Robert Stone’s Dog Soldiers
The book is populated by hippies, cheats, losers, dropouts, and freaks, set in the waning days of the Vietnam War and the dissolute California society of the age. John Converse is a writer/journalist of dubious credentials based in Vietnam who allows himself to get roped into a transoceanic heroin deal using a friend he calmly describes as “a psychopath” and his own wife as part of the supply chain. When the psychopath, Ray Hicks, and Converse’s wife Marge connect in California it sets off a chase by some bad guys who moonlight as good guys on their days off and an increasingly desperate and irrational attempt to sell the drugs in territory controlled by other suppliers.
Along the way, there’s a healthy dose of unhealthy drug consumption, copious vomiting, and more than a smidgen of violence. Ray and Marge end up in a hippie commune with the dope and more weapons than a Libyan rebel camp, while Converse tries to avoid the dirty cop who wants to bust Ray and Marge but take the drugs for himself. It’s a nihilistic, unsparing look at compromised people descending into a hell of their own making.
Aside from my inability to really place myself in the story – I’ve never tried a drug stronger than alcohol, unless you count chocolate, which I do – I struggled to find a deeper theme below the story. Maybe the heroin isn’t really heroin, but symbolized something deeper, like a search for meaning in something consumable and disposable like money. Maybe the battle over the heroin stands in as a metaphor for the war, a conflict with questionable and short-lived objectives where the cost in lives can never be justified by the results. Maybe it’s about the fickleness of man, how quickly we’ll sell out our friends for a quick fix or financial gain. All of these occurred to me as possibilities while I was reading the book but none were fully developed as themes, leaving Dog Soldiers as a compelling read but one whose plaudits I couldn’t fully explain.
Next up: Dashiell Hammett’s The Dain Curse