In this remarkable memoir of Wolff's Vietnam experience, there is a deeply haunting scene that vividly reveals the profound cultural differences between the American soldiers and the Vietnamese culture. Wolff, a first lieutenant and a special forces member, was assigned as an adviser to a South Vietnamese unit. He had spent a year at a language school in the United States and had become fluent in Vietnamese.

One day, he and some ARVN soldiers were hanging out when two of the ARVN soldiers found a small puppy wandering around. Wolff watched, annoyed, as one of the soldiers swung the puppy by a leg around his head and then tied it to a tree. Wolff wandered over and asked what they intended to name the dog. The Vietnamese soldiers laughed bemusedly at this remark, but when Wolff persisted, they laughed maliciously and replied, “dog stew.” The sergeant then grabbed the dog and, knowing it would drive Wolff crazy, slowly swung the puppy over the fire. Wolff tried to get them to stop, fully aware that they were playing with his mind, but the cultural reality and his whiteness prevented his interference.

Racial issues also pervade the story. Wolff was attacked by a group of Vietnamese outside a bar. He kept yelling that he must be the “wrong man,” but they continued their assault until another American stepped out of the bar and the attackers realized they had the wrong person. Wolff then realized that to them all white people looked the same. When he tried to explain this to his black sergeant, the sergeant understood him immediately and simply said, “You nigger.” The analogy to his experience in the United States was unmistakable.

Wolff's analysis of the Tet offensive is truly striking. "As a military project Tet failed; as a lesson it succeeded. The VC came into My Tho and all the other towns knowing what would happen. They knew that once they were among the people we would abandon our pretense of distinguishing between them. We would kill them all to get at one. [Iraq come to mind, anyone?:] In this way they taught the people that we did not love them and would not protect them; that for all our talk of partnership and brotherhood we disliked and mistrusted them, and that we would kill every last one of them to save our own skins....They taught that lesson to the people, and also to us. At least to me."

Vietnam was not just an absurd and unnecessary enterprise, but also doomed to failure, just like when the pharaoh launched his army to pursue the Jews and was swallowed by the sea.

It is a remarkable chronicle of the time the author spent in the Vietnam War. Wolff narrates to us the senselessness and cruelty of the war that he experienced firsthand. There are small stories where cruelty, humanity, heroism, and the madness of the absurd go hand in hand to tell us about the worst military defeat of the United States. It was a disaster in which approximately 60,000 Americans and nearly one million Vietnamese lost their lives.

Wolff's style is agile and entertaining, and the book passed by me in a sigh. Wolff was able to survive to tell the tale, and following in the footsteps of his admired Hemingway and London, he embarked on an adventure that would change him forever.

This account provides a vivid and poignant look into the horrors and consequences of war, making us reflect on the futility and tragedy that often accompany such conflicts. It serves as a reminder of the importance of seeking peaceful solutions and learning from history to avoid repeating the same mistakes.

Overall, Wolff's work offers a valuable perspective on the Vietnam War and is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the human experience during times of war.

In Tobias Wolff's "In the Pharaoh's Army," there were certain passages that deeply moved me (or came very close to doing so) due to the veiled memories of nostalgia and a suffused sadness that found acceptance within those passages. These memories mainly refer to his experience in Vietnam, to the friends who took their last breaths there, and to those who returned forever changed from how they had arrived. And then there is that terrifying awareness, for such young boys, of being involved in a mechanism - war - that is senseless, ungrateful, mocking, and, above all, absurd.

"We weren't supposed to be there, we all knew that very well; and yet, here we are.

"A curious question came to my mind, which I have never forgotten since. What would that bus have been like if we could have seen all of us a year from then?

"Nothing could stop us anymore. If not... What? An engine breakdown? They would simply have put us on another bus. My friends from the Haight, the Hugs Patrol fully assembled in a human chain in the middle of the street? Imagine, the young gentlemen surely wouldn't have woken up at that time of the morning. Dissenters. A nice group of dissenters in front of a barricade, armed with rifles, pitchforks, and clubs, ready to blind the driver with flashlights. The dissenters knock on the door until he opens. They get on board and squeeze into the aisle, shining a light on face after face and finally find those they are looking for. They call us by name, and finally we discover who is hiding behind the blinding lights. They are our fathers. Our fathers, who now take us home.

