Publication year: 2010
Published by Corvus
Stickiness factor (could I put it down?): Super Glue
Random quote:
But he felt there should be more time, some ritual of getting ready, before they plunged into the dark valley. (P148)
Plot summary:
Fresh-faced and newly arrived from an Ivy League education at Princeton, Second Lieutenant Waino Mellas joins the Bravo Company of US Marines on the mountaintop 'firebase' code named Matterhorn. He is young, ambitious, scared out of his wits, and in Vietnam.
My thoughts:
I am lucky in that I've never had to face the never ending fatigue and terrible fear of combat. I have never had to drag myself on for hour after pointless hour, worrying that at any moment forces outside of my control will suddenly and with great violence end my life in a flurry of bullets and blood. Karl Marlantes has and his experience as a front line US Marine in Vietnam forms the bones, muscle and heart of this novel.
Although this is a work of fiction, it feels real. It feels as if every mile of dark jungle, every panic stricken moment under fire actually happened. There are small details, such as the dark purple staining on the soldiers' lips from the fruit flavours that they add to the water in their canteens and the vile concoctions that they create by mixing all of their rations together (with generous lashings of Tabasco sauce), that speak of personal experience, rather than clever research.
In an interview with the Guardian newspaper, Marlantes explains that this novel sprang from his desire to explain something of the experience of the Vietnam war, away from the grand strategic overviews of history or the visual orgy of lights and iconography of something like Apocalypse Now, which have come to define our view of the Vietnam war. His novel does not come with a Jimi Hendrix sound track and a Colonel Kurtz figure somewhere up the river. Instead, the story looks at the rather personal conflicts that combat places on a group of men.
Tasked with preparing a mountain, codenamed Matterhorn, to be an artillery firing base, the Marines of Bravo Company must fight against the impossibility of staging patrols in the dense, unforgiving jungle, for what would appear to be a pointless exercise. At the whim of officers whose distance from the jungle and their own careerist agendas, the Marines are forced to act on ridiculous orders - covering front line foxholes to protect them from nonexistent artillery, when it means obscuring sight lines for a more likely ground assault; marching men without food or water over mountainous terrain towards meaningless, arbitrary objectives.
It would have been easy for Marlantes to portray the commanding officers as 'bad' or incompetent men. However, the novel carefully and patiently examines each character's motives and decisions. Ultimately, the reader has to ask themselves whether they would have made any wiser decisions once the god-like objectivity of their view was removed. For instance, Simpson, the commanding officer maybe a petty, alcoholic but as one of the characters points out, heavy drinking isn't unknown in the Marine Corps. Plus, Simpson's vivid memories of the Korean war mean that he is no stranger to the hardships of frontline combat.
Away from the jungle, in base camp, the company is riven with racial divides. This was the time of the civil rights movement, and the black marines are well aware and very sensitive to their status as a lower class than the white soldiers. It is this conflict that forms the sad conclusion to the novel, rather than the bloody battle to retake the hill. Whatever bonds battle forges, they cannot be as strong as the divisions and resentments that 'The Real World' has forced between these men.
Vietnam has its stereotypes, informed by the many films that have covered Vietnam, and these stereotypes exist here, but with a striking realism that stops them being the sorts of symbols we expect to see in order to tick them off our Vietnam War Score Card, and instead become living, breathing aspects of the lives of 'real' people. In his Guardian interview, Marlantes says of his characters "Now, with maturity and distance, I had come to love them all" and that is something that the reader takes away as well.
I strongly recommend this book, it is a gripping, funny, terrifying book full of real empathy. If you are looking for something that has all the tub thumping bravado of a Chuck Norris film, you will be disappointed; Matterhorn is not about how great explosions are but is a study of how war can shape the lives and souls of men. Maybe that sounds too melodramatic, but this is a genuinely moving story about the individuals called to fight and their experiences of war's violence.
Matterhorn is available from Amazon and many other retailers.
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