IN THE SPRING THE WAR ENDED by Steven Linakis. 380 pages. Putnam. $5.95.
The difference between this first novel and James Jones's From Here to Eternity, to which the publisher compares it, is that Jones had something to say, however gracelessly he said it. Author Linakis settles for Eternity's vacant form: a military milieu, dirty words, laconism parading as toughness, and the staccato sentences, intended as drumbeats, that only evoke memories of a first-grade reader. The scene is Belgium after the war. The action is provided by U.S. Army deserters and assorted, brutal military...
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