"Absurd.

"Anyway, less absurd than what they did, that is, let us leave [for Vietnam]."

What if war wasn't an epic, nor a tragedy, nor even a nightmare, but simply... a bureaucratic senselessness with moments of black comedy? What if in the end it all boiled down to that: surviving among absurd orders, incompetent commanders, and a landscape that oscillates between tedium and madness? Welcome to the pharaoh's army. Don't expect redemption.

Tobias Wolff doesn't write a book about Vietnam; he writes about being trapped in Vietnam. There's no epic, no patriotism, no neatly packaged trauma for catharsis. What there is is a voice that recalls, without solemnity or spectacle, what it was like to serve as a young officer in a war that already seemed lost before it began. In the Pharaoh's Army is a memory, yes, but not one of those that constructs heroes or villains. Wolff writes like someone who is watching an accident in slow motion: with strangeness, with a certain cynicism, and above all, with brutal lucidity.

Here there is no linear narrative, no arcs of redemption, no climactic battles. What there are are episodes —vignettes, flashes, moments suspended in time— that construct a mosaic as fragmented as the experience of war itself. One day you're about to die. The next, your biggest problem is that you can't get good reception on the television. Wolff understands that in modern war the line between hell and the trivial is not a line: it's a seesaw.

His style is an uncomfortable delight. There are no baroque flourishes or testosterone-inflated sentences. Wolff writes with the precision of someone who knows he doesn't need to exaggerate to cause vertigo. There's something of Hemingway in his economy, something of Tim O’Brien in the way he captures the absurdity of the front, but with a more contained, more corrosive, more intelligent humor. There are sentences that seem thrown out with reluctance and yet they pierce you. Because what lies beneath is not drama: it's the intimate understanding of human mediocrity.

The characters who people these memories are not heroes or monsters, but men trapped in a situation they don't fully understand. There are incompetent officers, soldiers who try to endure the war as best they can, and Vietnamese with whom Wolff lives closely, especially the soldiers and officers of the South Vietnamese army, with whom he has to work elbow to elbow in his role as a liaison. However, their presence in the narrative does not translate into greater mutual understanding: cultural distance, cynicism, and distrust are constant. Wolff also doesn't present himself to us as a noble or tragic protagonist. There's no imposture in his figure as a narrator. He shows himself as young, arrogant, insecure, sometimes ridiculous. He accepts his pettiness without trying to redeem himself. And that, of course, makes him deeply believable. He's not a disillusioned hero; he's a kid who thought war could be a stage to prove something, and who comes up against a broken puppet theater where no one is in control of anything.

The war, in this book, is a broken machine that keeps functioning because no one knows how to stop it. Because Wolff's war is a war of details: a soldier who hangs a radio around his neck and sings as if he were a rock star in the middle of the battlefield; the puppy he rescues from a barbecue only to find it months later floating in a stew prepared in his honor for his departure. These are small scenes that encapsulate the black humor, the casual cruelty, and the total indifference of the universe to each person's fate.

But Wolff doesn't only portray the senselessness of war from the action or violence, but also from the mechanisms that sustain it. Like when he realizes that the real command in his unit, the power that comes from experience, is not his, a white lieutenant with a university education, but his sergeant, Benet, a black man whose'real' authority is unquestionable but whose official position is inferior. There's an inversion of hierarchies there. And everyone pretends that's not the case, especially Benet himself, because that's how the army works. The hierarchy is a joke that everyone participates in.

And then there's that brutal and subtle scene when he realizes that decisions don't matter as much as we think. You can do everything right and die. You can do everything wrong and survive. There's no logic, no justice, no epic. Only chance. And that's the true violence of the book: not the explosions, but the recognition that there's no god taking note of our decisions.

The title is not just a biblical image. It's a verdict. The pharaoh's army is not a country nor a flag: it's the very structure of war. It's that imperial impulse that is launched with pride against the world and ends up mired in the mud, not fully understanding how it got there. It's the perfect metaphor for a war fought by confused young men in the service of a tattered cause, under the orders of a command that can't distinguish reality from the script.

