Richard Hooker

Richard Hooker

MASH

Paperback: 224 pages
1968
ISBN-10: 9780688149550

Reviewed by Patrick Killough

(1) biblio.com 04/19/2011

Would you recommend this book to other readers? MAYBE * *

I found Richard Hooker's 1968 novel MASH disappointing. I think of it as "poor man's Rudyard Kipling." Like Kipling's immortal SOLDIERS THREE tales of British India and his fictionalized school boy reminiscences in STALKY & CO., Hooker's MASH is about male bonding among a trio of people engaged in the same occupation: whether, as for Kipling, soldiering for Queen Victoria in an alien sub-Continent, or atttending together in England a prep school for future government servants or, in the case of Hooker's MASH, surgeoning together north of Seoul during the 1950s Korean War. Part of the glory of Kipling's depictions (like Shakespeare's) is that Kipling had a very good ear for English as it is really spoken. Richard Hooker, alas, does not. And this is the most annoying single fault in a frequently disappointing novel.

The novel's title, MASH, is an acronym for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. The MASH about which the tale revolves is the 4077th, located in 1951 and 1953 45 miles north of Seoul, capital of South Korea, and on the 38th Parallel of Latitude separating the two warring Koreas. The tale begins in November 1951. Enter forthwith two newly assigned surgeons, both draftees, "Captains Augustus Bedford Forrest and Benjamin Franklin Pierce." Pierce aka Hawkeye is 28. Forrest aka Duke is 29. Soon Captain Forrest commits for the first time an authorial tin-ear malapropism to be pointlessly repeated hundreds of time before novel's end. Speaking to the only other person in a Jeep driving north from Seoul, Duke asks Hawkeye, "What are y'all anyway? ... A nut?" "Y'all" is supposed to let the reader know that Captain Forrest is a Southerner, specifically a Georgian. Trouble is, of course, we Southerners do not use "you all" or its variants when addressing single individuals.

Whereas Shakespeare and Kipling individualize their characters through accurate reproduction of the sounds they make speaking English, almost every single character in MASH sounds as if he was born and raised in the same Midwestern neighborhood -- despite Hawkeye's being from Maine and Trapper John's being from Boston. Obvious exceptions are Captain Forrest and a late in the yarn black football star whose father had been a sharecropper on a farm owned by Forrest's father. And they both sound like tin-ear parodies.

In Chapter 3 there enters chest surgeon John McIntyre, formerly a famous high school and college athlete nicknamed Trapper John. He moves into a tent called the Swamp completing the third of the three Swampmen, the novel's heroes. The rest of MASH is about their growing companionship as unusually good but eccentric surgeons performing "hurry-up, short-cut or call-it-what-you-will surgery you have to do in a place like this" (Ch. 14). Like SOLDIERS THREE and STALKY & CO., MASH is essentially a string of short stories focusing on Hawkeye, Duke and Trapper John at work and at play, in depression and exaltation until each one's 15 months of front line surgery are over.

The novel spun off a movie directed by Robert Altman which followed the book fairly well, albeit with exaggerations of the mayhem that the surgical Musketeers strewed about them. An eleven-seasons television series was more popular than either novel or movie. If you must read MASH the novel, do it as the price of admission to the movie or television MASH. --OOO--

http://www.biblio.com/books/408690108.html
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(2) lunch.com 04/19/2011

name of review: "'Stop looking at those pictures, Reverend,' commanded Hawkeye."

rating: * * *

review:

There once was an American named H. Richard Hornberger (1924 – 1997). A medical doctor, he served as such with the U.S. Army during the Korean war in the 8055th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. Does Mobile Army Surgical Hospital sound disturbingly familiar to you? Perhaps you know the institution better by its acronym M.A.S.H or MASH.

For eleven years Richard Hornberger slaved away writing a novel and shopping it in vain from publisher to publisher. Finally, in 1968 the book appeared in print, with Hornberger calling himself Richard Hooker. In some later editions, M.A.S.H had the subtitle, "A NOVEL ABOUT THREE ARMY DOCTORS." And that is what M.A.S.H. or MASH is: a novel about three surgeons in a mythical Eighth Army Mobiile Surgical Hospital numbered 4077.

The 4077th's location: the Republic of Korea on the 38th Parallel of Latitude dividing Korea in two, 45 miles north of the Southern Capital Seoul. Novel's time is from mid-November 1951 until 16 or so months later when two of the "three Army Doctors," (by then 30 years old) Captain Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce and 31 year old Captain Augustus Bedford "Duke" Forrest return to their families in, respectively, Maine and Georgia. They leave behind their brilliant chest surgeon friend Captain John "Trapper John" McIntyre, moping about with no more male bonding to sustain him for almost six more months of near-front line service still to go.

