by Robert Stone
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Product Description
In Saigon during the waning days of the Vietnam War, a small-time journalist named John Converse thinks he'll find action - and profit - by getting involved in a big-time drug deal. But back in the States, things go horribly wrong for him. Dog Soldiers perfectly captures the underground mood of America in the 1970s, when amateur drug dealers and hippies encountered profiteering cops and professional killers - and the price of survival was dangerously high.
Amazon.com Review
Like Michael Herr's Dispatches, Robert Stone's National Book Award-winning novel Dog Soldiers trades on a hallucinatory vision of Vietnam as a place in which all honor and morality are ceded to the mere business of survival -- and, better, survival with personal profit. "This is the place where everybody finds out who they are," says the novel's protagonist, the journalist Converse, to which his friend and partner in crime Ray Hicks replies, "What a bummer for the gooks." Converse convinces Hicks to smuggle a shipment of heroin back to the United States, renegade CIA agents pop up, and all hell breaks loose in this beautifully written, dark study of the soul in anguish.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 A bizarre plot with a twist of twentieth century American history, 2008-12-01
Being a historian specializing in America involvement in Vietnam, I tried to take a break in reading nonfiction by delving into Robert Stone's "Dog Soldiers". Seeing Denzil Washington in the recent movie hit "American Gangster" American Gangster (2-Disc Unrated Extended Edition) piqued my curiosity in this novel. Besides, I needed a break from constantly reading nonfiction. Reading a novel allows the reader to absorb without constant attention to detail and historical connection. It is also proven to bring up one's reading speed. Thinking topics such as the Vietnam War, 10,000 Days of Thunder: A History of the Vietnam War the heroin trade that existed during the Vietnam Conflict The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade and CIA complicity in the trade Air America I was expecting an exciting yarn. Regrettably, I was disappointed. I found the characters, in particular "John Converse and his wife, Marge", to be burnt-out losers. You can read other reviews to get an idea of what the plot is about, so without being a "plot-spoiler", I felt that with all the drugged-out corruptness, the infidelity of the protagonist's wife, the illogical decisions made by people bent on profiting by the sale of heroin, this book was a waste of time to read. In trying to get any connection to reality, there was the part early in the story where "Converse", the protagonist, justifies smuggling a couple of kilos from Vietnam into the U.S. by what follows. Stone wrote:"The last moral objection (to smuggling heroin) that Converse experienced in the traditional manner had been his reaction to the Great Elephant Zap of the previous year. That winter, the Military Advisory Command, Vietnam, had decided that elephants were enemy agents bevause the NVA used them to carry things, and there ensued a scene worthy of the Ramayana. Many-armed, hundred-headed MACV had sent forth steel-bodied flying insects (helicopter gunships) to destroy his enemies, the elephants. All over the country, whooping sweating gunners descended from the cloud cover to stampede the herds and mow them down with 7.62 millimeter machine guns. The Great Elephant Zap had been too much and had disgusted everyone. Even the chopper crews who remembered the day as one of insane exhileration had been somewhat appalled. There was a feeling that there were limits. And as for dope, Converse thought, and addicts-if the world is going to contain elephants pursued by flying men, people are just naturally going to want to get high. So there, Converse thought, that's the way it's done. He had confronted a moral objection and overridden it". Obvoiusly, this twisted analogy to justify selling heroin made as little sense to me as the end of the story (what happens to the heroin and the people smuggling it). How Fiction Works For me, I need a story that has a semblence of logic, reality and historical connectedness, an attribute I felt "Dog Soldiers" lacked.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 Great Chase!, 2008-07-24
I remember this book with great fondness. Great characters and a break-neck plot. Good for escape, but also has a message from a terrific writer.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
my favorite book by a great american author, 2008-01-09
I am a fan of robert stone, and this is my favorite book by him.
First, having served as a correspondent in Vietnam and as someone who was immersed in 60s counterculture, he brings an authenticity to the story. The characters and setting ring true.
Secondly, for me this is his most successful integration of the philosophical/ideas novel with adrenaline-powered storytelling. It is a page-turner with a brain, with echoes of hemmingway and joseph conrad.
his central protagonist, hicks, is my favorite of all stone's anti-heroes. his novels never contain a "perfect" hero but rather protagonists doing the best they can in the world they inhabit and with the imperfect tools they are born with. Hicks is a fascinating though flawed character.
a deserved winner of the pullitzer prize.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
A Time Capsule for the 60s in decline, 2007-03-06
Dog Soldiers chronicles the promise of the 60s going hideously hay wire. As the flower generation shifts from pot to heroin, the ugly nature of the drug trade, which we know full well now, emerges: corrupt officials, crooked cops, addicts and dealers and violence. This novel captures the wonderful cadences of hippy language. Once the reader gets beyond the seeming cliché of so many `far outs' on its pages, the musicality of the language is apparent; Stone had an excellent ear for dialogue, and quite an incisive wit. All his characters, but especially Converse, express themselves with a minimum amount of words, and much of it slang, but to strong effect.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Michael Herr meets Jim Thompson, 2007-01-09
I read this novel after Richard Ford mentioned that Robert Stone was one of his favorite authors, someone who in his mind best deserves the accolade of "getting Vietnam right." Or at least, I thought he said something like that.
Stone is again pretty famous because he has come out with a memoir of his time in the counterculture -- Prime Green -- and that certainly colored my time with this novel.
Stone offers a lot of story in this novel. This is no aching reflection. It is not about peering through drawn shades on to a street in Vietnam, like Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. It is a thrill ride of a drug deal gone horribly wrong.
I suppose that desperation opens well into the moral ambiguities where these characters live. In each of the three main characters -- Ray Hicks, John Converse, and Marge Converse -- their lives have taken a break from normalcy. In Vietnam, Converse runs with a crowd of two faced brothel owners and press corps types. Back in the states, its more of the same: everyone is grifting -- from the police officers to the hippie commune leaders.
My favorite part of this book was the description of the odd stories that Converse wrote while working for his father in law at a second rate tabloid newspaper. "Hungry Skydiver Eats Woman," was a title, I think: that makes sense, in a way, because before he was famous, Stone made a living covering wrestling for local newspapers.
I am glad I read this book. It seems like it was an important story when it came out. I feel glad to have stumbled upon it. I thought I was going to get something historical, and it turned out to be a yarn and a half.
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