Gustav Hasford, The Short-Timers - First Assignment

The Short-Timers, in the opinion of many one of the truly great Vietnam War novels and the basis of the film Full Metal Jacket, has gone out of print, as have most of the 300+ Vietnam War novels written by American Vietnam Veterans.

However, Gustav Hasford's nephew has created a page for his famous uncle and his works: Private Joker's Home Page. And on it he has put the scanned texts of both of Hasford's major novels, The Short-Timers and The Phantom Blooper.

Here are links to the the Wikipedia pages on Gustav Hasford himself, and those for his novels The Short-Timers and The Phantom Blooper. I think you will find them interesting, so you may wish to read them, if only out of curiosity.

Here, archived, is the original Gustav Hasford Home Page, with links to his three novels, including A Gypsy Good Time.

With his permission, I have taken the scanned text of The Short-Timers and paginated it. Please use my paginated version. Download it; print it out; bring it to class.

If you want to take the book out of your local library, that's fine. The page numbers are to the paperback edition. I don't know whether they will be the same in the hard-cover edition that most libraries will have. If they are not, you will have to make adjustments.

First assignment on The Short-Timers:

Find the following passages. Identify them by page numbers and first five lines of the paragraphs with which the passages begin:

  1. In each of the three parts of the novel, an American soldier is killed by another American soldier. Find these passages. Write a short paragraph about each of them, describing the circumstances.
  2. In each of the three parts of the novel there is at least one "surreal" event, one that is not, cannot be, literally true. Find three such passages, one from each part of the novel. Write a short paragraph about each of them, describing the circumstances AND what is "surreal" about them.

    3. Email to your group and to me.