Carl Melcher Goes to Vietnam

Rating:
Summary: Rewarding, Coming-of-Age Novel about a GI in Vietnam
Review: Almost everyone grows up, leaves home and begins to encounter the real world. For those who are lucky, this encounter occurs in the quiet precincts of a college campus or a job where a friend or relative is never far way. In 1968, when this novel is cast, that growing up occurred for many young American men in Vietnam.

Carl Melcher is an 18-year-old draftee who finds himself in the infantry because the war isn't going well for the United States and its South Vietnamese allies. He views the whole experience through rose-colored glasses, feeling that the accumulated karma of having led a good life will see him through. That world view is challenged by experiences in which the best efforts of mere mortals seem to be inadequate to offset a strongly ironic fate for the soldiers. For every action, there seems to be an equally strong and nearly immediate reaction in an unintended direction. The plot is nicely built to both capture the perspectives of a young and naive soldier and to challenge his philosophy.

One of my cousins served in the Marines a little before this time, and his recollections of his time there tally very well with the story and perspectives in this book. As a result, I found that the semi-autobiographical story rang true in a way that many war novels do not.

If you are looking for a book that glories war, heroism, or the American cause, look elsewhere. This is one of those quiet books that is more of an anti-war book, although that does not seem to be its overt purpose. I was reminded of the better parts of All Quiet on the Western Front as I read the book.

The book's only significant weakness is that the story occasionally leaves you wondering what happened . . . and grasping for an answer. If you read on, the answer usually comes within four pages. The purpose seems to be to express the genuine confusion that often accompanies combat. As a narrative device, it didn't quite work as well as it might have.

Why should you want to read this book? I was reluctant at first, but the book received recognition as a 2001 Frankfurt E-Book Award finalist. That attracted my attention, and I felt well rewarded by the story.

This book will be especially valuable to those who have relatives who have served in combat, have been harmed by the experience and don't want to talk about what they faced.


Rating:
Summary: Filling in the blanks of the Viet Nam Experience
Review: But for the fact that I was born female, I would have been drafted during the Viet Nam War. I often wonder how and if I would have survived. Many friends and clasmates either went or figured out a way not to go. Some did not return and those who did were often changed. Few of those who did return talked about it. You stand at the Viet Nam Wall in Washington and wonder about the stories behind each name and wonder what it was really like; what really happened; how did were the lives of those who survived changed; what part of themselves did they leave in Viet Nam? After reading CARL MELCHER GOES TO VIETNAM, in some small way I feel that I can fill in some of the blanks.

The story is short but intense. It tells the story of one man's experiences in the war, his brushes with fate and his ultimate survival. The first two thirds of the book sets up the plot and develops the character of Carl Melcher. I'm sure that his character is representative of many young men who went to the Nam. The story pulls together in the last third of the book and the reader does a great deal of speculating about "what if" - what choices were made for Carl and what choices did he make himself.

Many of the characters are representative. I felt that the character of Carl's Vietnamese girl friend could have been a bit more developed. However, perhaps the author wanted to give her an almost dream like image - was she really real of a figment of Carl's imagination - part of his love hate relationship with Viet Nam.

One of the other reviewers suggested that this work would be excellent for students who did not live through the Viet Nam experience. I totally agreee with that. It allows the read to "live" Viet Nam, to smell the smells and feel the heat. The story is not new. But it gives a real insight into a war that continues to fascinate the American people and will be the subject of continued writing for generations to come.

Rating:
Summary: EVERYMAN and War: The Sanctity of the Human Spirit
Review: CARL MELCHER GOES TO VIETNAM is about as unlikely a title for a book as one can imagine. It sounds like a running byline in a newspaper, or a children's 'learn about this' story, or something that borders on corny. But after reading Paul Clayton's very strong novel, the title could not seem more apt. This is the tale of a lad from Philadelphia who enters the military in the late 1960's when the nation was at war in Vietnam and the kids of that generation were being eaten by induction into training camps then shipped via classy commercial airlines to Vietnam where they adapted to one of the ugliest wars in our history: Vietnam was an enormous mistake and the young men sent there to die or serve their year In Country returned home with either physical or indelible mental wounds. Making the narrator of this book (that is so very real a look at that war called Vietnam) a simple, nondescript person brings a powerful Everyman theme to the book. Carl Melcher lands in Vietnam without much in the way of history, he likes to read Hermann Hesse, he gets along with most everyone despite the ethnic barriers superimposed on the inductees - he just wants to survive. Clayton creates a group of likeable characters, gives them time to bond, and then begins to send them out on patrols where slowly most everyone is consumed by the greed of the war effort. There is no beginning or end to this story and that is so sensitive on the part of Clayton, a man who gathered his information form his own tour of duty in the Nam. He writes in straight forward, simple prose, much the way one would expect Carl Melcher to observe the world. Unlike most authors who have written about the Vietnam experience, Clayton shies away from the crude expletives that served as pan-communication in Vietnam: there are few curse words (the common language then) and the writing almost benefits from this trait. Some of the African American characters have their persistent phrases that Clayton uses with both solid humor and intense agony. By keeping his story so free of 'special effects drama' the tragedies are more tragic, the moments of camaraderie are more true. This is a war story that concentrates more on the indomitable human spirit than on 'strike and fall back' episodes. Not that the brutality and hideous waste that abounded in Vietnam are not addressed: they are very present and terrifyingly memory jolting. Clayton, I think, prefers to give us a version of what war does to the young people of the world. Writing in this manner he gives us one of the more subtle and lasting antiwar novels in some years. Highly Recommended!

