A brilliant novel of war, guilt, savagery. --Spokane Chronicle Hasford's vision leaves no room for healing...A furious yet compassionate book...Hasford keeps faith with the truth, however ugly, as a means of salvation. --Newsweek Hasford has a compelling genius for getting his point across...in prose that deserves to be celebrated...Hasford has truly outdone himself here.  The Phantom Blooper is a visionary's work of impressive literary art." --St. Petersburg Times Well crafted...Hasford's strength in vividly portraying the day-to-day life of the Viet Cong villagers...gives us something we've rarely seen before:  an empathetic view of a heretofore faceless enemy. --The New York Times Book Review

    We hump through a defoliated rain forest that is too dead even to smell dead.  Ancient trees stand stark and black and stripped of leaves.  The black trees are hung with limp windblown flowers that are parachutes from illumination shells.
    Later we see trees that are as white as bone, sun-bleached skeletons of the great hardwoods, white trees with black leaves.  The trunks and branches of the trees are warped by unnatural cancerous growths that look like human faces and human hands and human fingers growing out of decaying wood.
    In the poisonous fields of the defoliated rain forest we see monsters, freaks, and mutants.  We see a water rat with two heads and as big as a dog, birds with extra feet coming out of their backs, Siamese-twin bullfrogs joined at the stomach.  The bullfrogs scurry for cover with clumsy and desperately frantic movements horrible to see, finally sinking into oozing slime inhabited by shadows that are alive and best never seen by human eyes.

    There are a lot of stories about the Phantom Blooper.
    Below Phu Bai the Phantom Blooper is a black Marine Lieutenant who inspects defensive positions at bridge security compounds.  The next night, they get hit.
    North of Hue City the Phantom Blooper is a salt and pepper team of snuffy grunts who guide the Marine patrols into L-shaped ambushes set by the Viet Cong.
    Force Recon claims a probable kill for shooting the Phantom Blooper in the Ashau Valley.  The Phantom Blooper was a round-eye, tall and white, with blond hair, wearing black pajamas and a red headband, and armed with a folding-stock AK-47 assault rifle.  Recon swears that—and this is no shit—the round-eyed Victor Charlie was the honcho, the leader, of the gook patrol.
    The Phantom Blooper has many names.  The White Cong.  Super-Charlie.  The American VC.  Moon Cusser.  The Round-Eyed Victor Charlie.  White Charlie.  Americong.  Yankee Avenger.
    But whatever name we use, we all know in our hearts the true identity of the Phantom Blooper.  He is the dark spirit of our collective bad consciences made real and dangerous.
    “Go home,” the Phantom Blooper says, every night.  And we want to go home, we really do, but we don’t know how.
    “Go home,” the Phantom Blooper says, without mercy, over and over, again and again, punctuating his sentences with explosions.
 

"If there is a novel that illustrates the extremes to which the American soldier in Vietnam was driven, then Gustav Hasford has written it...  (The Phantom Blooper) is a major contribution to our continuing examination of the Vietnam War."
                                --John S. Nelson, professor of English at Saint Mary of the PlainsCollege

"Taken individually, each is a brilliant & singular portrayal of the war.  Taken together, we have a kind of Vietnam epic...  If you can find The Phantom Blooper and The Short-Timers, read them both together."
                                --Brian Siano, The Kubrick Site: Regarding 'Full Metal Jacket'