Seen in TV Tropes entry for the New Wave

[james_davis_nicoll]

Joe Haldeman's The Forever War was a bizarre deconstruction of military SF, full of surreal imagery and borderline existentialism, inspired by the author's real-life experiences in the Vietnam war.

What book did they read? Not The Forever War.

Comments

[nelc.livejournal.com]

I think the someone may be unfamiliar with literary SF. The phrase "surreal imagery" sounds like something mainstream critics emit when they encounter the genre for the first time.