Rating:
Summary: A Likeable Protagonist's Tour of Duty
Review: Carl Melcher, the reluctant draftee of Paul Clayton's title, arrived in Vietnam at eighteen half believing that his good karma would be sufficient to ensure his safety during his tour in the infantry. A host of needless deaths and the better part of a year later, Carl emerged from the jungle a more mature figure, still the likeable, duty-bound character he had been when he went in, but a world removed from the boys his age who had remained stateside.

Clayton's simply titled Carl Melcher Goes to Vietnam, narrated in the first person by the title character, succeeds in reading like the first-hand account of a naive GI's wartime experiences. (The novel is presumably autobiographical at least in part: the author is himself a Vietnam veteran who served in the same infantry division in which his character finds himself.) The book is interesting as a primer in the day-to-day living conditions of a soldier in Melcher's shoes--the friendships with fellow soldiers formed quickly in the confines of a bunker, and sometimes terminated even more quickly by gunfire, racial divisions among the troops mirroring those ripping the country apart back home, hard slogs through a dense jungle in which an unseeable enemy may or may not lie hidden. Carl himself never lays eyes on an enemy soldier during his tour, at least not a live one. He describes battle as a hazy experience of firing blindly into the green without knowing who or how many one is opposed against. The overall feeling one has when reading about Carl is that he is a very small figure on a large canvas, his fate entirely out of his hands, yielded to the army and to chance.

Despite the losses Carl suffers during his tour and the carnage alluded to in the book--there are no grotesque descriptions of ripped flesh here--Carl Melcher Goes to Vietnam does not grip the reader emotionally. This may be deliberate on the author's part, his readers intended to observe Carl's experiences at a remove just as Carl is in a sense removed from them, unable even to see the camouflaged enemy he fires at. More a memoir than a novel, Carl Melcher Goes to Vietnam tells its protagonist's story in spare, sometimes inelegant prose which, if not rousing, makes for a very quick read. Anyone interested in a straightforward account of a soldier's experiences in Vietnam will enjoy Clayton's detailed account of Carl Melcher's tour of duty.

Debra Hamel--book-blog reviews
Author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece

Rating:
Summary: Serviceable Vietnam War Novel
Review: Clayton's semi-autobiographical account of an infantryman's tour of duty in the Vietnam War is perfectly serviceable, but offers no new insights or perspectives to the already large body of fiction about that most regrettable of American military escapades. Told from the first person perspective of Philadelphia native and college dropout Carl, the story begins with his arrival in Vietnam in a 747 passenger jet. From the very beginning, Carl's tour follows predictable patterns and is peopled with thinly realized characters. He is assigned to a remote firebase where life is relatively tranquilómost of his time is spent in the camp hanging out with his squad and a conscientious objector medic who is full of Deep Thoughts.

The bulk of the book is full of familiar incidents and stock characters. The beloved father-figure squad leader, short-timer gets killed in a senseless manner. There's racial tension as good-looking quarterback type butts heads with a strong-willing black soldier only to end up as good friends. The motormouth guy on his second tour is alternatingly annoying and engagingóhe'll buy it too of course. The quiet intense guy flips out and kills himself. Most officers are avuncular, and then a martinet shows up and the easygoing atmosphere is transformed. Jungle patrols are tense and grueling. Combat is sudden and chaotic. A local French/Vietnamese girl catches Carl's eye and they have a platonic relationship. All of this is fine, but we've seen it all before, and from better writers.

Clayton's prose is about as simple as it gets, and not in a good way. There's no eye for detail and no ability to describe a setting so that it comes alive. It just reads flat, and about 2/3 of the way through the book, you realize that almost every single character Carl comes to like will be killed. To some degree, every perspective on the Vietnam War is worthwhile, as it helps one to build a larger mental image of the war. Certainly, if you know little about the war or haven't read any other fiction about it, or seen any films, it'll be interesting. However, for those who've read other Vietnam fiction, this doesn't cover any new ground or offer a new way of looking at the war. It's not bad, just not that compelling.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent!!!!
Review: I found this book one of those hard to put down book's. I especially enjoyed the fact that the storie didn't have to rely on the gratuitis violence,drug abusing,cursing that usually go's along with such a story. There's of course the telling of the natural death & human reaction to war,but not the over kill.
A book any age could read & enjoy!

