Dispatches

Rating:
Summary: Great book!
Review: At the time it was published, this book was unlike no other book I had ever read. It's train-of-thought, heavy metal approach to narrative has been copied many times since, but it remains the best of it's genre.

Rating:
Summary: Herr should get a Purple Heart for this awesome book!
Review: Michael Herr has written an extrordinary account of Vietnam, the Rock n' Roll war. When you read this book, you can imagine the sweltering heat and the "dog tags" hanging from your neck, as you walk "point," down a trail towards a senseless death.

Rating:
Summary: 'Dispatches' conveys how it FELT to be in Vietnam
Review: I'm a Vietnam veteran, and the first time I read 'Dispatches' I read it in one sitting. The next day, I read it again. I've since re-read it 10 or 12 times. I've read dozens of books about Vietnam and 'Dispatches' is the best at conveying how it looked and felt to be there. I recommend it to all Vietnam veterans, but don't think it should be the first book, or the only book non-veterans read about Vietnam. However, this should be one of the first three books anyone reads about Vietnam

Rating:
Summary: The one book on Vietnam that is MUST read
Review: If you read any book on the Vietnam war, this has to be it. Get a copy while you can (everyone has been stuck looking for out of print books before). Colorful writing and vivid descriptions such as "the elephant grass grew up homicidal...", as well as you-are-there reality - this book is a classic

Rating:
Summary: Far and away the best book on Nam there is.
Review: Nothing esle needs to be said. I get dizzy if I read more than a page at a time. Amazing.

Rating:
Summary: Down Alice's Rabbit Hole and Into Vietnam
Review: To be honest, I had a little trouble wading through _Dispatches_ for several reasons. First, and I believe foremost, I am simply too young. Herr's book is steeped in place names and cultural references, as he takes you on a hypnotic wild ride through the forests of Vietnam. Herr manages to pull off a conversational, stream-of-consciousness narrative. The only problem is, I wasn't old enough for the conversation.

Yet despite the fact that I lacked the historical knowledge to appreciate the book's references, one immediately gets the impression that it does not matter. Herr's insightful commentary can exist on any battlefield, during any time, yet particularly manages to capture the particularly absurd circumstances of Vietnam. As other reviewers have commented, _Dispatches_ is not a philosophical treatise on war. It is not an impassioned political statement. It is not conservative glorification or liberal backlashing. Instead, Herr manages to cipher the images, steeped in the language of psychedelics. The disoriented feeling the reader experiences while digesting these pages is akin to an acid trip:

"We were all strapped into the seats of the Chinook, fifty of us, and something, someone was hitting it from the outside with an enormous hammer. How do they do that? I thought, we're a thousand feet in the air!...I was new, brand new, three days in-country, embarrassed about my boots because they were so new. And across from me, ten feet away, a boy tried to jump out of the straps and then jerked forward and hung there...As the chopper rose again and turned, his weight went back hard against the webbing and a dark spot the size of a baby's hand showed in the center of his fatigue jacket. And it grew-I knew what is was, but not really-it got up to his armpits and then started down his sleeves and up over his shoulders at the same time...and it was running slow, heavy drops off his fingertips. I thought I could hear the drops hitting the metal strip on the chopper floor" (177-78).

One really cannot describe this book, do justice to its narrative, or even truly examine the book from a literary perspective. I do not believe that it was Herr's intention to create a novel "in the great line of Crane, Orwell and Hemingway," as the Washington Post's review states. This novel has to speak for itself. It must be read like one would take psychedelics; it has to be absorbed by the reader in a frenzy and experienced for what it is. It is journalistic prose delivered with the emotional impact of heart-wrenching poetry.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best written Vietnam era books.
Review: Herr was a war correspondent for Esquire magazine in Vietnam during the months of the Hill Fights of `67 through the winter to the Tet Offensive and on past the spring months of '68. In his memoir, "Dispatches", he focuses primarily upon the Battle for Hue and the Siege of Khe Shan but there are glimpses of other battles. He covers Vietnam reflecting upon everything from the bar scenes of the large cities to the terror of incoming while in trenches of firebases in an outpouring of confused and conflicted memories. Like a rock skimming across a pond he touches upon the drugs, the blaring of rock and roll, the freaks and the street-talking young toughs. In a few well-written sentences he eviscerates the information officers and the official line but spends several introspective pages exploring the parasitic nature of war correspondents. He rarely offers an opinion; he just tells in a stream of consciousness what he saw and heard. But this is not a book of great battles and heroic deeds. It is a book about average troops and a handful of war correspondents, for whom he held deep affection, and what they had to cope with and how some of them died.

