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| LitNet is ’n onafhanklike joernaal op die Internet, en word as gesamentlike onderneming deur Ligitprops 3042 BK en Media24 bedryf. |
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Aussie Vietnam Vets and a Marijuana Sting
Peter Merrington
Smoky Joe’s Café
Bryce Courtenay
Penguin 2001
True to Bryce Courtenay’s form, this feisty novel deals with one man’s
crusade against the forces of faceless government, hypocrisy, and political
bad faith. Thommo, an Australian Vietnam veteran, suffers, years after the event,
from the long-term physical effects of Agent Orange, and from psychological
trauma. Combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder is a recent understanding
in psychological circles; initially, however, Vietnam veterans were paid little
sympathy from official quarters, for their psychological or physiological problems.
Courtenay has closely researched the issues and written this novel as a tribute
to the volunteers who served in the elite Royal Australian Regiment in Vietnam.
After the war these volunteers felt profoundly betrayed by the radical shift
in political and public opinion, from support to outright condemnation of western
intervention in the Vietnam tragedy. Smoky Joe’s Café reconstructs
the point of view of a blue-collar gutsy but unsophisticated average Australian’s
toughly felt dilemma in the face of contemporary political correctness. The
sacrifice and heroism of his kind are now downplayed, ignored, or actively disparaged.
The narrative is told by Thommo himself, grappling with his physical and neurological
stress, the nightmares in which he replays the vicious battle where his best
friend was shot to pieces beside him; the awful fact of his young daughter’s
leukaemia which was brought about by his own exposure to Agent Orange; and his
wife Wendy’s quiet understanding of the issues.
Thommo’s narrative voice is unsophisticated, at times even provocatively
basic. His vocabulary is of the workshop or the barracks and Courtenay uses
this unreconstructed narrative voice to confront the twee evasions of politically
correct discourse. Added to this are the guttural vernacular grunts and oaths
of eleven of his old platoon comrades, who emerge from the social woodwork to
take up the fight against hypocrisy for the sake of his young daughter’s
health. This rebarbative and likeable crew rejoices in names such as Shorty
di Maggio, Animal, Bongface, Gazza, and Killer Kowolski. They include in their
hirsute company a variety of ethnic and national groupings that reflect the
social make-up of modern Australia, including a heroic midget of aboriginal
stock and others of more recent non-Anglo-Saxon immigrant origins. Thus this
crew is a rewriting, in refreshing ways, of the stereotypes of redneck Australia
and subverts any anticipated protestations of political correctness.
This ‘dirty dozen’ (to which is added the highly attractive figure,
sexually speaking, of Thommo’s wife Wendy) forge a plan to raise the hundreds
of thousands of dollars needed for specialist treatment for daughter Anna. The
plan is that the team, with the professional assistance of an ex-Vietcong medical
doctor and chemist, will grow, on Shorty Di Maggio’s farm, a huge crop
of hemp (marijuana, dagga, ganga, or hashish) and cultivate, harvest, and chemically
prepare the marijuana into a highly potent but clean form for sale to society.
The narrative deals deliciously with the reunion of the ageing veterans, and
their individual conditions (which include the need for barrels of beer as a
medication for their post-traumatic stress disorders), their coming to terms
with having the bombshell Wendy in their grubby midst, and the elaborate execution
of their illicit plan. In the midst of realistic gritty humour there are flashbacks,
well written and convincingly researched, to incidents in infantry training
and in Vietnam. The narrative in fact serves as a means for Thommo to confront
openly, after years of repression, the horror of the firefight where his mate
Mo’s head was blown off.
Once the marijuana crop has been harvested and processed, Wendy takes over with
her connections in the demimonde of Sydney, to market the drug among idle society
drones and other exotic species. There is a kind of raw justice in the way that
Thommo and his blue-collar mates who have sacrificed so much now milk the privileged
and petty of their money in the name of compassion. It is reminiscent of Paul
Gallico’s The Zoo Gang (1971), in which a group of World War II
veterans, all ex members of the French Maquis, reunite years later and work
outside the law, like Robin Hood, for the sake of social justice. The climax
to this narrative is delightful Australian razzmatazz, drawing on visual images
from the Australian modern classic film Priscilla Queen of the Desert,
but wresting these images from gay cinema, from Aussie Pink, perhaps, to good
old Aussie Blue. Added to the obligatory ten-ton horse-and-trailer outfit are
hundreds of outrageous rednecks on Harley Davidsons. Perhaps, finally, a new
kind of camp emerges, where the foul and unreconstructed redneck comes out against
society with his gross heart beating gently for a little girl who is dying of
leukaemia. It is a novel of social protest, but against the trends of the past
decade and a half Courtenay sets up a protest on behalf of the neglected old
white heterosexual male war-horse’s fundamental decency, his loyalty and
patriotism, his honesty, and his claims for recognition in a world of post-modern
twee PC coercion.
The issues are relevant to contemporary South Africa, where a support group
has recently been formed to enable veterans of the border and Angola wars the
chance to come to terms with their past, and to find out more about the subject
of combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder. A recent investigation on
South African television presented this support group’s work and revealed
the fact that there are many South African males now entering their middle age
who still carry with them deep mental and emotional anguish from their experiences
in Angola. A current Afrikaans play, Boetman is die Bliksem in, also
represents these issues as it works through the Afrikaner experience of adjustment
and re-affiliation in the new South Africa. However, besides these tough concerns,
Bryce Courtenay’s Smoky Joe’s Café is also a fine light read,
well structured and paced and appealing. It ought to be turned into a popular
and visually exciting film that would be a valued contrast to the standard Hollywood
Vietnam movies with their immense and irritating self-regard. Smoky Joe’s
Café is a heart-warming folk narrative setting up a new form of folk hero
in Australia, and it is a highly commendable novel.
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