SOURCE: Smith, Lorrie. “The Rhythms of Timeless Desire (No Phallus Necessary).” New England Review 17, no. 2 (spring 1995): 175-80.

In the following essay, Smith asserts that They Whisper is a well-written, complex novel that must be read in a post-Vietnam War context.

A number of Vietnam veteran writers who established literary reputations in novels, stories, poems, and memoirs of the war have moved to other ground. Astute readers discern, however, that Vietnam is often a shadow presence for writers like Tim O’Brien, Larry Heinemann, Philip Caputo, and Stephen Wright, even when they are not writing explicitly about the war. Those veterans who have continued to develop as writers have found ways to express not only personal trauma but the larger schisms and crises which constitute the cultural legacy of Vietnam. For critic Philip Beidler, the magnitude of the literary enterprise by “Vietnam authors in their generation” constitutes nothing less...