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Nam-A-Rama
by Phillip Jennings (Goodreads author!)

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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/642320.Nam_A_Rama?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Nam-A-Rama" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1176661420m/642320.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/642320.Nam_A_Rama?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Nam-A-Rama</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/346039.Phillip_Jennings">Phillip Jennings</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8395840?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 5 of 5 stars Phillip Jennings is about as subtle as a (wait for it...) hand grenade at times. And yes, he was clearly influenced by Joseph Heller, as many reviews of Nam-A-Rama have pointed out. But that's an easy, somewhat lazy comparison that doesn't do justice to this future-classic satire. It's more like an amalgamation of influences, as if Heller, Monty Python, Lyndon Johnson, Dr. Strangelove, Vonnegut, Jimmy Bond, Robert McNamara, Richard Simmons, William Westmoreland, one of Mickey Mouse's nightmares and On Golden Pond were put in a Cuisinart with a bottle of Scotch and a little bit of Hunter S. Thompson's blood, God Rest His Soul. (You don't have to be drunk to love this book, but you may have to be drunk to get it.) It is quite possibly the only book that will ever make you wish Morrissey had been a Marine commandant. Yeah, it's a little over the top at points. But wasn't the Vietnam War? This is a world where the president sends the CIA's pizza delivery boy (you will fall in love with him) on a secret mission that has something to do with Jane Fonda and ending a war the president just started. (I've read Dallek, I've read Caro, I've even read Beschloss. All fine historians. But Jennings has written the finest printed representation of Lyndon Baines Johnson I've ever read.) It's a world where therapy comes with blowjobs. One expects, at any moment, Slim Pickens, straddling an atomic bomb, to part the sky, hee-hawing at the top of his lungs, swatting his cowboy hat at his ass, only to land in the middle of Danang. This novel isn't discriminating in its targets, and everyone and everything from Big Business to the Great Society to southern racism is skewered at some point. But for every discomfort, there's a laugh, and through it all, as with all great satire, a truth that makes the absurdity almost plausible. If Gary winds up as Director of Central Intelligence in the sequel, then Gearheardt's version of the CIA will officially be at least as plausible as the CIA we have in reality. What's remarkable about this book is how prescient, whether intentional or not, it really is. Joseph Heller wrote Catch-22 ostensibly about WWII, a war he fought in, but later claimed it was really about Vietnam. Myself, try as I might, I've never been able to figure out what Vietnam was really about. All I know for sure is that from a literary point of view, whether history repeats itself or not, it certainly piles the hell up. And I'm not 100% sure I know what Nam-A-Rama is about. But it is hilarious, and probably truer than any of us would like to admit. Somewhere in all this, there's a Shirley Bassey song. Anyway, Nixon's not in yet, and we've got a war to fix.
 
 NC
 
 
 
 
 
 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/368200?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Nathan's review
rating:

bookshelves: fiction, humor
recommended for: Heller fans, Air America's board of directors.
status: Read in November, 2007

Phillip Jennings is about as subtle as a (wait for it...) hand grenade at times. And yes, he was clearly influenced by Joseph Heller, as many reviews of Nam-A-Rama have pointed out. But that's an easy, somewhat lazy comparison that doesn't do justice to this future-classic satire. It's more like an amalgamation of influences, as if Heller, Monty Python, Lyndon Johnson, Dr. Strangelove, Vonnegut, Jimmy Bond, Robert McNamara, Richard Simmons, William Westmoreland, one of Mickey Mouse's nightmares and On Golden Pond were put in a Cuisinart with a bottle of Scotch and a little bit of Hunter S. Thompson's blood, God Rest His Soul. (You don't have to be drunk to love this book, but you may have to be drunk to get it.) It is quite possibly the only book that will ever make you wish Morrissey had been a Marine commandant. Yeah, it's a little over the top at points. But wasn't the Vietnam War? This is a world where the president sends the CIA's pizza delivery boy (you will fall in love with him...more Phillip Jennings is about as subtle as a (wait for it...) hand grenade at times. And yes, he was clearly influenced by Joseph Heller, as many reviews of Nam-A-Rama have pointed out. But that's an easy, somewhat lazy comparison that doesn't do justice to this future-classic satire. It's more like an amalgamation of influences, as if Heller, Monty Python, Lyndon Johnson, Dr. Strangelove, Vonnegut, Jimmy Bond, Robert McNamara, Richard Simmons, William Westmoreland, one of Mickey Mouse's nightmares and On Golden Pond were put in a Cuisinart with a bottle of Scotch and a little bit of Hunter S. Thompson's blood, God Rest His Soul. (You don't have to be drunk to love this book, but you may have to be drunk to get it.) It is quite possibly the only book that will ever make you wish Morrissey had been a Marine commandant. Yeah, it's a little over the top at points. But wasn't the Vietnam War? This is a world where the president sends the CIA's pizza delivery boy (you will fall in love with him) on a secret mission that has something to do with Jane Fonda and ending a war the president just started. (I've read Dallek, I've read Caro, I've even read Beschloss. All fine historians. But Jennings has written the finest printed representation of Lyndon Baines Johnson I've ever read.) It's a world where therapy comes with blowjobs. One expects, at any moment, Slim Pickens, straddling an atomic bomb, to part the sky, hee-hawing at the top of his lungs, swatting his cowboy hat at his ass, only to land in the middle of Danang. This novel isn't discriminating in its targets, and everyone and everything from Big Business to the Great Society to southern racism is skewered at some point. But for every discomfort, there's a laugh, and through it all, as with all great satire, a truth that makes the absurdity almost plausible. If Gary winds up as Director of Central Intelligence in the sequel, then Gearheardt's version of the CIA will officially be at least as plausible as the CIA we have in reality. What's remarkable about this book is how prescient, whether intentional or not, it really is. Joseph Heller wrote Catch-22 ostensibly about WWII, a war he fought in, but later claimed it was really about Vietnam. Myself, try as I might, I've never been able to figure out what Vietnam was really about. All I know for sure is that from a literary point of view, whether history repeats itself or not, it certainly piles the hell up. And I'm not 100% sure I know what Nam-A-Rama is about. But it is hilarious, and probably truer than any of us would like to admit. Somewhere in all this, there's a Shirley Bassey song. Anyway, Nixon's not in yet, and we've got a war to fix.

NC

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message 1: by Books Ring My Bell

12/04/2007 06:55AM

Jennings did a great job with this... I wish I could have said it that well myself! You have to love the man... giving out a Purple Heart for someone who spilled hot coffee on themself..
Graet Review Nathan! Now you need to read Goodbye Mexico!

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message 2: by Nathan

12/04/2007 07:43PM

I honestly rarely read fiction, and nine out of ten times I hate it when I do read it. I have virtually no understandable standards with regard to the type of fiction I read and like. I'm a nonfiction reader, primarily. So reading two fiction books by one author in one year, just the act in itself, is pretty high praise where I'm concerned. That said, I'll probably have Goodbye Mexico read before too long. & Thanks!

NC

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message 3: by Phillip

01/11/2008 11:08PM

Nathan
Thanks for the review. I know you will believe me when I say "I'm not 100% sure I know what Nam-A-Rama is about either." I wrote the book without an outline. It's pretty much free form. I tried to write just what I 'felt' about the war, not what I remembered. I do remember my last mission in Viet Nam on my first tour in helicopters. We were picking up dirty spaghetti pots from the Marine outposts around Chu Lai one evening and Lt. Banning (my co-pilot) got shot in the neck. The last thing I heard him say was "F--king spaghetti."

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message 4: by Nathan

01/12/2008 02:58AM

There's no real way I can follow that up with anything worthwhile. I can't imagine. But the comments about how you wrote Nam-a-Rama are inspiring, for sure.

Never thank people for a review, by the way! I eventually review everything I read, though I'm falling behind by about 20 reviews right now. Anyway, you should expect people to thank you for funny-as-shit novels. I can teach you how to act like a genius, if you'll teach me how to be one.

NC

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