubbed the "Senator" because of his elite background - who delivers the verdict on the anti-war demonstrators for their alleged cowardice.
The book does not try to justify the "legitimacy" of the war where Mr. Webb and his men fought and bled, but calls for its readers to sympathize with and respect the men who fought in it. As he suggests through a Maileresque device known as the Time Machine, everyone in the platoon, except for Senator and the lieutenant, joins the Corps to get away from grim prospects at home, unaware that they will die in a godforsaken war. However, in spite of this, unlike many other typical Vietnam War novels, it discusses abstract ideals such as honor and duty associated with battlefield through Lt. Hodges who willingly volunteers for a tour in Vietnam.
True, the book is dark and depressing, but it is also entertaining and totally believable at the same time. That is why this book remains one of the finest literary works on the Vietnam War.
- From quoting Christopher York
Target readers:
History or warfare lovers
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James Webb, who has worked and traveled in Vietnam extensively since 1991, was one of the most highly decorated combat Marines of the Vietnam War. An attorney and Emmy Award-winning journalist, he has served as secretary of the navy, assistant secretary of defense, and full committee counsel to the U.S. Congress. He lives in Virginia, where he has authored five critically acclaimed, bestselling novels.
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From the publisher
They each had their reasons for being a soldier.
They each had their illusions. Goodrich came from Harvard. Snake got the tattoo - Death Before Dishonor - before he got the uniform. And Hodges was haunted by the ghosts of family heroes.
They were three young men from different worlds plunged into a white-hot, murderous realm of jungle warfare as it was fought by one Marine platoon in the An Hoa Basin, 1969. They had no way of knowing what awaited them. Nothing could have prepared them for the madness to come. And in the heat and horror of battle they took on new identities, took on each other, and were each reborn in fields of fire...
Fields of Fire is James Webb's classic, searing novel of the Vietnam War, a novel of poetic power, razor-sharp observation, and agonizing human truths seen through the prism of nonstop combat. Weaving together a cast of vivid characters, Fields of Fire captures the journey of unformed men through a man-made hell - until each man finds his fate.
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Snake
February 1968
There he went again. Smack-man came unfocused in the middle of a word, the unformed syllable a dribble of bubbly spit along his chin, and leaned forward, that sudden rush of ecstasy so slow and deep it put him out. His knees bent just a little and he stood there motionless, styled out in a violet suit and turquoise, high-heeled shoes. He had the Wave and his hair was so perfectly frozen into place that he seemed a mimic sculpture of himself, standing there all still with skag.
Snake peeped into the doorway one more time, still saw no one, and took a deep breath: I owe it to myself. He grabbed a sink with one hand and unloaded with a furious kick, perfectly aimed. Smack-man's head bounced up like a football on a short string, stopping abruptly when his neck ended. Then he slumped onto the floor, out cold, breathing raggedly through a mashed, gushing nose.
Nothing to it. Never knew what hit him.
Snake quickly sorted through Smack-man, careful to replace each item as he found it. Two ten's were stuffed inside one pocket. Whatta you know. Smack-man must be a bag man. Smack-man should be ashamed. Snake pocketed the money, laughing to himself: for the good of society, and little kids on dope.
He stood, pushing his glasses back up his nose, and scratched his head, studying his kill. Well, I gotta go tell Mister Baum. What a bummer.
And in twenty minutes he was on the street again, walking briskly toward nowhere under winter's lingering chill. His shoulders were raised underneath the gray sweatshirt, guarding hopelessly against the wind. His head was tilted to the side and back. A sneer sat tightly on his face.
What the hell. You gotta believe in yourself. It was the right thing to do.
A gust of wind swooped down from the amber mist of sky and chased him, rattling trash. Next to him the door of an abandoned rowhouse swung open and banged. The boards over its windows clapped against the building. His eyes scanned the building quickly and his narrow shoulders raised against the biting wind again, but otherwise there was no reaction from him.
Gotta be cool, man. Can't let no empty building spook you.
An old car clanked past him, spewing clouds of oil, and he eyed it also, not breaking his sauntering stride. Driving too slow. Looking for something. Hope it ain't me.
He was small, with a mop of brittle hair. The hair flopped along his neck, bending with any hint of wind. His face was narrow and anonymous but for the crooked memory of a broken nose and the clear eyes. The eyes were active and intense.
