THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 4, 1994 TAG: 9412050239
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY JOE COCCARO
LENGTH: Medium: 85 lines
IN PHAROAH'S ARMY
Memories of the Lost War
TOBIAS WOLFF
Alfred A. Knopf. 221 pp. $23.
The Vietnam War has provided grist for many a novel and movie. Most of them focus on the anguish or absurdity of the conflict. Gruesome detail of the bloody horror, or the psychological battering suffered by those on front lines, remains a popular theme.
By most accounts, it seems the majority of those involved in the conflict were lunatic killers, cowards or heroes. Fact is, scores of Vietnam vets had more sobering experiences.
Tobias Wolff was among them.
In In Pharaoh's Army: Memories of the Lost War, Wolff writes of coping in a war that he witnessed close up at times, but mostly from a distance. There's little sensational in this self-portrait, but a whole lot that's believable.
Wolff, who served in the U.S. Army, reflects on his experience in Vietnam from 1967-68 as both a participant and an observer. He shows the brutality and his growing disillusionment without being maudlin or cynical.
Wolff conveys his Vietnam tour with the same wit, self-examination and literary elegance that earned his 1989 smash memoir, This Boy's Life, the PEN/Faulkner Award. It later became a major movie.
Look for In Pharaoh's Army, a National Book Award nominee, to do as well, if not better.
Wolff, a literary instructor at Syracuse University, writes with Hemingwaylike economy. He lassos readers and drags them cover-to-cover with polish and punch. It's hard to put him down.
Anecdote, understatement and raw intelligence are Wolff's tools. He avoids hyperbole and does not allow self-indulgence to distract from the story.
The book opens where This Boy's Life left off, with Wolff in Virginia Beach pondering his fate. Kicked out of a prestigious Princeton prep school and with no career in sight, he decides to enlist.
He is perplexed by the Army - or so he says - but learns to cope. He assimilates so well that he is recruited to take the officers exam.
First Lt. Wolff attributes his promotion and relatively posh assignment to luck, and impressing the right folks. He pokes fun at his overall lack of ambition and talent. His only desire since childhood, he says, is to be a writer.
In Vietnam, he served as a liaison to the South Vietnamese forces in the Mekong Delta. There, he and a sidekick sergeant use their positions to fraternize with village folk and carve out for themselves a comfortable existence.
Wolff never sees action. In fact, he never pulls a trigger. His closest brush with death comes when a helicopter drops a piece of heavy equipment that almost crushes him.
Yes, Wolff witnesses atrocities, such as the annihilation of a mostly civilian village that he frequented. Yet he tells of the assault as an astonished bystander - not someone out to make a political statement. He underscores the inhumanity on both sides.
Throughout, Wolff strives for context to the war, not a verdict on its virtues. He finds humor where more self-absorbed writers might find outrage. He finds drama in what others might see as routine. He shows, with stunning recollection, that there was more to Vietnam than blood and straitjackets.
In Pharaoh's Army will doubtlessly push Wolff farther into the mainstream of the country's most noted writers. Early collections of his short stories and his 101-page novelette, The Barracks Thief, also about his Army experience, have been reprinted.
In The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories (1994), which he edited, Wolff contemplates the kinship that America's best writers forge with readers:
``The art gives shape to what the honesty discovers, and allows us to face what in truth we were already afraid of anyway. It lets us know we're not alone.''
Wolff will draw a crowd with In Pharaoh's Army. MEMO: Joe Coccaro is business editor for The Virginian-Pilot and The
Ledger-Star. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Tobias Wolff
by CNB