Dispatches

Rating:
Summary: Reads like a movie of Vietnam
Review: Wow, this book compares favorably with Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried. Michael Herr covered the Vietnam conflict for Esquire Magazine, and this book is like a mamoir covering his frontline impressions of the brutality, the insanity, and the weird excitement and thrill of life-and-death warfare, up close and personal. Herr's shocking honesty when he describes how he actually relishes the 'high' of risk and danger is downright scary; I'm glad I'm not married to the guy!
There's no preaching in this book; he doesn't have an agenda except to be as authentic in the telling as is possible. Great and engaging dialogue pulls you right into the story and the characters.

Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: Herr's 'Dispatches' is one of finest pieces of writing to come out Vietnam. I have read this multiple times and I know each time I begin it the book itself will carry me through to the end. It IS that wiggy. This is the journalism of personal experience. The book is a classic.

Rating:
Summary: Unreadable gibberish
Review: I read the great reviews of this book, so I decided to buy it. Bad move!
I read the first 50+ pages and could take no more. Herr's writing amounted to incoherent ramblings of free association, presumably induced by one of the more potent illicit drugs - there was no time-line and thus no history as such. To make things worse, his style is pretentious.
Perhaps the book gets better further on, but the fist 50+ pages were all I could stand (as I was on vacation).

Instead, I read "A Bright Shing Lie: John Paul Vann" and Stanley Karnow's "Vietnam: a History" -- both great books. There are many other fantastic books out there on Vietnam, such as "We Were Soldiers Once... and Young", "The Killing Zone: My Life in Vietnam", and "A Rumor of War" by Caputo.

All of these make Herr's book look like the gibberish it is!

Rating:
Summary: The Vietnam War at ground zero.
Review: Certainly one of the most visceral descriptions of the Vietnam War. Herr dispenses with politics to get to the heart of the matter - the soldiers in the field. He tells so many compelling stories of the front line experience, which served as fodder for both "Apocalypse Now" and "Full Metal Jacket," co-writing the movie scripts. What makes the book stand out is the empathy Herr had for the soldiers' experiences, subliminating himself in the course of the narratives.

Khe Sanh is indeed the centerpiece of the book. He describes the battle from ground level, drawing comparisons to the infamous Battle of Dien Bien Phu, which brought the French chapter of the Vietnam War to an end. Commanding officers bristled at the comparison, yet here were the Americans entrenched in a remote outpost, with the mysterious presence of the Viet Cong all around them. Herr gives you the perspective of a handful of soldiers he was in closest contact with, following up on their fates in later chapters.

Herr doesn't try to make sense of the war, simply presenting it as the maelstrom it was. Chaos reigned. All you could do was keep your head down. He ties you in to some of the other reporters covering the war, including the flambouyant Sean Flynn, who would ride into most any situation with the aplomb of his legendary father, Errol Flynn. It is such a fantastic range of dispatches giving the reader a real feel for what went on in Vietnam.

Rating:
Summary: Apocalypse Now, the book
Review: Maybe it's because Michael Herr wrote the narration for the film, but reading Dispatches, you can't help but feel that you're getting another peek into the thoughts of Martin Sheen's character Captain Willard, from Apocalypse Now. Willard if he was wimpier, actually; Herr makes no bones about the fact that he was scared out of his wits throughout most of his stay in Vietnam. One of the pieces in Dispatches, "Illumination Rounds," really slams this point home; Herr comes off like a paranoid wreck in it.

Beyond that, Herr's writing is almost poetic. His descriptions of the war and the men who fought in it are impressive, borderline masterly. In addition he throws off gems of impromptu character studies, almost throw-away sentences that describe the very core of the soldiers he met. One of my favorite lines that Herr wrote for Apocalypse Now is when Willard meets the PBR crew; he says they're "rock and rollers, with one foot in their graves." Dispatches is filled to the brim with such lines, and if you enjoyed Martin Sheen's voice-over in the Coppola film, you'll really enjoy this book.

