Stringer

by Ward Just

Stringer is a civilian intelligence agent who is teamed up with a very "Army" West Point captain on a guerilla mission to locate and destroy an enemy supply convoy in Vietnam. He is a failed newspaperman and a dropout from two colleges and one marriage; a man at the edge of his own life who wants to be a the center of things. He ends up in the center of the Vietnam war. There is, he understands, "no possibility of making sense of the whole."

Genres: Novels

166 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Ward Just was a war correspondent, novelist, and short story author.

Ward Just graduated from Cranbrook School in 1953. He briefly attended Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. He started his career as a print journalist for the Waukegan (Illinois) News-Sun. He was also a correspondent for Newsweek and The Washington Post from 1959 to 1969, after which he left journalism to write fiction.

His influences include Henry James and Ernest Hemingway. His novel An Unfinished Season was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005. His novel Echo House was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1997. He has twice been a finalist for the O. Henry Award: in 1985 for his short story "About Boston," and again in 1986 for his short story "The Costa Brava, 1959." His fiction is often concerned with the influence of national politics on Americans' personal lives. Much of it is set in Washington, D.C., and foreign countries. Another common theme is the alienation felt by Midwesterners in the East.

Reviews

[Bob · Rating 3 out of 5]

First half is such compelling war fiction. Second half is disjointed and surreal but honestly way hard to follow.