Anybody need a hero?

"The Arabs were cool with craziness," Cody notes. Lulu is engaged to marry Colonel Fawwaz, a high-ranking lunatic in the Saudi royal family. In appreciation for returning his reluctant fiancée, the colonel treats these two wide-eyed marines to a celebration that displays all his grotesque violence, decadence, and rabid anti-Semitism.

Cody confesses, "The bottom line was Trang and me were discovering these Arab Folk were way different than us Americans, and it was kind of a bummer, because your basic American attitude is: Hey, you're a towel head, and hot on this dude Allah, but we can still party together, right? and not only wasn't this friendly let's party American approach working, but we were wondering if deep down all these Arabs really hated us generally."

But everywhere they go, the Arabs are captivated by Trang, who projects an incongruous atmosphere of gung-ho Americana and Vietnamese exoticism, complicated by his claim that he's Jewish. High jinks ensue: Princess Lulu and Private Trang fall in love. He vows to save her from marriage to Fawwaz or death from Hussein. He outraces a camel nude (yes, both he and the camel are nude) and wins a young slave, whom he emancipates and fills with visions of Marine glory. They charge after Hussein with a troupe of traditional Bedouin dancers. Each new AWOL adventure leads to some more bizarre development, all propelled by Trang's desire to marry Lulu, bring the Bill of Rights to Kuwait, and earn a permanent place in Marine lore.

Paine marches a narrow line in this novel. Despite one calamity after another, he never sinks into the absurdist despair of "Catch-22" or floats away into the moral vacuity of "Hogan's Heroes." With the innocent voice of Cody, he reaches something closer to "Huckleberry Finn," a kind of clear-eyed naiveté that stumbles on cultural insights without any self-consciousness or political correctness.

On the eve of tragedy - both ours and Cody's - "The Pearl of Kuwait" offers a series of funny anecdotes in an untenable world of oil and repression. But the tissue of comedy tears easily when friends are eviscerated by friendly fire or starving Iraqis are consumed by fuel-air explosives. Technology has made so many advances in the manner of victory, but Paine makes clear that the old ghastly ways of dying haven't changed much.

"I was pretty sure we were not going to leave Kuwait," Cody speculates, "until Trang had done something big with his soldier talents to try and save this crazy Arab world." But the noble principles that he and his buddy believe they're defending are brushed aside in the interest of courting friendly dictators. "It was a very weird war," Cody admits. It's hard to imagine a character like Trang surviving for long, but if he's still in the service, I'm sure he's pumping his fist in the air and cheering America's new determination to make Iraq a model democracy. As Cody says, we've reached "a state of mind beyond whatever."

• Ron Charles is the Monitor's book editor. Send e-mail comments tocharlesr@csmonitor.com.

Page: 1 | 2