The Phantom Blooper

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The Phantom Blooper
Author	Gustav Hasford
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Autobiographical, War novel
Publisher	Bantam Dell
Publication date	Feb 1990
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
ISBN	ISBN 0553057189
Preceded by	The Short-Timers

The Phantom Blooper is a 1990 novel written by Gustav Hasford, and the sequel to The Short-Timers. It continues to follow James T. "Joker" Davis through his Vietnam odyssey. The book was supposed to be the second of a "Vietnam Trilogy", but the author died soon after completing it. The book is now out of print, but Hasford's website contains the entire text.

1 Plot
2 Literary significance & criticism
3 Footnotes
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Plot

The novel begins where the The Short-Timers left off and is divided into three parts. In "The Winter Soldiers," Private Joker is still at the Khe Sanh base, which is about to be abandoned by American Marines after withstanding a two-month siege. He believes most of his previous squad-mates to be dead, even the seemingly indestructible Animal Mother. Joker blames their deaths on "The Phantom Blooper," supposedly an American, armed with an M79 grenade launcher, who fights alongside the Viet Cong against his countrymen.

Joker is still haunted by the memory of his friend Cowboy, whom he killed in order to keep his squad from being cut down by a sniper; as a result, his behavior has become increasingly erratic and violent. At one point, he forces an inattentive soldier on guard duty to hold a live hand grenade with the pin out. Later, as the Viet Cong attempt to overrun the base, he splits his platoon sergeant's tongue with a straight razor, then ventures out in search of the Phantom Blooper. He is wounded and captured by the enemy.

"Travels With Charlie" begins over a year later. Joker has been living and working in a small Vietnamese village, waiting for a chance to escape. He has not been tortured or sent to a POW camp, and his captors have begun to trust him to some degree. In Joker's mind, his best chance is to fool them into believing that he has converted to their cause, accompany them on an attack against an American position, then make his escape when the shooting starts. As time passes, however, he genuinely begins to side more and more with the Viet Cong, seeing them--the people he has been trained to kill--as ordinary human beings just like himself. When a team of Army soldiers arrives to rescue him, he is badly wounded but manages to shoot down one of their choppers with a discarded M79 before passing out.

In "The Proud Flesh," Joker spends time convalescing and undergoing psychiatric therapy at a naval hospital in Japan. He quickly makes it clear that he does not regret any of his actions as a Viet Cong captive, and he expresses his disgust and outrage at having been sent by his country to fight in a futile war. Despite threats of a court-martial for treason, he is given a Section 8 discharge and sent back to the United States.

Upon arriving in California, Joker finds that his old radioman is alive and well and has become an antiwar protester. (Animal Mother, he also learns, was captured by the Viet Cong but escaped from a POW camp; he is still an active Marine.) They attend a demonstration that is quickly and forcefully broken up by the police, but Joker manages to slip away with the help of a cop who served with him in Vietnam. Next Joker travels to Kansas, Cowboy's home, and has a brief and uneasy meeting with Cowboy's parents. Their son's body was never recovered from the jungle, and Joker does not tell them that he fired the shot that killed Cowboy. Finally he returns to his family farm in Alabama, his disillusionment with the war and America growing all the time. Realizing at last that there is nothing left for him here, he sets out to return to Vietnam and his life among the Viet Cong villagers.

[edit] Literary significance & criticism

This was the sequel to The Short Timers, renowned for being the basis for the film the Full Metal Jacket. This novel made less of an impact, although it was highly regarded by reviewers^[1] and the author died not long afterwards.

Some contemporary reviews:

"A brilliant novel of war, guilt, savagery." Spokane Chronicle^[2]

"Hasford's vision leaves no room for healing...A furious yet compassionate book...Hasford keeps faith with the truth, however ugly, as a means of salvation." Newsweek^[2]

"Hasford has a compelling genius for getting his point across...in prose that deserves to be celebrated...Hasford has truly outdone himself here. The Phantom Blooper is a visionary's work of impressive literary art." St. Petersburg Times^[2]

"Well crafted...Hasford's strength in vividly portraying the day-to-day life of the Viet Cong villagers...gives us something we've rarely seen before: an empathetic view of a heretofore faceless enemy." The New York Times Book Review^[2]

"An extraordinary book, a descent into hell in more ways than one." Associated Press^[2]