The Long March has a grandeur that comes from being perfectly direct, yet deeply imaginative about a very simple time.Choicely eloquent at the numberless levels that mark all the greatest writing#146; Sunday TimesIn The Long March Styron depicts conflicts between men of somewhat more than average intelligence and the military machine. Two marine reservists fight to retain their dignity while on a grueling exercise staged by a posturing colonel.#145;The Long March impresses us not merely as an extraordinarily vivd account of a physical ordeal but as a vehicle discovering and exploring a new them: that of the rebellion of those born into a generation of conformists#146; Philip Rahv.