SOURCE: "Send Stronger Americans," in The New York Times Book Review, July 26, 1992, pp. 10-11.

A biographer, Kobak is the host of the BBC series The Art of Travel. In the following negative review of An Afghanistan Picture Show, she argues that Vollmann's attempt to help the mujahedeen, the Afghan rebels who fought the Soviet army, was more foolhardy than the subsequent examination of his naïveté, unpreparedness, and impotence can justify. She also suggests that Vollmann's honesty is ultimately self-serving and egotistical.

William T. Vollmann went to Pakistan in 1982 as a 22-year-old would-be adventurer, determined to get over the border into Afghanistan and help the mujahedeen fight the Soviets. In this account of his visit, the novelist (author of The Ice Shirt and Whores for Gloria, among other works) pictures himself with hindsight as an innocent abroad, a "panting puppy" filled with illusions about his capacity to sort...