He left the sidewalk, turning inside a rusted fence, and walked up to a rowhouse stairway. He climbed the outside steps, pondering each one as if searching for an excuse not to ascend it, and did a mull-dance on the landing, finally being chased inside by another gust of wind.
Hell with it. Need a beer anyway.
The black stench of air clung to him as he climbed the inside stairs. Sadie stuck her head out on the second landing and he jammed a ten-dollar bill inside her stained cotton robe. The bill never stopped moving. Sadie extracted it with a lightning stroke and ogled it as if it were an emerald. Her wild gray hair came full into the hallway and she called to Snake. He was three steps up from her landing now.
"What you been up to, bad old Snake?"
"Trouble. You know that." He stopped on the stairs for one moment and gave her his ten-dollar sermon. "Now, go buy that dog of yours some diapers. Or a box of kitty litter. I'm tired of seeing his shit inside the door down there."
She slammed the door on him. He laughed, continuing up the stairs. Old bitch.
Inside his own door, a vision on the bed. He blinked once at the greater light and focused. It was his mother, in her bathrobe. She dangled imaginatively on the bed’s edge, her chubby legs crossed, neither of them quite touching the floor. Her arms were up behind her head, pushing her hair over the top so that it fell down around her face. She looked as if she were carefully attempting to re-create a picture from some long-forgotten men's magazine. She watched the door with expectant eyes and dropped her hands in disappointment when she saw Snake. He shook his head slightly, then pulled out a cigarette and leaned against the doorway.
"Uh huh. What are you doing? Paying bills?"
She smoothed a wrinkle on the bed, studying it for a moment, not looking at him. Then she gave her hair a flip. She had bleached it artificial gold again, and she smiled her sugar smile and her sad, remembering voice came across the room on a puffy little cloud, floating lazily to his ears.
"You're home early, Ronnie."
"You noticed that."
She was naked underneath the robe. She leaned forward on the bed, finding the floor with her dangling feet, and the robe fell loosely away, revealing her. Snake shrugged resignedly. Something’s going on. Again. He walked to the refrigerator and searched for a beer but they were gone. There had been two six-packs that morning.
"Old Bones out on a job?" She nodded, watching him from beside the bed.
"You sure he's working?" She laughed a little. He did, too. The old man's antics were legendary and unpredictable.
"Man came for him in a truck this morning and he left with his painting clothes on, carrying a sackload of beer." She shrugged, then looked at Snake with an insightful stare. "From the beer I'd say he's working. If it was hard stuff..." She made a funny face and shrugged again. "I think he's working."
There was nothing else to drink in the refrigerator. "Any coffee?"
"Instant."
He put some water on. She eyed him closely, walking from the bed into the kitchen. "Why are you home so early? Did you get fired again?"
He spooned the instant into the cup. "Yup."
She grinned, half-amused and half-curious, her eyes lingering on his wiry body. "Was it another fight? How can you stand to fight so much? You're so blind without your glasses! Was it another fight?"
He checked the water. Hot enough. He poured it into the cup. "Yup. Sort of."
She sat down and leaned over the table, admiring him. "How can a man be fired for 'sort of' being in a fight?"
He joined her at the table and sipped his coffee. Perfect. Then he lit another cigarette. "Well. It all started when I had to clean the women's room." She nodded eagerly, already knowing that he would make it into a great story. She had always told him that he shouldn't fight but she cloyed him with attention when he did. She had always admonished him to be civil but at times like this he was John Wayne, straight out of Dodge City. He casually sipped his coffee.
"I put the sign out in front of the door, you know, so nobody will walk into the room when I'm cleaning it. Then I wait until all the girls are out of there, asking each one when she leaves if there's anybody else still in there. I don't want to get into that kind of trouble, moral turpitude is a bust, you know that. Finally I go in and clean the toilets and the sinks, and I'm starting to mop the floor when this nigger dude stumbles in. Got a Jones on, I can tell the minute he walks into the room. He's just shot up, too. Don't know where the hell he got off, maybe right there in the movie room. Don't know if he could cook up without being caught but I guess it's as good as any other place. Nobody ever gave a damn when a match was lit that I ever saw. Maybe he was snorting. Who knows. He looked too out of it to be snorting. He was out on his goddamn feet. You know he's out of it if he walks into the wrong bathroom. Moral turpitude and all."
She reached over and took one of his cigarettes, ogling him as if he were telling a bedtime story. Really grooving on it. "Yeah. O.K. So what did you do?"
