["Johnny Got His Gun"] is a tour de force which derives its intense but morbid interest not from any of the common allurements of fiction, but from the unraveling of an unusual physical and psychological puzzle. The solution is one of considerable brilliance and probability, and it holds the reader engrossed. This view of his book may surprise Mr. Trumbo, for there is evidence that he intended the novel as a passionate jeremiad against war, and as a dramatization of the sufferings that must come in its wake. But regardless of Mr. Trumbo's intentions, one soon forgets that Joe Bonham was blasted out of a dugout in France in 1918, and remembers only his tremendous struggle to return to the world of the living….

The story is told through Joe's stream-of-consciousness…. His mind is driven inward upon itself, seeking occupation, and in a mood of tenderness and sorrow he...