Er zijn zo van die boeken die je best gewoon weglegt om het later nog eens te proberen. Dit is er zo een. Man, wat is dit boek moeilijk om te lezen! In deze autobiografie verhaalt Drury over zijn lotgevallen nadat hij heeft besloten dat het leger toch niet alles is, alleen is het leger een logge machine waar het moeilijk van loskomen is.

Drury's taal is te doorwrocht en gecompliceerd en daar ligt voor mij het probleem met dit boek: het is moeilijk om door te dringen in het verhaal, je blijf als het ware drijven op de overvloed aan woorden en opgezwollen war/beeldtaal. Jammer, want de premisse van dit boek is absoluut veelbelovend. Na vijftig bladzijden hield ik het echter voor bekeken: mijn brein was moegelezen en had dringend behoefte aan een siësta.

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There are books that you better just lay down and try again later. This book is one of those. Man, this was a difficult read!
In this autobiography Drury tells us about his experiences once he decided that the navy was not his thing after all, but the army proved to be a big machine that is not easy to get away from.

Drury's langauge is too complex and that is my problem with the book: it is difficult to get to the point of the story, you keep floating around on the excess amount of words and swollen imagery and speech. More's the pity because the idea behind the book was absolutely promising. After fifty pages however I put the book down again: my brain was tired and urgently needed a rest. ( )

A member giveaway book. Just couldn't get into it at all. Many have, I know, but for me-this book was a difficult read and did not hold my interest from the beginning. ( )

There are some fascinating ideas here. The author uses the springboard of a navy hearing to create a memoir of a difficult life; a bit Joycean both in the collapsing of a personality down into less than a day's worth of time, and in the sudden drops into fantasy. These are not, unsurprisingly, handled as well as Joyce, but then the overall pattern of the book is a lot more clear than Ulysses, too, and perhaps Drury's attempt at combining readability with a jarring fantasy life isn't as unsuccessful as it could have been.

Some of the literary devices come across really well; one metaphorical description of a masturbatory experience had me snickering like a schoolboy and being impressed by the command of language at the same time. There's an interesting gimmick where conversations, probably orgiinally just a few words, between the protagonist and his shipboard companions are exploded into long Socratic dialogs. And some of the jumps from the real world to the world-inside-the-mind are handled well.

In many places it's hard to say where the line falls between fantasy and reality. A lot of the early sections of the book read more like the author self-justifying his own lack of responsibility; but as the end approaches the point comes out, with varying degrees of success, that that lack was actually a symptom of the author's awareness of the evils of governments and militaries.

All very 60's-hip. But for all the nice literary devices, the book lacks a certain flow to it. There's no real sense that we march steadily towards a climax; some events happen and then other events happen, and then the book ends. I suspect the goal of a memoir was probably met, but moving farther away from the actual events might have provided a better story. And other problems crop up, such as the jarring and inconsistent attempts at vernacular. So while I have a lot of respect for the author to be able to put together this book, and make a solid attempt at creating literature rather than just hacking something out, in the end I didn't enjoy it all that much. Maybe that's just the destiny of great literature in its own time. ( )

I really wanted to like this story of a man and his fight to get free of the Navy but really it wasn't to be. It was a story that might appeal to someone who is interested in the psychological reaction of someone having to go against his conscience and the almost-shamanic way in which he has to deal with this issue.

There are some quirks that just don't gel quite right. He uses 'n' for and everywhere and 'm for him. He also has some long speeches that don't quite ring true for his circumstance.

This basically is a transcript of his hearing to determine his fitness to serve, and I'm sure if I had heard it I would have decided that he wasn't suited to warfare. Being under the discipline of a branch of the military did his psyche damage that he had to face up to while also trying to stay alive.

There's either a good fiction story or a good biography lurking under the prose here, unfortunately it doesn't work for me and I would have a sneaking suspicion that it has a limited audience. ( )

It pains me to say this, but I very much disliked this book and couldn't finish. At 120 pages into it, I simply couldn't go any farther.

This memoir of a man struggling to keep his humanity and eventually reunite with his soul, all the while dealing with horrible circumstances such as an abusive, alcoholic stepfather and the harsh living conditions of one in the Navy seemed too good to pass up. Unfortunately, the book itself didn't match the potential.

To begin with, the writing is inconsistent and unrealistic. At times, the narrator speaks in a very natural language, using "ya" instead of "you" and other various little details which I felt captured the everyday dialect well. However, the narrator's language when speaking would go from natural to overly done, long winded, extremely poetic speeches which I just cannot imagine anyone who grew up in an abusive household, repeatedly skipped classes during high school and was expelled from more one college, and spent a majority of his time amongst the foul-speaking Navy, would actually say. An example of one of these speeches is:

Since time immemorial have we fallen for this lie, that our future lies hidden within our material progress. And yet, in our pursuit of this delusion, we've only succeeded in impoverishing the earth of its people. Thus have we helped to create a bipolar world, consisting of the haves 'n' have-nots, who have further polarized themselves over the issue of materialism by squaring off on either side of an iron curtain into two heavily armed, ideologically opposed camps or isms.(page 61)

This is only one paragraph of a speech that continues on for roughly two pages made by a man (not the narrator) who has been in the Navy for quite some time. The narrator (whose name is Eodor, Butch, Dury, or Drury depending on where you are in the book - this point was never quite cleared up before I got fed up) speaks in the exact same style. Now, I know there are some people out there, usually those who spend many, many years in school getting an English degree of various levels, who actually do speak like this. My teacher does. But two Navy seamen? I highly doubt it.

Drury also has these visions throughout the novel. These are extremely vivid. At one point he believes to have actually walked on water to save a drowning girl who he later discovers was actually his soul. He had been on watch during a torpedo exercise and his soul had distracted him from noticing the torpedo heading his way and therefore, somehow saved his humanity. His soul does this many times throughout the book, mysteriously appearing, visible only to Drury, and by doing something that distracts him from his duty and gets him in trouble with his superiors, saves his humanity. He never questions his sanity when having these visions, though, because somehow, he knows that it is his soul talking to him.

Also included in the book are an old Japanese woman who speaks a little bit of English and sent to him by his soul, excessive, uncontrollable masturbation (which he suffers from because he doesn't listen to his soul), a mysterious She Who Must Be Obeyed and her counterpart, the Great Gray Whore (I think this is the Navy but I'm not sure), and his protest of the Navy's "animalistic" behavior, which is to starve himself for three weeks.

Now, I know that may not make much sense, but that's kind of how the book goes. It throws random visions/dreams/fantasies at you and never really gets around to explaining them. The book just wandered around. Maybe it resolves itself in the end, but I can't get there. I just can't. ( )