John C Summitt

To read this book is to fall down the rabbit hole into some smoky circle of Hell with Hemingway and Orwell and occasionally Kerouac as your tour guides. War is about death and Dispatches captures the insanity and psychic rot that permeates the landscape of war–particularly, it would seem–this war, and also the fascination and even addiction to it. If one has ever read Hemingway's Soldier's Home and wondered at the disconnect between Krebs and his family and normal life, Dispatches describes what was in Krebs' head. Highly recommended.

A solid collection of stories by an author who is adept at creating a wide variety of characters and finding those moments of revelation in their lives.

This is the book Dennis Lehane wished he wrote when he wrote Coronado. The format is reminiscent of Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio (it even takes place in Ohio). It is a series of loosely interrelated stories that collectively create a portrait of the community of Knockemstiff. It is a collection of sad sacks and losers living dead end lives in a town where the only thing that is happening is entropy. Bruce Springsteen once wrote a song in which the characters suffer all sorts of misfortunes,yet “at the end of every hard-earned day people find some reason to believe.” The people of Knockemstiff rarely find those reasons, yet they keep on living and there's something compelling in that.

Howard Campbell agrees to act as a spy for his country and in the process becomes a better Nazi than the real ones. Darkly humorous with a parade of offbeat characters that cause Campbell to reflect on the moral consequences of his life as a spy.

None of he stories in this collection are bad and a handful are really good but for the most part I found them to be just competent. There is a sameness to the stories that is disconcerting considering the page-turning quality of his novels. Worth a read if you like Gibson.