Dispatches

Rating:
Summary: A Searing Memoir...A Vietnam Classic
Review: Michael Herr's "Dispatches" is one of the finest personal memoirs from a reporter in the Vietnam War. His account is full of the machismo, swagger, cynicism and passion that are indicative of the war correspondent. "Dispatches" is brutal and unflinching in its realism but the ugliness of the book - and the war - is leavened at times by a dark humor and sense of the surreal. Herr has a great ear for dialogue and a gift for observation and he describes the dramatic events of the Tet Offensive and his experiences with soldiers in places like Khe Sanh in great detail. This irony filled and drug fueled narrative is written in the tradition of Crane, Hemingway and Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" which became the inspiration for the film "Apocalypse Now." It should be read by anyone who seeks to soak up some of the atmosphere of the long, ugly war in Indochina and the men who sent their dispatches home for readers back home. Jeffrey Morseburg



Rating:
Summary: hell in a very small place
Review: The style is not for some tastes, but those people may learn about Vietnam elsewhere: there are many excellent straight histories out there. Parts disorienting, parts addled and charged, all brilliant. Frequent acronyms to this or that combat unit - ARVN, NVA, etc., sporadic names of military issue and weapons and vehicles. Spans times and places... there is little continuity, there is little narrative causality: what lead to Khe Sanh? What was the Tet Offensive? These questions are beside the point.

Herr gives a story of jangled nerves and madness, the crazy community of grunts who had no idea why they were there. Vietnam was a complete and utter mistake - it's wretchedly sad to read about it, years later, never having a stake in it. Vietnam was a disaster, senseless and wasteful, the product of failed ideology and a string of a thousand mistakes, a sinkhole. This book is not supposed to make sense. When you were on the ground, getting shelled, getting killed, there was no way it made sense. It was nightmare and should be remembered. Michael Herr did his job in helping us remember, often with startling insight, dark clarity, passion, terror, and grim humor. It is proper there are history books out there with dates and places; it is proper there is also this twisted, tortured book.

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.