The Birdcatcher: 30th Anniversary Revisit

Formerly a second lieutenant, Private Abel Joseph Jarrett is on a quest to redeem a soul in this idiosyncratically powerful drama of the Vietnam War. An encounter with mystic Mark Evans persuades Jarrett that Vietnam will be the forging ground in the battle for his soul. Obsessed with the need to atone for the murder of an orderly under his command, Jarrett sees himself as a vacant personality controlled by an entity called the Birdcatcher. Jarrett's bizarre quest to escape from his void of isolation by absorbing the personality of another, as he did with the orderly, takes on increasingly surreal dimensions, with the dissolution of Vietnam providing a violent backdrop to his own struggle. As Jarrett encounters death, sex, and the blandishments of the Birdcatcher, Schenck weaves an odyssey that is both startlingly unique and virtually incommunicable. Despite some tendentious dialogue and Jarrett's excessive self-reflection, Schenck has delivered a tantalizing and startlingly original work.