Rising Like the Tuscon
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Rising Like the Tucson is black comedy set in the latter half of the Vietnam War. Lieutenant Christopher, hopeless as an officer, is hounded by his real estate developer father back in the states, who is convinced of the victory to come when Vietnam will "rise like a Tucson" from its ashes and profits will soar. Absurd and explosive by turns, the mordantly hysterical and intricate story is the Vietnam war's Catch 22. "Deftly limns the overwhelming lunacy of the war in Vietnam," Tim O'Brien. "A masterpiece," Boston Globe.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in 1970 in Vietnam, where Danziger, a syndicated political cartoonist, served as an intelligence officer, this war novel is an uneasy mix of improbable farce and hard-edged realism. Battle-shy translator James Christopher, aka Lt. Kit, knows laughably little Vietnamese and even less about real estate. But his hawkish father, a boor puffed with racist jokes and tales of WW II glory, pushes James to help launch a real estate develoment corporation that will presumably build shopping malls and golf courses in Vietnam once the war is over. Fumbling lame attempts at vitriolic black comedy, Danziger more successfully depicts graphic stories--horrific and bizarre and tragic--about a war winding down. He tells of a U.S. lieutenant who deliberately kills eight of his own men, of a helicopter mission blasting ghost-like taped sounds meant to induce the Viet Cong to surrender, of a major who fights off his homoerotic love for Kit, and of the bungled ``Vietnamization'' program intended to beef up South Vietnamese troops as U.S. ground forces prepare for withdrawal.