In his Foreword, author Hornberger/Hooker wrote:

"The surgeons in the MASH hospitals were exposed to extremes of hard work, leisure, tension, boredom, heat, cold, satisfaction and frustration that most of them had never faced before. Their reaction ... was to cope with situation and get the job done. ... A few flipped their lids, but most of them just raised hell, in a variety of ways and degrees. This is a story of some of the ways and degrees. It's also a story of some of the work."

Two years after novel's publication, MASH became a feature film directed by Robert Altman. It starred Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould with a strong supporting cast. It won one of the five Academy Awards for which it was nominated. The film was widely taken as commentary on the war in Viet-Nam.

Then came eleven seasons, 1972 - 1983 of the television series M*A*S*H, starring Alan Alda as Hawkeye Pierce. Novel author Hornberger/Hooker is reported to have loved the movie but to have disliked the TV series.

All three incarnations of MASH focus to different extents on the three surgeons Hawkeye, Duke and Trapper John, on Medical Officer in Chief LTC Henry Blake, on signalman Corporal Radar O'Reilly, red-headed Catholic Chaplain John Patrick "Dago Red" Mulcahy, and on Chief Nurse Major Margaret "Hot Lips" O'Houlihan. Hawk Eye, Duke and Trapper John room together in a bachelor's tent called the Swamp, with them being the Swampmen. Their surgical output is prodigious and usually successful. The amount of alcohol the three friends consume is beyond computation. Their insubordination is laid out in considerable detail.

At novel's end Hawkeye and Duke are traveling together from Korea via Japan to the United States for reuniting with their wives and children. It is dawning on both that their days of companionable revery are drawing to a close. There will be few future opportunities in their hum drum Stateside careers for horseplay. But out of about to be shed habit, the two friends make time for one or two final pranks.

To avoid certain unpleasant inspections imposed on all medical doctors on route home with a troop ship of 3,000 men, Duke and Hawkeye put Chaplains' crosses on their Eisenhower jackets. Sharing a cabin with four other returning non-Medical officers, Hawkeye tells his new mates that Duke had "come down with the clap" and needs a dose of Auromycin. "Chaplain" Duke has to be ready to marry the Bishop's daughter on return to Kokomo, Indiana. Meanwhile Captain Duke Forrest is leafing through a girlie magazine. "'Stop looking at those pictures, Reverend,' commanded Hawkeye" (Ch. 15).

And so it goes throughout MASH. One adventure after another.

I would rate MASH Four Stars except that the author has a tin ear for regional variants of spoken American English. All his characters with two exceptions (both Georgians and they are caricatures) sound alike, as if they come from the same white neighborhood in the North Central United States. The tin earishness of MASH contrasts mightily with the brilliant oral localisms of Shakespeare's HENRY IV and HENRY V and Kipling's SOLDIERS THREE and STALKY & CO. Call MASH Kipling lite. It does not rise to the ranks of three-dimensional literature, though it is very amusing betimes.

-OOO-

http://www.lunch.com/ubergizmo/reviews/d/UserReview-Richard_Hooker_MASH
-64-1729214-206143-_Stop_looking_at_those_pictures_Reverend_.html
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(3) bn.com 04/20/2011

title of review: "There were more gas-passers than anesthesiologists in Korea"

rating: * * *

review:

Mainly because of its successful movie and TV spinoffs, Richard Hooker's 1968 novel MASH is worth reading and analyzing. I say this despite the fact that the book has many weaknesses, starting with the fact that all its American characters talk the same regional dialect. There are two exceptions, surgeon Captain "Duke" Forrest and neurosurgeon Oliver Wendell "Spearchucker" Jones, formerly a professional football player. They are from the same part of rural Georgia. One is white, the other black. And neither sounds authentic. All the other American characters, mainly Army medical corps personnel serving in warring Korea in the early 1950s, sound as if they grew up in the same town in Indiana, which supposedly they did not. Thus, best known character, general surgeon Hawkeye Pierce is from Maine, chest surgeon Trapper John McIntyre is from Boston. You would never know it from the sounds coming from their mouths.

MASH, like Rudyard Kipling's STALKY & CO. and SOLDIERS THREE is about three males who become friends while living together (respectively, in an English boarding school, in a British regiment in Queen Victoria's India or in a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) in Korea. The novel framework loosely unites, in all cases, short stories showing the heroes at work and at play, under stress and at ease, bored and pulling pranks. Kipling's "three friends" are three dimensional and speak authentic regional English. Richard Hooker's three bonded males struggle hard to break from time to time into two dimensions. MASH does not rise to the level of immortal literature.

