One to Count Cadence

New York: Random House. Near Fine in Very Good dj. (c.1969). First Edition. Hardcover. [nice clean copy, just a touch of fading to cloth along top edge (consistent with tiny nicks and tears in the jacket); the jacket has a few small nicks and tears along the top edge, with some dog-earing at the top of the spine, and similar but much less wear along the bottom edge (now enclosed in a new mylar cover to prevent further damage)]. Possibly the first great American novel about the Vietnam War, Crumley's debut book is set in 1962 at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines, and is narrated by a new Sergeant who arrives at the base to find himself in command of "a collection of dissatisfied, rebellious enlistees." What begins as a novel about the peacetime Army becomes something else again as the Vietnam conflict escalates -- but as the jacket blurb states, "it is least of all a war novel, [but rather] about friendship," even as it holds "a mirror to that part of a generation reared on violence, actors in the American wars of the 1960's who can no longer believe in the myths and institutions of their country." .