The Aardvark Is Ready for War

by James W. Blinn

In this incendiary first novel, a Navy aircrewman who calls himself "Aardvark" takes us aboard an aircraft carrier racing toward the push-button killing fields of the Persian Gulf War. Aardvark is. an Anti-Submarine Warfare Specialist Second Class -- a paranoid slacker, a sardonic video-abuser, a trained cathode-ray-tube assassin -- and his manic voice captures with satellite-imaged clarity a surreal shipboard world of gas masks, smart bombs, CNN, and free-floating dread. From the computerized charade of combat drills to the phantasmagoric excesses of shore leave in Honolulu and the Philippines, Aardvark brings to life a postmodern military menagerie of New Age psychobabblers, porn entrepreneurs, and nostalgic Cold Warriors -- and records the creeping terror, twisted aggression, and media-stoked madness he is both part of and witness to. As the carrier moves Aardvark ever closer to "getting microwaved, toasted, infected, or poisoned by a missile full of nasties he can't see, smell, or taste", his experiences bring into focus an era of electronic simulation and sensory overstimulation, a time when human experience itself is under siege in the mother of all battles.

Caustic, disturbing, and fiercely funny, The Aardvark Is Ready for War will earn a place among the great subversive war novels.

Genres: Fiction, War

2 pages, Audio Cassette

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[Szplug · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up a hardcover copy of Blinn's quirky little book for about $0.99 from an aisle bargain bin at Zellers ages ago - I know of nobody else who has read it, but I'll back this under-a-buck-beauty with steadfast support and the declaration that I would pay eight times its original cost if I had to.

Blinn's Aardvark is an awkward, voyeuristic, and weird - but basically good-hearted - petty officer aboard a US aircraft carrier on its way across the Pacific to join in the Gulf War festivities. The gas-mask wearing Aardvark loves his little camcorder, with which he records the zany, gonzo and occasionally masturbatory antics amongst the chiefs, petty officers and ratings both deep in the bowels of the floating city-cum-arsenal, and in the shoreside bars and flophouses of the various ports-of-call. This boisterous, hard-partying, and, occasionally, thoughtful crew - the Aardvark is a sonar operator aboard one of carrier's jets, where he can zone in like nobody's business - are doing their best to hide the dark fears and anxieties engendered below the surface by the prospect of a real war in a little known region beyond the Persian Gulf, towards which they are making full speed; that they might actually be killed fighting against strange people speaking a strange tongue.

Blinn's darkly humorous writing about navy life has the ring of truth to it, while his style reads like a mix of Pynchon and DeLillo with less metaphysicality but the updated designer drugs still coursing. The Aardvark is Ready for War is a weird and hypnagogic tale of a quick and arid war that hasn't received much fictional attention: if you happen to find it in a bargain bin you are browsing through, by all means give it a shot.

[Tex · Rating 3 out of 5]

I should know better than to pick up a book with "war" in the title. However, it was a fascinating read and should probably be on the Required Reading List for every modern sailor and possibly members of every branch of the US Service community. It was compared in reviews to Catch 22 and I can see the modern twist that is there. No, I don't want to read anything more by this guy...unless he starts writing about some other topic.

[Maria Morrison · Rating 3 out of 5]

Umm...well, this book was recommended to me, and I was warned that it was pretty f'd-up....It was. This bizarre encounter with the soldier in the gulf war had no true heroes and villains: only reality and its witness. I followed its flow well, and it was well written, but very candid seeming from the personal narrative.

[Jason Mills · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intriguing funny-serious novel about life in the modern military and how the fear and foreknowledge of battle, combined with technology, distances the soldier from reality. Better than I'm making it sound.

[Jay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting insight into electronics warfare in the modern military. I picked this up on a whim and read it and enjoyed it. Also liked the author's simple and direct presentation style.

[Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

PO2 Bender, Greg, is an inquisitive and voyeuristic member of the exclusive club that boasts among its number the likes of Yossarian and Cacciato, and, yes, even Charles Marlow.

[Tatton Bordry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This author was in the Navy and he writes realistically about that part of the novel. However, this book is not a "realistic" novel in the modern sense. It is literary, in the tradition of Catch 22, etc. I have fond memories of finding this book and have always been disappointed the author didn't publish another novel.
The story is about the fear of going through the first Gulf War as an electronic warfare specialists in a jet flying off an aircraft carrier. (Remember, it's not realistic, not about the technical details of war.) The themes center around the visual/video game surreal quality of the war; what is real, what is fake and is their any difference; and the strangeness of male sexuality and violence around warfare.
I have the original first edition hardback and I'm proud to have it on my shelf.