That said, some of the episodes in MASH are amusing: a high-stakes amateur football game between two different U.S. Army medical units relying on professional talent (and dirty tricks) for victory; surgeons Hawkeye Pierce and Duke Forrest en route home in a troop ship pretend to be chaplains to avoid medical chores expected of military doctors; signal corps Corporal Radar O'Reilly has extra-sensory talents and receives communiques apparently from outer space, and so on.

The novel is also enormously didactic. It abounds in surgical and related medical jargon and might, I imagine, inspire teenagers to want to make a career in healing professions. There is also considerable authorial moralizing about medicine as an art. For instance, Captain Ugly John Black is a first class anesthesiologist. And

"a good anesthesiologist is essential to any important surgical effort. Without one, the greatest surgeon in the world is helpless. With one, relatively untalented surgeons can look good. ... a (good) anesthesiologist is a boon to all mankind. If all he can do is keep the patient unconscious, he is just a gas-passer. There were more gas-passers than anesthesiologists in Korea" (Ch. 10).

The book inspired both a better 1970 Oscar-winning movie (directed by Robert Altman) and an astonishingly enduring, eleven season (1972-83) television series. Not bad for a generally no better than average piece of writing. -OOO-

recommended reading:

-- Joseph Heller - CATCH-22

-- Rudyard Kipling - STALKY & CO., SOLDIERS THREE

-- William Shakespeare - HENRY IV, HENRY V (for its varieties of spoken English among male-bonded friends)

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(4) amazon.com 04/21/2011

title of review: "'My name's Duke Forrest. Who are y'all?' 'Hawkeye Pierce.'"

rating: * * *

review:

The 1968 novel MASH was eleven years in the writing and promoting to a string of publishers all but one of whom rejected it. Novel's author H. Richard Hornberger, M.D. (1924 - 1997) gave himself the nom de plume of Richard Hooker. He had been a surgeon in a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) during the Korean War (1950 - 1953). In his Foreword to MASH, author Hornberger/Hooker explained what the novel was trying to do:

To be fair, the author delivers what he promised. He focuses on the lives of three MASH surgeons, all drafted U.S. Army captains who spend 18 months in country 1951 - 1953, two of them, Captains "Hawkeye" Pierce and "Duke" Forrest, putting in 15 months close to front lines 45 miles north of Seoul in the 4077th MASH. When they return to civilian life in 1953, they leave behind a third tent mate Captain "Trapper John" McIntyre, a chest surgeon. Trapper John has another six months to serve. Without his two soul-mates, he will probably have a gloomy time of it.

The three friends, called Swampmen after "the Swamp," the name for their bachelor officers' tent, preserve their sanity (sort of) under horrible working conditions, but their self-preserving eccentric, zany often anti-social behavior was apparently not typical of most of the suprisingly abundant medical personnnel attached to the 4077th MASH.

The novel is a string of short stories and episodes of Swampmen pranks, usually humorous, interspersed among didactic descriptions of treatment of a variety of battlefield wounds usually caused by pieces of exploded enemy metal distributed in every imaginable part of the human anatomy.

Characters are two dimensional at best. Arguably the worst feature of MASH are pedestrian conversations among the surgeons and other medical staff. Here is an early, typical, sample:

"'My name's Duke Forrest. Who are y'all?'

'Hawkeye Pierce.'

'Hawkeye Pierce?' Captain Forrest said. 'What the hell kind of a name is that?'

'The only book my old man ever read was THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS, Captain Pierce explained.'

'Oh,' Captain Forrest said.'" (Ch. 1)

Had MASH the novel not begotten a better 1970 film (directed by legendary Robert Altman) and an enduring eleven season (1972 - 1983) television series, it might be forgotten by now. Its writing rarely rises above average. Its depiction of character struggles to reach the second of two human dimensions.

-OOO-

http://www.amazon.com/Mash-Novel-About-Three-Doctors/
dp/0688149553/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=
1302986909&sr=1-1
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(5) epinions .04/21/2011

Review Title: MASH's Tin Ear. Its Dialog: Kipling Lite, Shakespeare Even "Liter"

by aohcapablanca, Apr 21 '11

Once upon a time H. Richard Hornberger, M.D. (1924 - 1997) spent eleven years writing a first novel called MASH or M.A.S.H. Its fictional 4077th MASH was a U.S. Mobile Army Surgical Hospital not far from the front lines of the Korean War (1950 - 1953). Doctor Hornberger assigned himself the nom de plume Richard Hooker and finally found a publisher in 1968.

In his Forward, Hornberger/Hooker tells us succinctly and accurately what he was trying to do:

That passage is arguably the best, most honest writing in the book.

