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 War
Junkie by Jon Steele
Reviewer: Rob Wood
Date Posted: 3 July,
2004
Few people know the main
players in Red October, the Russian parliamentary siege of 1993
and even fewer people know why in 1994 the Hutu Tribe went on a
killing rampage of Tutsi civilians. The fact is that few people
in the wider world really care. Jon Steele, however was at both
of these places as well as several other world hotspots and tries
to make small inroads into our wider ignorance by letting us know
what it was actually like on the ground. The book is billed as "One
Man's addiction to the worst places on earth," and for all
intents and purposes it seems to live up to this rather vulgar publicist's
hype.
By way of background,
the author was a cameraman for a major British broadcaster at the
time of the conflicts at hand. Having lived in Russia (and presently
Jerusalem according to the cover) he was sent on assignment to some
quite interesting places. It was for this reason and not the over-hyped
and overdone "adrenalin junkie" cliché that was
being pushed by the promotion surrounding the book, that I found
myself reading it.
A first person account
of dangerous places at dangerous times often makes for an exciting
read and this book certainly seems no exception. Gunfights, drugs,
sex - this book has all the ingredients of a non-fiction Wilber
Smith novel. It does however, lack any deeper attempt to give the
reader an understanding of the places involved and why they had
come to such perilous predicaments. Steele is obviously an experienced
and adept traveler and he employs his experience well to give an
exciting account of the "worst places on earth," often
mixed in with the black humor that only travel to such places can
foster. His account at being left at the mercy of a crowd of pissed
off civilians in Rwanda is genuinely terrifying and is laced with
the kind of funniness that could only be realised after such a frightening
experience.
Nor is the genuine tragedy
of the people living in such places lost in the writing of the author.
Steele doesn't miss too many opportunities to remind the reader
of the almost comically despairing situations of the people living
in these places. The child dead by the handy-work of a sniper in
Bosnia while playing on the street or the bodies upon bodies rotting
in the heat of Africa. Each place has its own personal tragedies.
But once again a more thorough understanding of how they all came
to be in these predicaments would have been a great asset to the
story.
War Junky is not without
its drawbacks. The opening chapter detailing Steele's own mental
breakdown comes across as a superfluous way to start the book. It
is also an indicator of the style of reflection that comes later
in the prose with intermittent monologues at timely intervals of
the story. I must admit to having stopped reading the book after
a few chapters as I was finding it difficult to stomach the author's
self-reflection though this is certainly a personal bias. Once I
resumed reading, I regretted having put the book down, as Steele
saves his better writing for the second part of the book.
His accounts of these
places is, at most times, quite engrossing, even if the adrenalin
junkie thing is a tad overdone. However, for anyone who has in interest
in travel to dangerous destinations, this is certainly a book that
deserves a read.
Reviewer: Rob Wood
Contact: news@polosbastards.com
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