I've read Dispatches a few times, and each time I've taken something new from it. The "Khe Sanh" section is obviously the centerpiece of the book; it dwarfs all of the other stories. Stuck in the bombed-out, besieged base, Herr effectively conveys the sense of doom and paranoia that gripped the Marines trapped inside. This section features one of the more memorable soldiers in the book, the black Marine Day Tripper, as well as a mysterious grenade launcher who provided the inspiration for the character Roach in Apocalypse Now. In fact, the "Khe Sanh" article, as it originally appeared in magazine form, was a prime source of inspiration for John Milius, when he was writing the Apocalypse Now script in 1969.

There are a host of intriguing characters in this book. My favorite is cast aside quickly, however: a drugged-out LURP who appears briefly in the opening chapter, "Breathing In." Herr apparently was too frightened of this guy to get closer to him, so all we get in Dispatches is an intriguing glimpse. We do get to see more of Herr's colleagues, though, such as Errol Flynn's son Sean, who treats the war like a day at the park, riding to and from battles on a motorcycle.

Readers looking for detailed combat description are out of luck. In fact, it appears that Herr didn't see much fighting at all. At least, if he did, he doesn't mention it. Instead, what you find in Dispatches are illuminating reports from the front lines, insightful character studies of the men who fought and died. You also get a heavy dose of the pop culture of the time: the spirit of Morrison and Hendrix and Zappa so permeate every page that you can almost hear their music blaring in the background.

So, just as Apocalypse Now rises above being just another "war" film by mostly not being about the war at all, Dispatches rises above your average combat journalism. Instead, it comes off as a moment in time, caught and contained forever in text. It is to be read first and foremost by those who wish to understand Vietnam, the mindset of the men who fought there. It's also just a plain engrossing read.

Rating:
Summary: Worth a read
Review: A warts-and-all account of the Vietnam War. Possibly the best book on this subject in the last thirty years, Michael Herr gives us an objective look into the horror of combat without looking through the eyes of rose-tainted patriotism. He invokes the dread and chaos of the battlefield and weighs out the whims of human behaviour, bravery and insanity, meekness and humanity, without the judgement or condemnation that might be meted out by a loftier author.

Herr's use of brutal imagery absorbed me into his savage surroundings. From the soldier who can't stop drooling as a result of a particularly dreadful gun battle, to the scenes of the dead, American and Vietnamese, adult and infant, on eclectic battlefields and village streets.

The characters are real people in a situation that most of them neither like nor understand. They are young men who invoke the same shortcomings we all have. But they are a step above the common reader. They are professional soldiers and act that way despite their misgivings. They push past the boundaries of fear and into the realms of heroism or insanity or death. Everyone that he introduces is individual. There are no carbon copy soldiers here. They are funny or musical or religious or delusional, whatever their idiosyncrasy may be. I felt as though I was being introduced to people I knew throughout the book.

Most books on the topic of war that I have read tend to stay with one platoon. Herr constantly shifts places and battalions and makes the reader feel as though he/she is part of something bigger. There is no single climax in the book. An honest reflection of that war perhaps. Each chapter is as horrific and exhilarating as the next.

The length of it, in particular, displays an author who wants to show us the bare bones: no hyperbolic descriptions that eventually desensitise us to the events, no ivory-tower pensive soliloquies to the tragedy of war. Michael Herr gives us the facts and trusts the reader's intelligence to decide.

Rating:
Summary: Twisted and beautiful.
Review: Pure poetry so vivid I covet the author's nightmares.

The war's chronology and events remain jumbled but I am left with an indelible impression - of futility, waste, confusion, paranoia, youth and the strongest camaraderie all at once. Without the smells, this is likely the nearest I will ever be allowed to the Vietnam conflict. I envy Michael Herr's experience and am so grateful he shared but a fraction.

