Nam-A-Rama

商家名称	信用等级	购买信息	订购本书
		Nam-A-Rama
		Nam-A-Rama

基本信息·出版社：Saint Martin's Press Inc.
·页码：352 页
·出版日期：2005年06月
·ISBN：0765311208
·条形码：9780765311207
·版本：2005-06-01
·装帧：精装
·开本：32开 Pages Per Sheet
·外文书名：越南战事

内容简介 Book Description
Nam-A-Rama is Catch-22 meets Apocalypse Now. It's the wildest, wackiest, saddest, truest war story ever told, because it's all made up, which means it's all real - from the oatmeal dropped on the VC (the Marines won't eat it) to the naked movie star parachuting into Hanoi; from the jarhead who calls in air strikes from a Bangkok brothel to the "Sky-Kyke" who fills out the Marine Corps's diversity quota; from the businessmen demanding a long inventory-reducing war to the Pentagon brass hoping for a glorious medal-worthy one; from the locals who'll do anything for a Yankee dollar to the grunts nobody ever asked and never will.

It starts and ends, like all the best adventures, in the air. Almost-Captain Gearheardt and his buddy, Almost-Captain Armstrong, are ferrying bodies (live in, dead out) for the CIA's Air America, but they have never forgotten their top-secret orders, given when Gearheardt was delivering pizzas to the Oval Office for the CIA: Chopper into Hanoi and buy Uncle Ho a beer. Then either shoot his ass or shake his hand (the instructions get vague at this point).

And so they do, Semper Fi, pausing only to get an aircraft carrier black-flagged for bubonic plague, have an affair with Mickey Mouse, cleverly decode the message sewn into a lusty spy's black panties, commandeer a Russian truck complete with a midget Chinese "Uncle Sam," avenge themselves on a Cuban torturer, and dutifully experience all the Honor and Glory of the next-to-the-next-to-last war that never (God forbid) made the Nightly News. And they do it all for laughs. Because if they were to stop laughing, where would the heartache end?

Join Marines Jack Armstrong and his unpredictable buddy Gearheardt as the war is cooked up at a White House pizza party. Then President Larry Bob Jones is forced to send the boys on a secret mission with anti-war movie star Barbonella to stop a war that has quickly gotten out of hand. Their trip to Hanoi takes them through deadly combat in South Vietnam and wild misadventures that propel their story forward in a boisterous satiric rush. Not since Catch-22 has there been such a laugh-out-loud anti-epic that captures so brilliantly the absurdity of modern war.

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Published as the military and its actions abroad are under intense scrutiny, this highly entertaining, provocative lampooning of the Vietnam War is reminiscent of Catch-22 and David Mamet's Wag the Dog. Marine helicopter pilot Gerard Finnigan Gearheardt, in the Oval Office on CIA pizza delivery duty ("They don't let freckle-faced teenagers deliver pizza to the White House, you know"), overhears President Larry Bob Jones and the Joint Chiefs of Staff brainstorming the idea of escalating the American advisory presence in Vietnam into a full-fledged shooting war to enhance Larry Bob's image and beef up a flagging peacetime economy. To make sure the situation doesn't get out of hand, Larry Bob concocts a loony-tunes scheme to parachute Gearheardt and his buddy Lt. Jack Armstrong, along with antiwar movie sex kitten Barbonella, into Hanoi to meet with Ho Chi Minh and negotiate peace just in time to get Larry Bob reelected. The two hapless Marines rendezvous with Barbonella, but, thanks to the meddling of an American agent and a Cuban operative, the zany scheme goes haywire and Armstrong and Gearheardt wind up flying for the CIA in Laos. In this wonderfully irreverent novel, evocative of vintage Max Shulman, hearty belly laughs contrast with chilling insights into high level political machinations.

From Booklist
Jennings, a former marine and Air America pilot and a sometime CIA operative, gives us a story about a couple of Air America flyers who are recruited by the U.S. president and the CIA to embark on a secret mission into South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. But this isn't your typical Vietnam novel; it's a satire, a comedy of war, with a blatantly racist president, a beautiful movie star turned antiwar activist, and a couple of antiheroes (Jack Armstrong and his impulsive, quite possibly insane pal, Gearhardt) who just want to keep themselves in one piece. Although some elements of the book are a little obvious--the movie star, Barbonella, is clearly based on Jane Fonda, star of Barbarella--Jennings generally approaches this broad satire with a surprising amount of delicacy and subtlety. The book is sure to be compared to Catch-22 and M*A*S*H, but that may not be entirely fair. Jennings is telling his own story, in his own voice, and the novel earns the right to stand on its own satirical feet.
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　David Pitt

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
As an editor once said to me nervously about a war novel, "We are to take this ironically, right?"

So many novels have been written about Vietnam, and now here is another: Nam-A-Rama, by Phillip Jennings. I mention the slew of other Nam novels because Jennings seems late to be throwing his cover (to use a Marine term for helmet) into the ring. But clearly for many this war is not yet in mothballs, and it is still incredibly alive for Jennings, a former Marine captain and helicopter pilot who flew more than 300 missions in Vietnam, and who also flew for Air America in Laos.

