No Bugles, No Drums
NEW––BroDart Dust Jacket Cover
Author: Charles Durden
The Viking Press
©1976 Charles Durden/The Viking Press
CAB Comment––I actually knew author Charles Durden (who was a war correspondent in the Vietnam War) during my 21 years lost in L.A. I met him one night at a small New Year’s Eve get-together with mutual friends, among them Executive Producer Christopher Webster (Hellraiser, Hellbound: Hellrasier II, Heathers) and Rodney Montague (Special Effects Producer on many noted films). I didn’t immediately like Charlie, but I was in a bad mood that night. Ultimately, he turned out to be a very kind and generous person and even read the first 100 pages of my novel “Puzzleman”––and then, to my utter shock, he actually called me and said it wasn’t his usual genre to read, and he thought I was doing something different (“I don’t what it is,” he said) but that I was doing something very right and to keep at it. I was extremely flattered and uplifted. I also read Charlie’s second novel not long after that, “The Fifth Law Of Hawkins” and became a fan. I didn’t see Charlie often before he died of cancer in the very early 2000s, but when I did, he was a genuine person and down-to-earth individual thinker. Both of his two novels are definitely worth reading, worth remembering––and so is Charlie.
“No Bugles, No Drums”––Kirkus Reviews:
“The kind of novel that makes the Vietnam War seem dramatic and important all over again…Marked by some of the funniest, ghastiliest military scenes since ‘Catch-22’”––Newsweek
“From out of Vietnam. A novel with echoes of Mailer, Jones, and Heller.”––Houston Chronicle
“A sometimes hilarious Catch-22 about a Georgia ""grunt"" stuck guarding a pig farm near Danang. Hawkins and his buddies smoke dope, run a numbers game, smoke dope, run a lottery, smoke dope, smuggle dope, and dope-philosophize (sort of) as they wait for time and the war to pass them by. During off hours, they blow up a South Viet outfit to win the daily numbers (based on the number of dead ARVN), or share an ice-cold beer with a deserter in a comfy air-conditioned hut replete with tape deck, electric can opener, and stereo, courtesy PX black market privateers. But the war catches up with them--in the guise of Colonel Levine's search for a high body count, and (his son) Lt. Levine's fatal attempt to be the complete soldier--the dangers, of course, being less the VC than the US artillery shells, landing short on the wrong guys. Like most Vietnam war novels, this is a tale of psychic and moral disintegration--a humorous and at times disgusting charting of the path from cynicism to nihilism. The narration is occasionally clumsy but effective--the dialogue an honestly realistic compendium of ‘mothafuckahs’ and ‘sonofabitchs.’”
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