Reading Jarhead

I usually find novels dragged out and filled with needless details seemingly designed as nothing more than page fillers. Authors get paid by the page, right? Jarhead is no different. Except Swofford is writing about actual events or at least what he can recollect. I really hate the fact that he jumps around in time so often. My reading comprehension is poor enough that I have trouble following the story, but when he goes from talking about a night he spends contemplating suicide and the indirect paths the bullets might take through his body to talking about Troy's death and his funeral and his time spent in Greenville and then right back to stories involving Troy. It seems to me like the book was published as he originally wrote it. In the order he remembered it rather than the sensible order of chronology. It's not that I don't like the book itself, what it's about, or the military subject matter, rather I think it would benefit from a little re-editing to suit more of a story than a collection of memories and past events. It's actually not a bad read when there are several pages that refer to a single memory, but when he jumps from story to story I lose interest and focus.