FICTION

THE USELESS SERVANTS by Roland Hinojosa (Arte Publico Press: $17.95; 191 pp.) In order for a work of fiction to be effective, how much do we need to know about the characters? Do we need to care for them? How important is plot development? Description? Whether intentionally or not, Rolando Hinojosa is asking these questions in what seems to be a barely fictional account of one man’s Korean War experience.

Written in diary form, “The Useless Servants” spans 15 months in the life of Texas Mexican Rafe Buenrostro as he travels around Korea with his battalion trying to kill as many NK and CCF (North Korean and Chinese Communist Forces) as possible without being killed himself. Rafe’s journal reads like military memo, full of terse, boxy sentences that sometimes make for slow going. “He’s an Intel and Recon O. Says NK Army is called the Immun Gun, and he called it that as well as NKPA. Said ROK were fighters. Make no mistake.” The men fighting alongside Rafe are named, but rarely given solid features, so that it’s hard to differentiate between them, and harder still to feel anything when they die.

There are people who will find “The Useless Servants” an interesting experiment in language and narrative style. And there are others who will find it just plain claustrophobic.