Wolff, who already in \\n  This Boy's Life\\n showed that one can write about personal chaos without losing acuity, brings that gaze here to a larger scale. But the theme remains the same: the illusion of control. The absurd fantasy that we understand what's happening to us. If in his first memoir war was growing up in a dysfunctional family, here it's the story of a dysfunctional empire that drags its soldiers like pawns without a compass.

What distinguishes this book from other accounts of Vietnam is not its crudeness —which it has— nor its intelligence —which it has in abundance—, but its tone. That almost impossible balance between irony and disenchantment, between emotional distance and subtle horror. Wolff doesn't shout. He doesn't cry. He just observes, remembers, and writes. And for that very reason, he leaves you breathless.

At times, In the Pharaoh's Army feels like an episode of M*A*S*H, but without the closing music or the easy jokes: a parade of absurdities, incompetent officers, and survivors by inertia, where humor is not a relief, but another symptom of despair. An episode of M*A*S*H directed by Samuel Beckett: desolate humor, crumbling hierarchies, and a sense that no one really knows what they're doing, but everyone keeps acting as if they did.

In the end, what remains is not a great war story, but a collection of moments —banal, cruel, absurd— that compose something much more disturbing: the portrait of a war that promised nothing and yet managed to disappoint everything. When he's discharged and offered a promotion to come back, his response is not grandiose. It's not heroic. It's simply this: «Captain?», he says. «Captain of what?».

And in that question there's more truth than in a hundred speeches about war.

Tobias Wolff's decision to join the US army was, in part, driven by the hope that the experience would enhance his writing skills, perhaps drawing inspiration from his hero Ernest Hemingway. Indeed, the Vietnam War backdrop in "In Pharaoh's Army" gives rise to several thrilling sequences and actions.

However, the story fails to fully showcase Wolff's true talent, which lies in the simple and honest exploration of everyday human frailties. Compared to his other works, we see disappointingly little of this in "In Pharaoh's Army".

It is only at the end of the book, when Wolff has returned from war, that we finally witness him at his finest. He paints a complex and nuanced portrait of bittersweet (dis)connection and alcohol-infused Californian melancholy, all centered around his charismatic, lonely, and once larger-than-life father.

This leaves the reviewer with an uncomfortable thought: perhaps this story would have been even better if Wolff had simply spent a few years in his father's spare bedroom, observing and writing about the ordinary lives in America, rather than getting involved in one of the nation's greatest atrocities.

I read This Boys Life and was completely enamored with Tobias Wolff's writing style. As a result, I decided to pick up In Pharaoh's Army next. However, for some reason that I can't quite put my finger on, it didn't grip my attention as tightly. I found myself constantly losing focus and falling out of the story.

In theory, Pharaoh's Army has more of a plot and is filled with interesting elements. Nevertheless, I believe that Wolff's portrayal of being a boy and a child in This Boys Life is somehow more captivating and relatable on a universal level. This book left me with a sense of loneliness and sadness, and I was eager to move on to something else. That's not to say that there weren't parts of In Pharaoh's Army that were beautifully written. Wolff is an incredibly observant writer, able to notice the tiniest details that reveal profound truths and express them in a simple yet poetic manner.

If you're seeking a comprehensive understanding of Vietnam, this book may not be for you. Similarly, if you're looking to fall in love with the characters, you might be disappointed. However, if you want to read a well-crafted piece of writing from a great memoirist, then In Pharaoh's Army is worth a read.

One aspect that I truly admire about Wolff is his restraint. So much of modern memoir writing seems to be about shock value, exposing the reader to extreme emotions and situations. But Wolff understands that life is mostly lived in the ordinary, and he writes masterfully about these mundane moments. He doesn't feel the need to exaggerate or sensationalize things to keep the reader engaged, because his writing speaks for itself.

Overall, while In Pharaoh's Army is a good book, it just wasn't my favorite of Wolff's works. Hence, I gave it three stars.

Tobias Wolff, during the Vietnam War, was a volunteer in the US Army.

He underwent training as a Special Forces Paratroop officer and learned to speak Vietnamese.

Realizing that he wouldn't become a competent Special Forces Officer, Wolff was relieved when he was assigned as an advisor to a Vietnamese Army artillery battalion in a relatively quiet area.

Nonetheless, he had several "close calls" and managed to survive the enemy's Tet Offensive.

This account was extremely engaging,描绘了 a young officer's experience in Vietnam and his subsequent re-entry into civilian life.

