Bob Newman's Reviews > In Pharaoh's Army: Memories of the Lost War

Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Been (except me)

Honesty is like "Nude Descending a Staircase". Was she really going down ? Maybe it was only a pose, she was really headed up. And how nude did she get ? Maybe the artist just imagined the last part. But the picture stands as a lasting, but unclear, monument to a certain moment. As we strip away our motivations for doing things, as we take account of all the moods and history that lie behind the smallest of our actions, may we not-----even we------get confused ? Some people delude themselves that they are telling the truth, even as they lie hypocritically yet again. Some people may even think that they ARE telling the truth, they've told those lies so many times already. Others never peer under the surface, truth is a matter of feelings of the moment. Honestly revealing yourself takes a lot of effort. It's a great deal of work and probably very much of an art. If it's an art, then it can't be a science. As Wolff himself says, "Your version of reality might not tally with the stats or the map or the after-action report, but it was the reality you lived in, that would live on in you through the years ahead, and become the story by which you remembered all that you had seen, and done, and been." May I add, humbly, that your version would transform as you got older, as you experienced those subtle, but long-lasting changes creeping into your very memories.
Yeah, well, this book is about a guy's year in Vietnam, the training before, the blankness and partial recovery afterwards. It's about parents, girlfriends, dead comrades, being a stranger in a strange land. If that's all you want to know, though, then this book is not for you. A lot of guys had that kind of experience. But how many of them could write about it in this perfect way? IN PHAROAH'S ARMY is a gem because of the honesty with which Wolff describes every feeling, every nuanced experience, sparing himself nothing, hiding no unpleasantness of character. Moving as it is, I still wondered where honesty and self-revelation can finally be found, since they are so obviously art forms. That's the question that Wolff's book will raise in every reader. It is a most powerful question and this is a most powerful book. I could give it more than 5 stars, but that's all there are.