Ummm…about “Naked and the Dead” and four-letter words–I thought the big thing about that book was the joke that all the characters had head colds because they kept saying “fug you, you fugging fug.”
I read that book; it was okay. So I read “Armies of the Night.” I guess you had to have been there. Read nothing else of his; he wrote like a bar drunk talks.
Oh–what’s the big deal about Hemingway being so much better? Are you guys kidding? “Across the River and into the Trees”…”Death in the Afternoon”…even the ballyhooed “Old Man and the Sea” (the great Dimaggio…oh, lordy).
No wonder nobody reads “literary” novels anymore if these poseurs are the best the form has to offer.