#sorry the enemy theyre fighting is this looming absence throughout the book until the very end | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ayegomorrah · 8 days ago

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The Forever War by Joe Haldeman truly sucked ass and doesnt belong to the must read canon tm now its so incredibly 70s. It's not even a shooting and crying book though i do think its scifi metaphors for alienation and combat ptsd are very good it just. Packs in every possible societal anxiety of the time from women's and gay lib to urban crime to road warrior-esque apocalyptic gangs to overpopulation to fear of the horrible eastern hive mind whose primitive ways our individualistic culture can never understand. It treats the Vietnam war as some tragic miscommunication, almost. Fairly troubling how many "anti war" works are like this, and still get praised now, i must say.

#the forever war #ok i can do a good faith reading of almost every aspect of this book #i just feel like the forever war people talk about is a completely different work from what i read #so im not really arguing with the book here im arguing with its legacy #joe haldeman #finishing my 2024 reading diary and hm this was a weird one #kinda interesting as a time capsule to all the just very weird shit here #idk i feel like every man over 40 read this as a boys adventure book #then forgot about it for 25 years and read somewhere about its importance of the time and keeps repeating it #the first third is a very good war book #then it becomes this completely bizarre conservative dystopia thing just to land on some very iffy readings on american militarism #and communism and gay lib bad #sorry the enemy theyre fighting is this looming absence throughout the book until the very end #but what is very present is this mandatory homosexuality and fear of gender variance and changing social norms a la gender roles #and its very clear what haldemans stand in thinks of womens role in society #every good faith reading of the homosexuality thing just keeps landing me in new kinds of homophobia its very of its time

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