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Buck : A Tennessee Boy in Korea
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First published January 1, 1982
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June 20, 2024
Buck is like a conversation with a yammering drunk at the VFW who spins a yarn about his daring wartime exploits but was probably really a cook who never fired a weapon in anger. It’s an action focused Korean War tale. There’s nothing in it that makes you pause and think or maybe reflect on the horrors of war.
Buck favors use of racial slurs, a lot. I initially had the impression that Keller Cox was trying to capture the colorful language of the soldiers. However, that initial thought fades away with passages like,
“… don’t fire until I give you the word… Not ‘til you see the slants of their eyes!”
“So many of the yellow bastards… they could lose a million men and not hardly miss them. I guess Chinese get born faster than you can shoot them.”
It’s safe to say Buck is a racist. An unrepentant one at that.
Keller Cox was writing the stories of Raymond L. “Buck” Frazier. Frazier was a Korean War veteran whose life and experiences closely match the story in Buck. Frazier spent over two years as a POW of the Chinese. He’s certainly entitled to his animosity against the Chinese. However, there’s a fine line between accurately portraying soldiers’ language and writing in a fashion fit for a Klan newsletter. Buck comes dangerously close to the latter. In fact, archives.gov has a recording of an interview with Frazier where he talks about “accidentally” shooting at an African-American National Guard unit (the Army was still segregated in the Korean War). Later in the recording, he breaks down into a tirade of “chinks” before the interview ends. Not because of the racist language though. You can listen to the recording here, https://www.loc.gov/item/afc2001001.7....
I’ve come to expect racism from Korean War novels written by UN participants. The use of “chink” or “Joe chink” in the book is pretty frequent. The racism isn’t really the most egregious part of the novel. The war crimes get that distinction.
Buck is a First-Aid Man by MOS designation and likely a non-combatant by Geneva Conventions standards. After Buck was assigned the MOS designation, he set fire to civilian dwellings as a feint for an ambush in which he kills 68 combatants (most likely a completely fictional event). Some soldiers torture a Chinese POW before summarily executing him. Buck and some other escaped POWs steal enemy uniforms in an attempt to hide from their patrols. Finally, in a bizarre Freudian slip, Buck is found guilty of raping a Korean woman it a trial held at the POW camp. A charge he never denies, though he does label the proceedings a kangaroo court. Given Buck’s racist language, the charge is hardly a stretch of the imagination.
The book would be useful to a historian interested in American POWs during the Korean War. Buck’s story, and Frazier’s story parallel in this respect. Frazier has an online biography which is useful for separating some of the fact from the fiction. You can read at http://www.koreanwar-educator.org/mem.... I haven’t gone through the hassle of independently verifying stories from a novel. I’ve just been interested in the literature surrounding the Korean War.
The book only gets two stars from me. It’s coherently written. Although, some of the writing conventions caught me as kind of odd. The book ends kind of abruptly, and the combat story bookends the tale of Buck’s childhood. Although it was relevant to the story, it felt misplaced in the middle of the novel. The writing was good enough but not quotable or deep. There were a few odd gems here and there such as,
“If you bastards don’t shut up, I’m going to come all over my shorts. I’m so goddamned horny I could fuck a snapping turtle.”
Really captures the poetry of the English language. How Buck dodged the Pulitzer for fiction, I’ll never know.
Buck favors use of racial slurs, a lot. I initially had the impression that Keller Cox was trying to capture the colorful language of the soldiers. However, that initial thought fades away with passages like,
“… don’t fire until I give you the word… Not ‘til you see the slants of their eyes!”
“So many of the yellow bastards… they could lose a million men and not hardly miss them. I guess Chinese get born faster than you can shoot them.”
It’s safe to say Buck is a racist. An unrepentant one at that.
Keller Cox was writing the stories of Raymond L. “Buck” Frazier. Frazier was a Korean War veteran whose life and experiences closely match the story in Buck. Frazier spent over two years as a POW of the Chinese. He’s certainly entitled to his animosity against the Chinese. However, there’s a fine line between accurately portraying soldiers’ language and writing in a fashion fit for a Klan newsletter. Buck comes dangerously close to the latter. In fact, archives.gov has a recording of an interview with Frazier where he talks about “accidentally” shooting at an African-American National Guard unit (the Army was still segregated in the Korean War). Later in the recording, he breaks down into a tirade of “chinks” before the interview ends. Not because of the racist language though. You can listen to the recording here, https://www.loc.gov/item/afc2001001.7....
I’ve come to expect racism from Korean War novels written by UN participants. The use of “chink” or “Joe chink” in the book is pretty frequent. The racism isn’t really the most egregious part of the novel. The war crimes get that distinction.
Buck is a First-Aid Man by MOS designation and likely a non-combatant by Geneva Conventions standards. After Buck was assigned the MOS designation, he set fire to civilian dwellings as a feint for an ambush in which he kills 68 combatants (most likely a completely fictional event). Some soldiers torture a Chinese POW before summarily executing him. Buck and some other escaped POWs steal enemy uniforms in an attempt to hide from their patrols. Finally, in a bizarre Freudian slip, Buck is found guilty of raping a Korean woman it a trial held at the POW camp. A charge he never denies, though he does label the proceedings a kangaroo court. Given Buck’s racist language, the charge is hardly a stretch of the imagination.
The book would be useful to a historian interested in American POWs during the Korean War. Buck’s story, and Frazier’s story parallel in this respect. Frazier has an online biography which is useful for separating some of the fact from the fiction. You can read at http://www.koreanwar-educator.org/mem.... I haven’t gone through the hassle of independently verifying stories from a novel. I’ve just been interested in the literature surrounding the Korean War.
The book only gets two stars from me. It’s coherently written. Although, some of the writing conventions caught me as kind of odd. The book ends kind of abruptly, and the combat story bookends the tale of Buck’s childhood. Although it was relevant to the story, it felt misplaced in the middle of the novel. The writing was good enough but not quotable or deep. There were a few odd gems here and there such as,
“If you bastards don’t shut up, I’m going to come all over my shorts. I’m so goddamned horny I could fuck a snapping turtle.”
Really captures the poetry of the English language. How Buck dodged the Pulitzer for fiction, I’ll never know.
Displaying 1 of 1 review