Rating:
Summary: TOUR DE FORCE
Review: I want to know why this novel hasn't been purchased by a large publishing house and mass marketed. Paul Clayton put his heart and soul into the writing of this book, yet somehow managed to keep enough distance from his subject to allow him to craft his work with dispassion and objectivity. Clayton served in Vietnam, and maybe there are more than a few autobiographical incidents in this novel. The prose borders on being minimalist, especially the dialogue, and that's what really works in Clayton's favor as he depicts the every day existence of what it was really like to be a grunt in Nam. (In some ways his writing style reminds this reader of Raymond Carver). The tone is serious, the characters very real. The protagonist, Carl Melcher, is just an ordinary, average citizen soldier that comes to Vietnam to fulfil his obligation to Uncle Sam. Along the way he makes friends and loses friends. It's a great coming of age novel in that Melcher also loses his innocence. An endearing character due to his naivete and willingness to accept his fellow grunts on their own terms, Melcher ends up being just another emotional casualty by the time he gets back to the "world." I am a high school teacher and would love to have a set of this novel in our bookroom. If the cost were not prohibitive, I'd buy a class set myself. I can see high school students eating this up. The language, the dialogue, and the logical flow of events carry you along effortlessly, and when you finish, you're left with a whole lot to think about. Thanks for serving, Paul, and thanks for writing this powerful little book.

Rating:
Summary: pretty good vietnam novel
Review: I'm going to say, despite the lackluster title (which is pretty dull and doesn't draw anyone in), this is a pretty good book.

Carl Melcher Goes To Vietnam was originally published as an e-book and was short-listed (along with such high profile authors as Joyce Carol Oates and David McCullough) for the Frankfurt E-Book Award.

It's a pretty good book. There is something familiar about the novel. But that is because, like all good stories, it feels like coming home, to use an old cliche. It has well drawn characters, and Clayton very skillfully draws you into the drama of his people. The one weakness of the book is a slight predictability. Many times you are able to see things coming long before they happen, but still, the journey is fun, even if you know the outcome. It isn't like most Vietnam novels, and I'd recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Coming of age in Vietnam
Review: This is a powerful, deeply personal story about what it was like to be a young soldier in Vietnam. Told in the first person, this story has a strong autobiographical feeling to it, and probably closely tracks the author's experiences during the war. In many ways, this account is unlike anything else I've ever read about this war. Instead of constant patrols in the jungle with constant ambushes and firefights, this book shows how the war included periods of calm, when a soldier could almost convince himself that there really wasn't a war at all.

This story is not an action packed thriller, but a coming of age story, and is filled with a range of characters, all of them convincing, and all of them reflective of the diversity of the men who fought the war. The narrative draws you in and convincingly describes the setting. It definitly provided me with a clearer picture of what duty in Vietnam might have been like.

Rating:
Summary: Life of an 'ordinary' soldier
Review: This is an enjoyable enough book if you are into 'war stories'. It's not the best or most gripping book I've read on this theme but I was happy to keep reading to see how it all panned out, so I guess it engaged me enough to want to finish it.

The first half of the book was a little 'slow' as far as action goes but the author is clearly trying to portray the life of an average bloke thrust into an insane war - the monotomy and boredom Carl Melcher faces for most of his tour in Vietnam almost convinces him the war is passing him by. During combat he equips himself well...he's not a coward, he just wants to survive and get home alive. The pace does pick up in the last half of the book.

There were some lovely descriptive language used but it was let down at times by some mediocre sentences that really grated! As an example of the best and the worst, on page 36 there is a description of the squad chopping a tree down to re-inforce the roof of the bunker.

QUOTE: Mike paused in his chopping and wiped his brow. ....... We grew quiet and the jungle continued its silent observation of us. END OF QUOTE

In my opinion this is brilliant! BUT, half a paragraph later, Carl takes over chopping the tree down.

QUOTE: "Ok Carl," Ron said after a while, "why don't you take over and give Mike a break?"

It was fun. I hadn't chopped a tree down since summer camp when I was a kid. END OF QUOTE

"It was fun." IT WAS FUN???? Acck! This sounds very 'grade one' in style. Unfortunately such simplistic descriptions of his emotions are used a number of times throughout the book.

So in my opinion, it's an enjoyable read if you can ignore a few glitches in the author's style. Worth reading to get an overview of life in an army base for a regular soldier having to deal with the mundane and ordinary tasks of the war (rather than the tension and responsibility of one of the 'top brass').