William Vollman has an amazing negative review of Anthony Swofford's new novel in the NYTs today. (Link via Jenny who got it from Ed.) Unfortunately for Swofford this is such a smartly written (and clearly sympathetic) review, that he really can't rail against Vollman and say it was an unfair or meanly excuted piece. Consider this:

“Imagine my satisfaction,� reads the Scribner publicity office’s form letter that came with an advance copy of this book, “when I found myself immersed in a dark love story that was all at once sensual, moody and elegant.� Imagine my dissatisfaction when I found myself not in the least immersed in a love story to which none of these adjectives apply, not even “dark.� For this is a novel that ends as follows: “He wanted to find answers to other questions, too, some of his own, some of hers, but they would answer those later. Together.� This is a fair sample of Anthony Swofford’s prose in his first novel, “Exit A,� prose that befits a Harlequin romance novel more than functioning as (to quote the publicity office again) “confirmation of Swofford as a major literary talent.�

I hate to write reviews like this. I especially hate to disparage the work of someone who, like Swofford, has put his life on the line for the ostensible purpose of preserving my freedoms and civil liberties, such as they are. In the hope of finding something more constructive to say, I decided to read Swofford’s first book, the memoir “Jarhead.�

I have to admit that is some of the most stilted prose I've come across since the agony that was Attack of the Clones and those love scenes from hell between Anakin and Padme. Vollman makes a very strong point in the piece that maybe there is a certain style of writing that Swofford just isn't good at and should avoid. Not everybody can write a novel and just because you write a steller memoir doesn't mean you can do it all (or shouldn't take some time to work up to unfamiliar styles). Clearly Vollman can write a review though - a very impressive, well thought, smartly written look at a book that most reviewers would dream of being able to accomplish in the same few words. Interestingly while I was still on my high from Vollman's piece I headed over the Green Man Review where I saw how not to write a review. Consider what Kathleen Bartholomew does to Cherie Priest on the subject of her new novel, Dreadful Skin:

A large part of the problem is that the story is a period piece, but aside from simply labeling the setting and characters as 19th century, not much effort has gone into making them believably so.

Sister Eileen is largely a 21st century woman, unconvincing as a 19th century nun. The idea of making her a nun is fine -- but her behavior would be aberrant even for a modern religious woman, and no explanation is given for her actions. Some are needed: she totes a Colt .45, plays cards, and smokes cigars. She is still a member of her order when the story begins, and so is roaming the American West in full robes and wimple -- but no one is surprised at encountering an unaccompanied Irish Catholic nun in the largely Protestant American West. Later on in the narrative, she has been forced to assume a secular persona, but no explanation is offered for either choice.

Actually you do find out what makes Sister Eileen different from most people, let alone nuns, in the second part of the book - there are suggestions of her difference from the very beginning. And more than once she is treated oddly at first meeting by people who aren't quite sure how to take a nun (this happens first on the boat in the early pages with the gambler who ends up a friend). And while Catholics might not be common in America in the post Civil War period this was after the Irish famine and the mass emmigration to N America, so they weren't unheard of. Also Catholics had long been in the southwest and far west from the Spanish/Mexican influence - and Priest's book takes place on the Tennessee River, in West Texas and just beyond - where Catholics did indeed live for centures prior to the book's time period. (Read all about it at Texas Online.)

Any historican could tell you Catholics were out there and to suggest that a nun could not travel in the post Civil War period out west simply because she was a nun is sort of getting bogged down in a very weird detail. Sister Eileen is a nun unlike all others - we know that for sure from the very beginning and the reason she is a nun in this book is because there is a lot of heavy duty thinking about good vs evil and the nature of a human soul. It made perfect sense to me that she be a nun - but then again, I knew Catholics weren't stuck in American cities on the east coast in the 1870s. (And hey, the fact that the final battle takes place in a chuch? That might have something to do with the whole nun thing too....)

Then there is this from Bartholomew:

There are also some unfortunate lapses of common sense and general believability. At one point, Sister Eileen slips both a pint bottle of chloroform and a Colt .45 into "a garter holster." Eileen is repeatedly described as a small woman; an unloaded Colt .45 weighs two pounds and the pint bottle adds another pound. A regular holster under Eileen's skirt would be plausible; a garter holster is not. Several characters also refer to Eileen as red-haired: however, with the 19th century nun's habit in which she begins the story, no one would be able to tell the color of her hair. Overlooking this kind of logic suggests that the story was written in a white heat and never examined for content, that we are reading a first draft or even a juvenile work of the author's.

Well, kudos for knowing the weight of an empty Colt .45! But small does not mean dainty and the way Sister Eileen wails on the bad guy from the very beginning I was thinking short and stocky all the way. So three pounds in a garter holster is too much? I don't know, I was stuck on the whole part about werewolves taking over the town. Maybe Sister Eileen modified her holster or something - maybe she did what she had to do to pass unobtrusively and still survive.

Crap, Steve McQueen used to have a sawed off Winchester rifle in his holster on Wanted Dead or Alive and everybody loved that show. It's a novel for God's sake! She's hunting a werewolf!!!! Are we going to pick and choose how she kills it? When did fantasy novels have to toe the line so much with historical accuracy? And when did two or three small considerations like this one (and I won't sign off on Sister Eileen not being able to handle three pounds) become the primary issue of whether or not a book was professionally written? (Oh - and hair escapes the wimple all the time. We knew the hair color for everyone of my nun teachers in Sunday school when I was a kid. I would imagine while running around a boat on the Tennessee River the stray curl or two would be visible.)

Mostly though, more than the digs at detail or history, I hate when a reviewer calls a writer amatuerish, juvenile or "overwhelmed". It is very rare that a reviewer is accomplished enough to make that kind of call against a writer. Go ahead and complain about the writing style or the dialog or the characterization - go ahead and pick apart the plot if you want to, but calling someone juvenile just because you didn't like the details? I'm sorry, I've read amatuer hour - we all have, it's all over the web, and Dreadful Skin is most certainly not it. Hell, you don't see Vollman calling Swofford an amatuer do you? It's because the man is too good for that kind of condescending tone and he knows that like the new book or not, Swofford is still a professional and deserves respect.

Lame review. Lame, lame, lame. I thought Dreadful Skin was outstanding, it's a whole new take on the werewolf myth, it has a great heroine and an ending right out of a Clint Eastwood movie. I think Priest has done great work here and the Green Man reviewer got sidetracked in the details. I'll be submitting my review to Bookslut for next month and it's all about the story, the atmosphere and the characters - and how well written I thought this book was. (I'll tell you one thing, the dialog is great!)