Rating:
Summary: What Dreams May Come
Review: At nightfall, suddenly, you hear what you dread and then you see it: a line of incoming tracer bullets.

Michael Herr's writing is beautiful and fearsome. Deeply disturbing. Vietnam was and is a nightmare. It was a lesson in idiocy and mayhem. His essays apprehend that trauma. I feel some guilt but not shame for having cheated death in the U.S. Army. His book tells why.

"I had a bad dream last night."
"What was it?"
"It's still going on."
-- from a dialog with a child

Rating:
Summary: Getting It Right
Review: The main reason I read as many first hand accounts of Vietnam combat is to see if the author can describe it.

Michael Herr in his brilliant little book Dispatches gets it right. Perhaps it takes an outsider to describe what a combatant feels. Herr was a reporter who went with the Marines to Khe-Sanh.

Herr describes the fear, the confusion, the gnawing gut feeling that this will be your last day alive and that you will die in the hot mud in a strange land far away from home.

I think it is fear that Herr describes so brilliantly.

Underneath his on the edge of your seat writing style, is the debilitating, ever-present, under tow of fear of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, of fear that can trip you up and suck you out in the sea of never ending incoming, of losing your 20-20 vision for the one thousand yard stare.

This book gets it right..

A longer edition of this book appears in the excellent two volume history published by the Library Of America, Reporting Vietnam.

Rating:
Summary: We won¿t do it but we can't look away...
Review: It has been said that the "real" legacy of Vietnam was that for the first time reporters and editors began to question the American authorities as they never had before. This is not a view Historians can particularly subscribe to. History presents us evidence of opposition to the 'party line' over the last century, including the Spanish American War. Perhaps this is idea of legacy seems credible due to the general short memory of the American public. Certainly, the Vietnam press coverage (even before Tet in 1968) stands in contrast to the Korean era when any question of objectives or policy might lead directly to a McCarthyist challenge of where one's allegiances lie. So it was that in Vietnam the politeness in the line of questioning was certainly in contrast to the Korean 'police action'. Yet, Michael Herr's book Dispatches does not show his part in this allegedly newer style of hard-look journalism. Yes, things may have been questioned as never before but this occurred only after the failures in US policy became glaringly acute did the editors begin jumping on the bandwagon.

Herr jeers the 'syndicated eminences' and mainstream editors and bandwagoneering in oblique passing (Herr 214, 220). But this is not the thrust of Dispatches. In reading this work, one finds some portions reading more like a personal journal. Other portions read like a high-octane fuel-injected amphetamine-driven psychotic episode. Some parts are a recall of previous experiences, while others were written closer to the time in which they occurred. Either way, Dispatches gives us the glimpse into the world of a war correspondent covering the Vietnam War. Much of what Herr has to say is heartbreaking, but more often the words leaping of the page do so with the same adrenaline with which they were originally inscribed. Herr often mentions the trouble Grunts had understanding why he and other journalist would put themselves in the situation in which they encountered him. As a columnist for Esquire and Rolling Stone, it is even less likely that he hardly garnered the understanding that a journalist from the New York Times or Washington Post might have enjoyed.

Indeed, there is a sense of self-consciousness when he relates "There was no nation too impoverished, no hometown paper so humble that it didn't get its man in for a quick feel at least once." Furthermore, he informs the reader that he didn't have the deadlines facing many of the other journalists in Vietnam. Of course, his dismissal of deadlines can be partly attributed to the fact that he considered himself a 'writer'... But the distinction between a 'writer' and a journalist or correspondent was hopelessly lost on grunts, who were just as likely to see the difference between a Viet Cong and a 'friendly' villager. The fact that he didn't even carry a camera led to further incredulity on the part of the military brass he encountered.

