Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

CW2 by Layne Heath

1991; University of Nebraska Press; Volume: 25; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/wal.1991.0070

1948-7142

Clay Reynolds,

Mormonism, Religion, and History

Reviews 373 there isof course the comic Quixote figure, the lone ranger (without any Tonto —otherwise how could he be indeed a lone ranger?), the mysterious shadowy presence who finally is identified by Hayduke as the aging surviving Jack Burns from Brave Cowboy (a link identified well in the May 1989 WLA by Paul Bryant in “Edward Abbey and Environmental Quixoticism”). The enemy of course are personified in: the caricature Mormon bishop Dudley Love, builder, real estate man, car dealer, heavy equipment lessee and uranium developer; the FBI-CIA men, the Colonel and his henchmen, Hoyle and Doyle, who spy on the MWG, attempting to capture and thwart them, especially the most “productive” member, George Hayduke; Bureau of Land Management Rangerette Virginia H. Dick, representing the blindness of gov­ ernment blindly supporting the destructive technocracy; and of course the primary evil character, the monster machine, the 13,000-ton Giant Earth Mover, GOLIATH, which comes lurching across the country, scraping it bare for strip mining and road building while drawing down enough electrical energy to power 75,000 TV sets. Naturally GOLIATH becomes a symbol of all the destructive aspects of modern technology and of course becomes the obvious ultimate target calling the aging Monkey Wrench Gang out of retirement for one last try. And you have to admit that Abbey devises his story well, to get you rooting for these terrorists and bringing down GOLIATH in the most dramatic way possible. Abbey also works in humorous self-deprecation as he shows himself, the aging journalist-novelist “covering” this dire action (to make money off his books reporting it) but being far too cowardly to actually participate himself— and possibly get his head smashed. Paul Bondi refuses to ride again. Hayduke Lives! is altogether a great finale to the collected works of Edward Abbey. No doubt he is smiling from some literary Valhalla as the Earth First!ers and Greenpeacers march on, getting their heads smashed in pursuit of his beautiful ideal. STARR JENKINS Emeritus, Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo CW2. By Layne Heath. (New York: Morrow, 1990. 370 pages, $19.95.) As one who has taught several courses on literary responses to Vietnam, I often find myself cynical when I pick up a book so highly touted as CW2. Arlington, Texas, native Layne Heath reportedly received a huge advance when he sold the novel to Morrow, but I expected it to be just another ho-hum adventure story set in the skies of Southeast Asia. I couldn’t have been more wrong. CW2 is very likely the best novel about Vietnam to be published in the past five or six years, maybe the best ever to be published. What makes it work so well is less Heath’s devastating theme and setting and more the fact that he 374 Western American Literature has written a perceptive, incredibly deep story of humanity’sdesire to conquer, to expand civilization, to engage a frontier and its savage armies, and to defeat them. CW2 is military short-hand for warrant officer, second grade. The lowest possible pilot rank in the Army, it was commonly assigned to helicopter pilots. They were neither enlisted men nor officers in status, and as a result they were usually in limbo, caught between two suspicious camps, fearful of both, yet responsible to both. In many ways, the rank itself is a metaphor for the plight of all soldiers in Vietnam, caught as they often were between politically con­ trolled high command and a vicious and predatory enemy. In another way, it is a purely American conception, one that would have satisfied the mountain men and Army scouts of the last century as they took their personal wars off into the wilderness and relied completely on their wits and their sense of right and wrong for survival. The protagonist of the novel, Billy Roark, arrives in Vietnam as a naive and enthusiastic young pilot. He makes quick friends among the other pilots and gunners, but soon he comes to understand that the war he is being asked to fight is personal and has little to do with geopolitics or patriotic zeal. He quickly determines that those who are in...