Dog Soldiers is a 1974

1974 in literature

The year 1974 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics is founded by Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman.-New books:*Richard Adams - Shardik*Kingsley Amis - Ending Up...

 novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 by American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 novelist Robert Stone. The story revolves around journalist John Converse, Merchant Marine sailor Ray Hicks, Converse's wife Marge, and their involvement in a heroin deal gone bad. The novel won the 1975 National Book Award (US) for best fiction, an honor shared that year with co-recipient The Hair of Harold Roux by Thomas Williams

Thomas Williams (writer)

Thomas Williams was an American writer and a National Book Award winning novelist. Williams was twice nominated for the National Book Award. His first nomination was for Town Burning, published in 1959...

.

The novel was included on TIME magazine's

Time (magazine)

Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...

 list of the 100 best English-language novels

TIME's List of the 100 Best Novels

Times List of the 100 Best Novels, is an unranked list of the 100 best novels—and 10 best graphic novels—published in the English language between 1923 and 2005. The list was compiled by Time critics Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo....

 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923.

The book was adapted into the 1978 film Who'll Stop the Rain

Who'll Stop the Rain

Who'll Stop The Rain is a 1978 psychological drama film released by United Artists. It was directed by Karel Reisz and produced by Herb Jaffe and Gabriel Katzka with Sheldon Schrager and Roger Spottiswoode as executive producers. The screenplay was by Judith Rascoe and Robert Stone from Stone's...

, starring Nick Nolte

Nick Nolte

Nicholas King "Nick" Nolte is an American actor whose career has spanned over five decades, peaking in the 1990s when his commercial success made him one of the most popular celebrities of that decade.-Early life:...

.

Plot and Summary

Dog Soldiers deals with the fall of the counterculture in America, mistrust of authority figures, and the end of the optimism of the 1960s. Southern California (where the majority of the novel takes place) has moved on from the Summer of Love

Summer of Love

The Summer of Love was a social phenomenon that occurred during the summer of 1967, when as many as 100,000 people converged on the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco, creating a cultural and political rebellion...

 to post-Manson

Charles Manson

Charles Milles Manson is an American criminal who led what became known as the Manson Family, a quasi-commune that arose in California in the late 1960s. He was found guilty of conspiracy to commit the Tate/LaBianca murders carried out by members of the group at his instruction...

 paranoia. Converse seeks inspiration for his next big play as a correspondent in Vietnam

Vietnam

Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...

, but only finds the decline of morals in himself as well as the world. Symbolic of this moral corruption is his decision to traffic in heroin, which was never embraced by the 1960s counterculture the way LSD

LSD

Lysergic acid diethylamide, abbreviated LSD or LSD-25, also known as lysergide and colloquially as acid, is a semisynthetic psychedelic drug of the ergoline family, well known for its psychological effects which can include altered thinking processes, closed and open eye visuals, synaesthesia, an...

 was.

Converse involves his friend Hicks in the smuggling deal. He offers to pay Hicks to hide the heroin on the Merchant Marine vessel he works on when it ships from Vietnam to California, and then to deliver the dope to Converse's wife in Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

 upon arrival. The novel's primary complication unfolds when Hicks arrives in California and realizes he is being followed. Unsure of whether Converse has been double-crossed by his suppliers or if Converse has himself betrayed him, Hicks elects to go on the run, taking along Marge with him, who is addicted to prescription painkillers and who had agreed with Converse to do the deal. Hicks---a bit of a paranoid survivalist infatuated with Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...

 and martial arts

Martial arts

Martial arts are extensive systems of codified practices and traditions of combat, practiced for a variety of reasons, including self-defense, competition, physical health and fitness, as well as mental and spiritual development....

 with a bit of Zen Buddhism thrown in---proves a formidable escapist, and the action of the novel follows the extended pursuit of Hicks and Marge by Converse and his suppliers. Marge would like to believe that she has spent her youth as an advocate of freedom, both sexual and speech, but inevitably discovers she is little more than an adulterer and a junkie. Antheil, their pursuer, may be interested in arresting them and getting the drugs off of the street, or killing them and keeping the swag for himself, but no one can tell for sure.

The initial chapters portray South Vietnam as a decadent pit of death, mismanagement, and cheap thrills—essentially it is doomed to self-implosion. The next several chapters show us a detailed view of Hicks' life, once an all-American Marine, now wandering among the ruins of urban decay, longshoremen bars converted to titty bars, and stumbling across all manner of perverts in Southern California. The final chapters do spend some time fleshing out the 'regulatory agent' Anthiel and his cohorts, but it is not clear if these are merely well-informed drug thieves or if they are legitimately on the fringe of the law enforcement world until the end of the novel. We are also introduced to Dieter in the last few chapters of the book. Dieter is the German immigrant who stayed in the cliffs/desert where the wild parties and orgies of yesteryear are just ghostly memories. At one point he asks Hicks to stay, to somehow kickstart the feeling of the sixties all over again, and Hicks replies that it's over.

Inspiration

Stone acknowledges having borrowed heavily from his experiences among the Merry Prankster

Merry Pranksters

The Merry Pranksters were a group of people who formed around American author Ken Kesey in 1964 and sometimes lived communally at his homes in California and Oregon...

 milieu led by novelist Ken Kesey

Ken Kesey

Kenneth Elton "Ken" Kesey was an American author, best known for his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , and as a counter-cultural figure who considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s. "I was too young to be a beatnik, and too old to be a...

, with whom Stone became acquainted while he was a student in the graduate creative writing workshops at Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

. The character of Ray Hicks is modeled specifically on Beat Generation icon and Merry Prankster Neal Cassady

Neal Cassady

Neal Leon Cassady was a major figure of the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the psychedelic movement of the 1960s. He served as the model for the character Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road....

. Numerous details from the novel are based on Cassady and his exploits and the environs of Ken Kesey's home in La Honda, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

, an informal commune

Commune (intentional community)

A commune is an intentional community of people living together, sharing common interests, property, possessions, resources, and, in some communes, work and income. In addition to the communal economy, consensus decision-making, non-hierarchical structures and ecological living have become...

 depicted in the writings of Hunter S. Thompson

Hunter S. Thompson

Hunter Stockton Thompson was an American journalist and author who wrote The Rum Diary , Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 .He is credited as the creator of Gonzo journalism, a style of reporting where reporters involve themselves in the action to...

, Tom Wolfe

Tom Wolfe

Thomas Kennerly "Tom" Wolfe, Jr. is a best-selling American author and journalist. He is one of the founders of the New Journalism movement of the 1960s and 1970s.-Early life and education:...

, and Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg

Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...

(among others).

External links

• Photos of the first edition of Dog Soldiers

See also

• Stephenson, Gregory. Understanding Robert Stone. University of South Carolina Press, 2002. ISBN 1-57003-462-1