Nam-A-Rama is the story of two marine helicopter pilots, Jack Armstrong and his Tom Sawyer-like buddy, Gearheardt. As Jennings writes, "Gearheardt was one of those people who never looked in the rear view mirror. Causing the Tet Offensive, prolonging the Vietnam war, and getting the President fixed up with the girl who showered in her underpants in Olongopo were hijinks quickly forgotten by the boyish pilot."

One of the things civilians forget time and again is that soldiers are often Gearheardts, with ferocious, fun-loving, but troubling imaginations coupled to a lot of testosterone. And with Gearheardt yanking Armstrong along with him, the story rips up and down like zippers in a Saigon whorehouse.

The two marines are sent on a secret mission by the Prez to meet with Ho Chi Minh to stop the war. They link up with anti-war movie star Barbonella, and there is a cavalcade of vibrant, schizophrenic episodes as the buddies-in-arms head to Hanoi to put a cap on the death toll.

At one point the narrator, Armstrong, is in a Mustang with North Vietnamese Gen. Giap, being chased by Ho Chi Minh in a Corvette. It is pretty surreal. In a letter called "Why I Wrote Nam-A-Rama" and included with the publicity material, Jennings comments: "Almost every line in this book, even if perhaps a throw-away or cheap shot, has a sub-textual basis in fact. The silliness of acts that condemned American troops to increased danger and death . . . can hardly be exaggerated." Well, Mr. Jennings, I beg to differ. You do exaggerate (a Corvette for Ho?), your imagination was burning white-hot sulfur, and kudos to you.

Jennings doesn't want the reader kept at the safe remove of irony. This is acid satire, because Jennings is still outraged and sickened by the war he attended. And satire is braver and more meaningful than irony, which is something cowards often hide behind to avoid battling with real life.

And yet this reader was most moved when Jennings seemed to be writing from his actual war experiences. The break from insanity to reality adds to the horror.

Jennings writes during one firefight, "When we hit the ground I jumped out and landed on top of a Marine who had been shot in the throat. I tried to avoid looking down at his face, because I didn't want it to be the kid with freckles and a nervous knee. Blood pumped up over my boot and pant-leg. . . . I saw the crew chief jump out, pick up the Marine shot in the neck, throw him into the chopper in one swift motion, and then they were gone. . . . "

This is only one of several realistic war scenes that depart from the Hanoi-bound hilarity. These pages will stay with me as do the best of Tim O'Brien and John Del Vecchio's The Thirteenth Valley. Everything that finally moved me in this book is captured in "I didn't want it to be the kid with the freckles." For in those words is visible a great soul, still alive in a soldier after the numbing, insane carnage.

Interestingly, Jennings has also written that he wanted to show how the good soldiers who fought the war were betrayed by our military and civilian leaders. His lampoons of those leaders are miraculously funny. But what moved me to outrage and heartbreak were the pages in which he goes beyond satirizing venal leaders and to write fiercely and humanely as a man who was there, served his country, and is still clearly losing sleep over real flesh-and-blood kids with freckles and nervous knees.
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Reviewed by Tom Paine

About Author
Phillip Jennings left the Marines as a captain and subsequently flew for Air America in Laos. He won the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society short fiction award in 1998. He has a degree in business administration and is the CEO of Mayfair Capital Partners. He was recently proud and honored to swear his youngest son into the USMC. He lives in Kirkland, WA.

Book Dimension :
length: (cm)21 　　　 　　　　　 　　　　　 width:(cm)14
作者简介 Phillip Jennings left the Marines as a captain and subsequently flew for Air America in Laos. He won the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society short fiction award in 1998. He has a degree in business administration and is the CEO of Mayfair Capital Partners. He was recently proud and honored to swear his youngest son into the USMC. He lives in Kirkland, WA.

媒体推荐 "Set during a pivotal time in U.S. history and populated by a bizarre cast of characters, Phillip Jennings' zany novel is cynical, fast-paced, irreverent, thought-provoking and thoroughly entertaining." -Bob Kerrey
"Just when you thought it was safe to stop reading novels about the Vietnam War, along
comes Phillip Jennings with "Nam-A-Rama," . . . a wild, original and often hilarious ride from its opening sentence to the last. . . . [a] weird, painfully funny, wonderful book." -Christopher Buckley
""Nam-A-Rama" is a dazzlingly inventive novel of an epic American adventure abroad run totally amuck, a work that demands your full attention from start to finish." -Nicholas A. Basbanes
"Jennings has done a big service to all of us Vietnam vets and anyone else who was touched by that conflict. He has written a book that hacks its way through the dark tangle of the Vietnam War with a blade that flashes with comedy. One of the most bizarrely profound aspects of the human condition is the way horror and hilarity can intimately embrace. To capture that truth in fiction may be the toughest stunt of all. Phillip Jennings does that, and does it brilliantly." -Robert Olen Butler
""Nam-A-Rama" is a wild piece of work, a sustained vaudeville softshoe on the most rollicking, ugly topic. Very, very funny, ribald, raunchy and smart." -Stewart O'Nan

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