policies they make. Like it or lump it.”nMitsuko, knowing better, would smilenat such naive pragmatism. Surely thencommon good is defined by somethingnmore than the counting of heads. Thenargument is a serious flaw caused, Inbelieve, by angry impatience, which lednto the special pleading that urged Webbnto include this weak idea as evidencenfor his case.nJames Webb makes a deadly sincereneffort to tame the war in the way thatnartists must tame their material in ordernto put it to use, shaping the waste sonthat it takes on the splendor of form.nYet, his anger is barely contained bynthe conventional devices he uses. Perhapsnhe felt that he had no choice butnto rely on a series of war-novel conventions,nfeeling that basic emotions generallynget expressed in conventionalnforms and platitudes. It is, however,nthe way one orchestrates these platitudesnthat makes a work of art quick orndead or something in between. The conventionsnare there in abundance. Therenare the various types of soldiers, unsurenof their identity and thus openly vulnerablento experience. Almost all have thenexpected nicknames to mask their insecurity.nNationalities, races, and typesnare all represented to show the universalitynof the experience. One is full ofnstreet smarts, another is fearful, anothernis a womanizer, another is brave,nand so on. The past is irrelevant, thenpresent immediate, and there is no future.nA precious fraternity develops.n”He missed the people in the bush,nmore than he had ever missed anyngroup of people in his life. There wasna purity in those relationships thatncould not be matched anywhere else.”nThere are the wives and girlfriendsnback home. There is Hodges’ brief romance.nThere are the understandingnofficers, the obtuse, the cowards, thenhostiles. The way Webb uses these conventionsnis only satisfactory. His angernis not sufficiently controlled. And whennraw life breaks into the house of art,nthe result can be sentimentality, propa­nganda, or, as it is here, special pleading.nWebb has not altogether succeeded inncontaining that threat to his structure.nAnd yet I was moved by his work.nWhy.-* For two reasons, I guess. First,nHodges thrust himself boldly forwardninto my forgetfulness, asserting hisnmoral claim on my conscience. Thenimage of his vulnerability and that ofnhis comrades in this bush war is hardnto forget. The war scenes are done sonvividly and with such passionate intensitynthat they linger in the imagination.nThe dead and the maimed do not remainnplacidly on the fringes of my consciousness;nthey are there center stage, andntheir mute questions speak in a loudnroar. His gifted reporting captures thenscenes of battle with an unmistakablenauthenticity. I see the face of the Barbarianncloser than I did before, andnknow better why there is no grin on hisnface as he gazes steadily at our nervousnlevity and our passion for trivializingnthe sacred.nSecond, Fields of Fire as a topicalnwork called to mind obliquely but firmlynwhat William Safire has called then”now we knows” about the Vietnamnwar. The blood bath that wasn’t supposednto happen did. Cambodia was innfact a vital staging area for VC attacksninto South Vietnam. The “domino theory”nso discredited is not discreditednanymore. The world’s perception of ournweakness of will or loss of nerve hasninvited aggression. To Hodges’ questionncomes a belated and inadequatenanswer. “Who do I suffer for.^” Fornknowledge, ineffectual after the fact,nbut perhaps usable on the road we havenyet to travel toward the turn we havennot yet taken. DnUnintended Sadnessnand Unspeakable ConfusionnCharles Simmons: Wrinkles; Farrar,nStraus & Giroux; New York.nby Edward J. WalshnA. few years ago George Gilder wrotenThe Naked Nomads, a book that touchinglyndescribed the lives of men withoutnwives or convictions, who stumblenthrough youth into middle age preyingnon women, until age forces them into antwilight of loneliness and self-pity.nCharles Simmons’ Wrinkles is the fictionalnadjunct to Gilder’s book. It is anseries of brief chapters of a man’s life,nwhich move from childhood to adolescencento middle age in a matter of paragraphsnin no discernible order.nThe novel is apparently intended asnMr. Walsh, an officer of the U.S. IndustrialnCouncil, is a student of thencontemporary literary scene.nnnallegory; Simmons’ protagonist is identifiednonly by the personal pronounn”he.” As allegory, it purports to be ansaga of honesty and freedom blendednwith mature wisdom and, incidentally,nsophisticated literary taste, since “he”nis a successful novelist. But for all Simmons’nostentatious effort to write somethingnoriginal, to be simple and unaffectednin tone, his book easily passesnthe test of sophistication required ofnmodern fiction by the reigning arbitersnof American taste, who have called itn”charming,” “witty” and “poignant.”nWrinkles is a book full of unintendednsadness and unspeakable confusion. Thennovel is a profile of a middle-aged mannwho has learned nothing more in lifenthan how to get a woman into bed, andnhow to comb his thinning hair to hidenhis bald spots. His eventual failures atnboth are rationalized by sweeping, resignednobservations about the world.n9nChronicles of Culturen