Herr's writing does not need to impugn the Military and Administration's talking heads and their endless chatter of 'Victory just around the corner.' His stories reveal the utter lack of faith in their words. He tells us a few of the running jokes, and the stale lines for given situations. Herr might have told us the joke about "how do you know when ___________ (insert Westmoreland, LBJ, Taylor or any other name connected to the madness) is lying? Their lips are moving..." But he need not even do that. His companions in the press corps and the majority of the grunts who were remotely in US policy knew after a few hours in Vietnam that it was not about anything they could have claimed.

Still it is difficult to reconcile Herr's disdain for the grunts' brutality and his apparent admiration that surfaces when his not trying to suppress it. Herr's narration is colored by the pop music of the era. Of course, that pop music was as counter-culture as his personal views. It is difficult to grudge a person for their attachment to the most exciting times of their life. Herr's is almost an addiction to the life of the thrill seeker, but as he mentions, unlike the grunts, he could always take the next chopper back to an air-conditioned hotel room in Saigon, or leave altogether. (Not that an air-conditioned room in Saigon would be necessarily safer than Khe Sahn...) There was a band in the early 1980's that sought to re-kindle the psychedelic experience of the bands that Herr most appreciated. Herr's Dispatches recalls his experience and the experience of the press corps in Vietnam (and to a certain extent that of all Americans):
Easier said than done you said, But it's more difficult to say
With eyes bigger than our bellies, We won't do it but we can't look away...
What were you thinking of, When you dreamt that up?
We can't tell our left from right, But you know we love extremes
Get into grips with the ups and downs, Because there's nothing in between...
With eyes bigger than our bellies, we won't do it but we can't look away... So much of the press corps, Herr included, lived vicariously through the lives and deaths of the GI's. The American public lived vicariously through what the press fed them. Some would like to believe that the lesson of Vietnam is a "lasting legacy." In deed many members of the press continue to claim this. It is supposed now in the press and the American public that "we don't take things for granted; we don't take things as face value; we don't believe officials, as we did before Vietnam." The 'Credibility Gap' created by the wake of the US involvement in Vietnam and the many presidential administrations that tried to deny the reality of its circumstances was supposed to make us somewhat wiser. However, those who are following the news today, hearing similar themes and even similar speeches cannot help but realize it is not so much wisdom gained by Vietnam, but crass cynicism on the part of the American public. 'Yes, our own government lies to us, but that it is to be expected... It is the journalist job to act as a kind of Consumer Protector...' "Just let us know when the amount of lying exceeds an accepted standard." At that point, The Press is then like the USDA. When a certain amount of rodent feces exceeds the amount we allow for in our food supply, let us know... otherwise keep it to yourself because we don't want to know.

In a response to a recent PBS NewsHour special on the Vietnam War, David Greenway, (one of Michael Herr's acquaintances) commented,

"When you think about it, Vietnam was unique. The same problems... were true in previous wars, in World War II and in World War I. Only in Vietnam were the two bugbears of journalism overcome - censorship and access to the action - that the military can impose. Vietnam is really the only war where there was no censorship and you could go anywhere you wanted. That wasn't true in World War II or World War I, and it's never been true since. So Vietnam was really unique in that - to that extent."

Greenways comments could be a clarion call to the public to demand more access and knowledge about the wars and "operations" (Grenada, Panama, Haiti, Iraq, Bosnia, Afghanistan etc., not to mention the others that aren't on anyone's radar...) But the publics utter lack of demand suggests another lesson from the Vietnam experience, as consumers, we want only so much and at a certain point we are satiated. When that point is reached, the twisted and charred bodies, the 'collateral damage' is not only unacceptable, it is unappreciated. On the other hand, there are many who have developed a pallet for it. As Herr says, "I think Vietnam was what we had instead of happy childhoods." (Herr, 244.) In many ways, He seems to have written the book full of dark nightmares and adrenaline pumped dreams that acquiesces to Page's assignment, (the British journalist friends' acclamation) "Take the glamour out of WAR?? How the bloody hell can you do that?" (Herr, 248.) The glamour of war remains in it hellish visions and ecstatic epiphanies.