Eastlake, William

New York. 1969. Simon & Schuster. 1st Printing. Very Good in Worn Dustjacket. 350 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Paul Bacon. keywords: Literature America Vietnam War. FROM THE PUBLISHER - In this powerful new novel, William Eastlake once again blends heroic epic with gothic mystery and savage modern satire to create a masterful and haunting statement about the horrors and grim humors of war. Vietnam provides the war zone in • which Eastlake's characters find themselves trapped. All of them - the brave and the cowardly, the ethical and the corrupt, the gentle and the cruel - move through this twilight of Death, groping for some means of physical and moral survival in the lethal conflict. Among those who fight in this war and battle its arcane potency are: Mike, the veteran newspaperman on assignment in Vietnam; Captain Knightbridge, the commander of the BB, who makes love to his female aide while the helicopter hovers 10,000 feet above the battle; Captain Clancy and his mistress, Mme. Dieudonne; and a pair of flower children, who come seeking love and find only destruction. Writing about William Eastlake's earlier novels, CASTLE KEEP and THE BRONC PEOPLE, Walter van Tilburg Clark stated that ‘Eastlake brought into sharpest focus all the questions about modern man and his values . with the most unimpeachable blend of sardonic realism and far-reaching myth.' THE BAMBOO BED confirms Clark's judgment. It is William Eastlake's most significant statement: a black fantasy that captures both the glorious and the grotesque elements of 20th-century man; a work that crystallizes the reader's laughter into careful reflection. inventory #18698