Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Wolff, Tobias - Amanda Hopkinson (review date 9 December 1994)

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Amanda Hopkinson (review date 9 December 1994)

SOURCE: Hopkinson, Amanda. “Fragging Morality.” New Statesman and Society 7, no. 332 (9 December 1994): 39-40.

[In the following review, Hopkinson calls In Pharaoh's Army an understated indictment of the Vietnam War.]

Tobias Wolff's indictment of the US war in Vietnam is all the more withering for being so gentle. Its tone, which is what keeps you reading even the most horrific accounts, has a subtlety and modesty that belie the apparent detachment. The anecdotes that fuel the overwhelming humiliation of the whole experience are graced with charm, and even humour.

Many vituperative critiques have been made of that mad and disastrous period. The waste of lives—overwhelmingly civilian on the Vietnamese side, merely youthful on the American—is impossible to justify either in the chimerical cause of “defeating Communism” or as an experiment destruction waged by the US...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Valentine Cunningham (review date 14 March 1975)
   2. Bruce Allen (review date spring 1982)
   3. Richard Orodenker and Welch D. Everman (review date June 1982)
   4. Dean Flower (review date summer 1982)
   5. Bruce Allen (review date 7 June 1985)
   6. Thomas DePietro (review date autumn 1986)
   7. Linda Taylor (review date 6-12 November 1987)
   8. Richard Eder (review date 8 January 1989)
   9. Jeff Danziger (review date 16 February 1989)
   10. Geoff Dyer (review date 28 April 1989)
   11. John Clute (review date 12-18 May 1989)
   12. John Rechy (review date 5 November 1989)
   13. Peter J. Bailey (essay date summer 1991)
   14. John F. Desmond (essay date 14 May 1994)
   15. Richard Eder (review date 16 October 1994)
   16. Tobias Wolff and Nicholas A. Basbanes (interview date 24 October 1994)
   17. James Hannah (essay date 21 November 1994)
   18. Amanda Hopkinson (review date 9 December 1994)
   19. Michael Wood (review date 23 December 1994)
   20. Michael O. Garvey (review date 19 May 1995)
   21. Pat C. Hoy II (review date summer 1995)
   22. Jay Rogoff (review date summer 1996)
   23. James Hannah (essay date 1996)
   24. James Hannah (essay date 1996)
   25. Erin McGraw (review date summer 1997)
   26. Tobias Wolff and Elizabeth Glass (interview date July 1997)
   27. Daniel D. Challener (essay date 1997)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright