One to Count Cadence

Rating:
Summary: Absorbing
Review: I found this book while I was staying at a castle building thing in France. Here I was, middle of rural Provencial France, tons to see and do and watch and I spend my time sitting on my door step, drinking wine and smoking cigarettes and reading this book. I have never had anything to do with the armed forces (other than read other classic war books), but this one brings you in and forces you to drop and give it twenty. Excellent story and twists.

Rating:
Summary: I could not finish it
Review: I have a personal rule. I always finish any book I start. In this case I made an exception. About one half way through I just canned it. I am sure there is a story line somewhere but I became too bored with the writing to find it.

Rating:
Summary: Lots of grit and extra edgy, but not a great book
Review: I like gritty, edgy stories and this one is about as gritty and edgy as you can get. But, I can't say I felt it had much more to offer. The characters are pretty over the top and not well enough developed that you feel like you can relate to them. The same criticism would apply to the story. I also never really felt like I was in the scenes as their descriptions were not vivid enough to put me there.

I'll try at least one more Crumley novel before I write his work off and move on to other writers. I think this was his first work and I also believe most of his other work is detective related. Maybe he can bring the grit and the edge a little more fluidly to that genre. It was simply too much of a chore to get myself to finish this book.

Rating:
Summary: Lots of grit and extra edgy, but not a great book
Review: I like gritty, edgy stories and this one is about as gritty and edgy as you can get. But, I can't say I felt it had much more to offer. The characters are pretty over the top and not well enough developed that you feel like you can relate to them. The same criticism would apply to the story. I also never really felt like I was in the scenes as their descriptions were not vivid enough to put me there.

I'll try at least one more Crumley novel before I write his work off and move on to other writers. I think this was his first work and I also believe most of his other work is detective related. Maybe he can bring the grit and the edge a little more fluidly to that genre. It was simply too much of a chore to get myself to finish this book.

Rating:
Summary: One to Count Cadence
Review: I loved this book and couldnt put it down. Made me laugh and made me cry. The best use of words I have come across in a long while.

Rating:
Summary: One of the two best military books I have read
Review: I was in the Phillippines and Vietnam some two or three years after Mr. Crumley. His view of the places and times, and his description of the now defunct Army Security Agency is eerily accurate, as is his insight into the type of persons in the Agency at that time. Intelligent, anti-social misfits that left college from boredom and did not want to get drafted. Mr. Crumley has my highest respect

Rating:
Summary: Officers, See Yourselves as the NCO Sees You!
Review: James Crumley's novel hardly ever gets mentioned in lists of Vietnam War novels (maybe that's because a good deal of it takes place in the Phillippines), but it really is one of the best. It is not a typical "combat" novel; rather, it is concerned largely with garrison life in the manner of a James Jones or James Gould Cozzens sort of novel (of course, war bursts into the sleepy routine of the peacetime army in "From Here to Eternity" just as it does in "One to Count Cadence").

It is written in the confessional mode, in a surprisingly florid and allusive, or "literary" style. The narrator (largely modeled after Crumley himself) is an NCO, recovering from combat wounds in an army hospital and looking back on his tour with the 721st Communications Security Detachment at Clark Air Force Base and, later, Vietnam.

Being an army officer, I have read about a gazillion novels about soldiers and war, but I can't think of any that articulates the "NCO mentality" better than this one. Sergeant Krummel is a very smart guy who is tight-lipped but thoughtful. He and the First Sergeant are always trying to protect the soldiers from the wrath of the arrogant, annoying little bastard of a lieutenant and the pompous company commander (he is hardly ever seen). The soldiers, of course, try to get away with as much as they can, so the NCOs are always struggling to do the right thing while prevent themselves from being taken advantage of by their subordinates.

Arrogant officers on a power trip should read this book--you need to see yourself as that E-5 or E-6 sees you. "One to Count Cadence" shows how enlisted men can wait patiently to get sweet (and all the more sweet because legal) revenge on an officer they hate.

Overall, a tour-de-force. I haven't read any of Crumley's detective novels yet, but if this novel (his first?) is any indication as to the quality of his other fiction, then it should be well worth the time.

There are a lot of Vietnam literature critics (especially the older ones like Thomas Myers and Philip Beidler) who see the late 1970s as the period during which the best novels were published. Oddly, none of them devote much space to Crumley's novel, published way back in 1969.

Rating:
Summary: cadance is deja vu of my on experiances in this unit 1953-19
Review: mr crumbley captures the mood of this unique setting i can almost fit his characters with my eras personnel .it brings nostalgic memories too mind .we were young intelligent wild happy fun filled american youth living an adventure of alife. time the book is a classic !

Rating:
Summary: undoubtedly the finest book about the vietnam war
Review: the author takes the personage of slag krummel, a man of warrior tradition, torn by the contradictions of war ... emphasized is the interpersonal relationships of the charactors.