Characters are two dimensional at best. Arguably the worst feature of MASH are pedestrian conversations among the surgeons and other medical staff. Here is an early, typical, sample. Note the absurd "y'all" of the purported Georgian speaking to the only other human being in sight, a onetime Maine lobster farmer who sounds throughout the tale (as do almost all other American characters who might have been raised in the same neighborhood) like a mid-Westerner:

Not a few readers prefer character-true banter, regionally authentic speech from such sources as Kipling's SOLDIERS THREE. Here is some from "The God From the Machine." The author is listening outside a noisy regimental ball in India to the patter of two enlisted friends. They are devouring "two-thirds of a ham, a loaf of bread, half a pate de foie gras, and two magnums of champagne."

Said Irish Private Mulvaney, "the tallest man in the regiment," to his mate Private Ortheris,

"' ... I wud be the disgrace av the rig'mint instid av the brightest jool in uts crown."

Replied Ortheris, "who was a Londoner," 'But what makes you curse your rations? This 'ere fizzy stuff's good enough.'"

Or listen to a centuries earlier interchange like:

Falstaff: (speaking to Prince Hal, pretending to be Hal's father King Henry IV): " ... That thou art my son I have partly thy mother's word, partly my own opinion, but chiefly a villainous trick of thy eye, and a foolish hanging of thy nether lip, that doth warrant me. ... there is a virtuous man whom I have often noted in thy company, but I know not his name."

Prince: "What manner of man, an it like your Majesty?"

Falstaff: "A good portly man, i'faith, and a corpulent; of a cheerful look, a pleasing eye, and a most noble carriage ..." (Shakespeare - KING HENRY THE FOURTH Part One, II.4)

MASH's writing is weak beer. Call it "poor man's Rudyard Kipling." Like Kipling's immortal SOLDIERS THREE tales of British India and also like Kipling's fictionalized school boy reminiscences in STALKY & CO., Hooker's MASH is about bonding among a trio of males all engaged in the same occupation.

-- For Kipling the common occupation is

---- in the first case, an Irishman, a Londoner and a Yorkshireman soldiering for Queen Victoria in an alien sub-Continent,

---- and in the second case, an English boarding school grinding out future mid-level government servants that three teen age boys are attending, growing up in and making mischief together.

-- The common profession of the three friends (including chest surgeon "Trapper John" McIntyre) in Hooker's MASH, is sharing a tent, "the Swamp," while surgeoning together north of Seoul during the 1950s Korean War.

Part of the craft behind Kipling's depictions (like Shakespeare's) is that Kipling had a very good ear for English as it is really spoken. Richard Hooker, alas, does not. And this may well be the most annoying single fault in a sometimes disappointing novel.

The novel as framework loosely unites, for both Kipling and Hooker, short stories showing their three heroes at work and at play, under stress and at ease, bored and pulling pranks.

Shakespeare's and Kipling's "friends" are three dimensional and speak authentic regional English. Richard Hooker's three bonded males struggle hard to break from time to time into two dimensions. MASH does not rise to the level of memorable literature.

There is no denying, however, MASH's in-depth, didactic probing of and moralizing about wartime surgery under time pressure and using primitive resources. Nor can it be denied that there are a couple of dozen moderately funny, sometimes bizarre scenes strung through the book: a frenetic football game between rival medical units, a house of ill repute starring an epileptic fille de joie, surgeons Hawkeye Pierce and Duke Forrest returning home on a troop ship passing themselves off as boozy, randy chaplains, and on and on.

Robert Altman directed the Oscar-winning movie adaptation. Then came the eleven season TV version. Dr. H. Richard Hornberger, author of the book, is said to have loved the movie and shunned the TV series.

For undemanding humor and introduction to surgery and to the anatomy of the shrapnel-ridden human body, you could make a case for a FOUR STAR rating of MASH the novel. But for the author's either general inattention to or not infrequent mangling of American regional speech patterns: TWO STARS. Ditto for a string of one dimensional characters striving to reach the second dimension. MASH is at best an average book.

-OOO-

Pros:
Drafted American surgeons at work and play near the front lines of the Korean War.

Cons:
One dimensional characters. Either no sense or inaccurate sense of differing American speech patterns

The Bottom Line:
Had there not been a better follow-on movie and a popular eleven season TV version of MASH, this book might no longer be read. Lame writing. Flat, forgettable characters.

Overall Product Rating: * * * AVERAGE

Recommended: No.

http://www.epinions.com/review/MASH_by_Richard_Hooker/content_548227944068
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hooker_mash

http://www.patrickkillough.com/books/hooker_mash.html