"I saw that face at least a thousand times at a hundred bases and camps, all the youth sucked out of the eyes, the color drawn from the skin, cold white lips, you knew he wouldn't wait for any of it to come back. Life had made him old, he'd live it out old."

Reading this book you feel and are touched by Vietnam and several excellent passage leave you feeling empty. Hard for a book to evoke that kind of response but this one does. Excellent writing, a damn good book.


Rating:
Summary: A grunt's-eye view of the war
Review: I have to agree with John LeCarre'. This is the best Vietnam book I've read. Herr has written the Tarentino movie of war books. He has managed to capture the whacked-out unreality of that war like nobody else, probably because of his unique ability and willingness to see the war from all angles. Masterful- The vivid description of being shot at in the mud and cold vs. the press releases of the generals in Saigon, body bags ever present. Time warps- A base defended to the death only to be abandoned a few months later, a city (Hue) fought over and turned to rubble , only to be peaceful and clean on the next visit. Another city (Saigon) supposedly a safe haven yet more dangerous than the field in it's own way. Dope-smoking foul-mouthed soldiers doing a good job and being polite. Crazy personalities who fit right in.
So...Do Not expect the usual history book time lines, battle drawings, etc. If a book interests you that portrays the Vietnam war as the vertigo-inducing insanity that it truely was, this is it. You will be right there unbalanced by the language, sounds, scenery, smells and, yes, the incoming artillery. You will be amazed at the end that Mr. Herr has given you such a clear understanding. In passing (political comment), you will also gain an appreciation of the mental problems that so many of our troops developed when they returned to "the World." A must read.

Rating:
Summary: Dispatches by Michael Herr
Review:
Dispatches by Michael Herr is a book that was made to show how terrible the Vietnam war was. Herr being an independent reporter had almost no restrictions except his own. The images you can depict in your head as you read this book are terrifying. Going in to vivid detail is one of the greatest parts of this book.

The ability to kill in cold-blood is one topic that is touched on a lot in this book. This changes the soldiers lives forever, endless nights men stay up and think about what they have done. The ones who didn't mind killing found some hate in the enemy that kept them going, and found fulfillment in carrying around weapons. Something almost always went wrong. The men were never fully informed on all the thing that happen to them, this added to the stress the soldier go under during battle. Your knew that if you went with the marines you would get shot or wounded.

Often crude language is used, and the thoughts of the men are just terrible. The men speak and think as if death is just around the corner for all of them. The men that fought this war were unhappy, because they thought they were fighting in an unjust war. They had no motivation to be brave and become hero's. It's interesting to read this book while the war on Iraq is going on. Could it be that the same deluded American people are at it again? Could this war be another Vietnam war?
Throughout the book Herr talks about video clips that his partner Jim Page got. These are described so detailed that I felt as if I was going to vomit while reading it. Men pray to God for the first time ever. In such a tragic time in need of some hope some help from a higher power. Men break down and cry wishing they could have paid more attention to church, like there lives were already over. Men found God and comforted themselves. On the battlefield seem as if they are not alive like it is a dream.

The book seems to be an emotional one. Its one of the only books that was mad from the point of view of a grunt soldier (foot soldier). I think that Dispatches was mad to show America what war is really like, and to think before you go to war. There must be many things there before you can go to war, like the full support of the people who are fighting for your. I think this book should be read in our class rooms to teach the kids that could be our leader for years to come see how terrible war is.

Dispatches is a good book, possibly a great book, and certainly ranks amongst those books which I would consider as a 'must read'. Writers such as Herr, while not necessarily contributing as combatants nonetheless make a huge contribution to our perception of war itself. This book is about nobility amidst futility, it is about a noble endeavor pursued by ignoble methods ultimately it is about the death of innocence, and how we should never lose our childish qualities.


Rating:
Summary: Grabs you and HOLDS YOU!
Review: When I first read "Dispatches" I was amazed at how it really just yanked me along and having gotten a new copy along with "Rumor of War" and "The Bamboo Chest: An Adventure in Healing the Trauma of War" it would be one of my all time three bests book on Vietnam, Caputos and Herr's recapturing the main part of the war, and Graham catching the worsts part of the war and what Vietnam was like because we lost there, learned while held in Vietnam as the first American political prisoner held by the Socialist Republic of Vietnam since the end of the war. Two old books and one that just came out this June. Get them all and you'l have a respectable collection on Vietnam that will answer every question!

What I was most ironic is that Graham was drawn back to Southeast Asia as a teenager to become a combat photojournalist like his idols, Sean Flynn and Tim Page, two wild men photogs that that hung around with Michael Herr. What a time described by Herr, it's no wonder Graham was drawn back there after the war.