It offered a vivid picture of the challenges and adventures Wolff faced during his time in the warzone and how he adapted after returning home.

The story not only provided insights into the military operations but also delved into the personal growth and transformation of the protagonist.

Overall, it was a captivating narrative that left a lasting impression on the readers.

Wolff is an exceptionally masterful author. His story is incredibly dense, filled to the brim with the richness of life. It is populated with a plethora of vivid characters,描绘出 numerous detailed scenes, and is interspersed with thoughtful - and at times, deeply philosophical - musings on how all these elements fit together. I find myself in absolute awe of his remarkable artistry with words. So much so that I often find myself re-reading a sentence or a paragraph multiple times, just to allow its beauty to fully soak in and be absorbed.

This memoir predominantly takes place in Vietnam, where Wolff served during the war. Having just completed reading it, I am already eagerly looking forward to delving into more of his work. And without a doubt, "In Pharoah's Army: Memories of the Lost War" most definitely deserves a prominent place on my bookshelf for yet another thorough read through. I would rate this book four stars.

He is undoubtedly one of the best short stories writers alive today. His works are nothing short of killer. With a unique writing style and an extraordinary ability to craft engaging plots, he has captivated the hearts and minds of countless readers around the world.

Each of his short stories is a masterpiece, filled with vivid characters, intense emotions, and unexpected twists. He has a remarkable talent for exploring the human condition and delving into the deepest recesses of the human psyche.

Whether it's a heartwarming tale of love and redemption or a spine-chilling thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat, his stories always leave a lasting impression. His writing is a true art form, and he is当之无愧 one of the greatest short story writers of our time.

Maybe I'm just a zoomer, but I have to say that this thing had a few really good moments.

For example, there was one particular scene that really stood out to me and made me sit up and take notice. It was filled with excitement and energy, and it made me think that maybe there was more to this than I initially thought.

However, for the most part, it was pretty boring. The pacing was slow, and there were long stretches where not much seemed to be happening. I found myself checking my phone or looking around the room, just to pass the time.

I wanted to like it more, but unfortunately, it just didn't quite hit the mark for me. Maybe it's because I'm a zoomer and have a shorter attention span, or maybe it's just that this particular thing wasn't really my cup of tea. Either way, I can't say that I would recommend it to others.

I’m quite convinced that Wolff can’t write a bad word, a bad line or a bad page.

His writing is a masterpiece, a work of art that captivates the reader from the very first sentence.

In Pharaoh’s Army, the follow-up novel to This Boy’s Life, Wolff again displays his remarkable talent for writing with honesty and insight about human emotions and motivations.

He delves deep into the psyche of his characters, revealing their fears, hopes, and dreams with a rare authenticity that is both refreshing and moving.

As a Viet Nam memoir, this novel is easily up there with If I Die in a Combat Zone and The Things They Carried.

It offers a unique perspective on the war, one that is both personal and universal.

Wolff’s writing is not only excellent but also deeply moving.

It has the power to touch the reader’s heart and soul, leaving a lasting impression long after the final page has been turned.

This is truly a new favorite for sure, a novel that I will recommend to anyone who loves great literature.

As I stepped out of my morning train, the words of what I had been reading still echoing vividly in my mind. I became instantly aware that despite the obvious and menacing downpour that was happening all around me, I had, unfortunately, left my umbrella on the train. I chastised myself briefly for my carelessness and lack of awareness. However, in that moment, I had an epiphany of sorts.

There are certain books, the truly outstanding ones, that have the remarkable ability to transport you out of the present moment. They completely absorb you, almost suffocating you, and leave you with the distinct feeling that if you were to read them to the very end, you would not emerge as the same person you were when you began.

Such a book is "In Pharaoh's Army" by Tobias Wolff. These short essays, which detail his experiences in Vietnam as a young man in his early 20's, are a captivating blend of emotions. They are at times amusing and yet also harrowing, altruistic and then spiteful, poignant and sometimes petty. More than just mere war stories, they are profound tales about human connection and the deep sense of loneliness, about love and the tragic futility of war.

I realize that there is nothing I can pen here that will do these stories the justice they truly deserve. Instead of attempting to do so, I earnestly urge you to discover them for yourself. It will undoubtedly be one of the most powerful and impactful things you will have read this year.