"Take it easy. Don't steal my lines, all right? The dude walks into the bathroom, taking a couple steps and then stopping, nodding out right on his feet, leaning all the way forward at the waist, all the way out. Then he wakes up real quick and goes 'whoooeeee, whooooooeee,' like that, and then falls asleep again, there on his feet. I don't know how the hell he made it to the bathroom. Well. I watch him do that a couple times. He smiles when he wakes up like everything's O.K. I try to check his fingers to see if he's got the poison but I can't tell, and he's pretty strong when he wakes up. Figure he's just got a strong shot in him.
"He's dressed pretty good. That don't always mean anything, I mean, why the hell would he be in a movie in the afternoon if he's worth a shit, it's a lousy movie anyway. But you never can tell."
He flipped his cigarette into the cluttered sink and slowly lit another, enjoying her eagerness. "Didn't know what to think, to tell you the truth. Coulda been anybody. But I watched him dropping off like that, and checked those clothes out, and I figured it was worth a shot." She nodded quickly to him, smiling, enraptured by his logic. Snake laughed ironically. "It was like the Lord his-self delivered him to me. Here we are in the girls' room, with a sign out front that says 'CLOSED,' ain't nobody coming in, ain't nobody there to say what happened, this dude is so far gone he could take a picture of me and still not remember me. Well. Just had to make me a play."
She was still smiling. She leaned forward in anticipation. "So you punched his lights out."
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| View all 10 comments |
Doug Vaughn (MSL quote), USA
<2007-05-10 00:00>
James Webb is a terrific writer. As a former marine infantry soldier who experienced the war in Viet Nam first hand, he could have taken that experience to extremes as some writers have, either exaggerating the Gung Ho comeradere of the soldier's experience or attacking the war itself as a meaningless and senseless horrer. Instead, while showing clearly the dehumanizing effects of terror and hardship that marines in the field experienced, he manages to make the reader care about the characters - even while honestly presenting them with their many faults. He doesn't turn his head away from brutality and inhumane actions on the part of his characters. Rather he creates a world where normal values have to be put aside in favor of survival, and even those characters one might dislike initially because they are crude, viscious and stupid, take on an almost larger than life image as they survive and help their buddies survive.
Webb can really write. This is a book told with the authority of one who was actually there and has thought long and hard about his experiences. The characters are skillfully drawn, the action of the story moves forcefully forward with few lulls and the descriptive passages and dialogue are so right on that one really believes that this is real - these people, these actions.
This is an excellent book and should be appreciated both by those who had the first hand experience and those who didn't. |
Uitlander (MSL quote), USA
<2007-05-10 00:00>
I am not widely read in war novels, but this one carries the flavor and angst of Vietnam as well as its dilemmas. Webb scallops the line between hero and murderer to the point of invisibility. His characters live their mostly brief lives on the edge of rage and desperation, cockiness and cool.
Fields of Fire provides glimpses of what it takes to be a fighting man. The Marine Corps can standardize them in boot camp, but the really superb ones have it in their bones - a natural alacrity that keeps them forever watchful and reactive.
Finally, if anyone wonders why combat soldiers re-up, the author demonstrates the reasons. It must be a huge rush to perform this perilous, bloody work, do it well and cheat the grim reaper. No other job is as real, no bonds of fealty are stronger. Thank you Mr. Webb, for all your services. |
A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-05-10 00:00>
Those who were born beneath the Line will appreciate this, as will those Northerners who still remember the line between the good guys and the bad guys. Men are thrust into war, for the most part--and we should remember that these days as the bullets fly. Mr. Webb shows us here the American warrior's spirit: reluctant, but resolute; other wise engaged, but ready to do his duty. Better than the standard set before ("Thin Red Line" comes to mind), this novel gives us war as he knew it, and he knew it well. Purchase this to know what Americans can do and what Americans can be in a horrible situation. |
Schmerguls (MSL quote), USA
<2007-05-10 00:00>
This book took me a while to get into, what with the tape-recorder-like gutter language and the awful things its characters went thru and their tomcat morals. But it screams authenticity to me, which may not mean much since I was never in Vietnam. But the haunting moral dilemmas faced by the protagonists cannot help but inspire thoughts such as: what would I have done in a like situation? While Robert E. Lee Hodges is the central character, Goodrich ("the Senator") faces the more agonizing situations. Read the book, and you decide. But don't let the grime and the horror keep you from getting to its overpowering ending.
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