Michael HerrBesprekingen

#532 in our old book database. Not rated.

The chaos of that war in unflinching prose.

Sorry, just couldn't get past page 50. The author's style is simply not for me. I found it all over the place. No specific narrative, non sequitur paragraphs and sentences that were simply too disjointed to read. I have no idea why this book is considered so groundbreaking and amazing? Maybe it was when it first came out, but this style of writing is just not for me. I am also reading The Things They Carried, also about Vietnam. This is an incredible book, and far superior to Dispatches. If you have one book to read about Vietnam, pass on Dispatches and read this one.

Great

Holy shit.

Reason read: it's on my randomization list and it was available on Libby
This is not really a novel but journalism, nonfiction and takes place during the Vietnam War. Michael Herr was an American writer and war correspondent for Esquire. I grew up listening to these stories and seeing the pictures on the TV. Herr explores not only the war, the soldiers, and the people but also the war corespondents that went to Vietnam and reported on the war. He discussed how loyalties of the correspondents to agencies in the US kept them from reporting the realities of the war. This is about Herr's experience in the war so it is a memoir. Not sure how it contributes to the development of the novel except that it reports on the realities of the Vietnam war. It's a quick read but hard to describe as enjoyable with the death, language, attitudes, and behaviors. It's about the men who fought and reported on the war.

The 100 best nonfiction books: No 9 – Dispatches by Michael Herr (1977) | Autobiography and memoir | The Guardian.

Considered a nonfiction novel

I was really surprised by this one; war reporting/novels aren't really my thing, but Herr's writing and introspection were incredible.½

If the writing sounds a lot like Martin Sheen's monologue in Apocalypse Now, it's because Michael Herr actually wrote that part of the movie script himself. Do you want to take the Sheen persona as a reliable narrator? For me this question made for a dissonant reading experience. Three solid stars for as far as I got.

Gives you a real feeling of what Nam was like. Hallucinogenic and poetic with shocking details.

959.70438

When this came up in every list of “Best Nonfiction” books I reviewed, I decided it was time to add it to my list of books I’ve read - and loved. It truly is a marvel at conveying experiences unimaginable to those who weren’t there.

As a Vietnam vet, I see a rambling mess, with the third dispatch, I quit. The guy is on drugs or was hit in the head with a rifle butt. Then what do correspondents know anyhow, in our unit they were NEVER near the front. A solider from the front would give them what they were looking for, a tall story, or not even talk to them. They were too lazy and to scared sh-t less to go see for themselves. They were a day late and a story short. All those 500 people were blind? I hate to give it to the library, someone else might read it.½

This is a tremendous book. It reminded me of All Quiet on the Western Front in terms of its emotional impact, but was probably even a bit stronger.
To me, its strength is in its capacity to see and discuss the emotional impact of war and senseless slaughter on the otherwise good, gentle young men who would ordinarily never have done such things.
There are many books about war written by historians, journalists and others, but few written with the authentic gut wrenching pain that can only come from someone who has been there.
Both the Vietnam War with its 58,000 dead American casualties and WW I were senseless stupidities entered into not for the good of the country, but for the good of the “military industrial complex” described by Eisenhower.
This books mentions US bombers dropping 120,000,000 pounds of explosives on a small area in one week and accomplishing nothing militarily important except reinforcing the resolve of the “enemy” to expel us from THEIR country. How much money did the “defense” contractors make on 120,000,000 pounds of explosives? Why is life so cheap?

Rating from one to five stars doesn't really work for this book. You should read it whether you love it or hate it.

Vietnam,Vietnam, Vietnam.

War, no glorification, trying to get it down, trying to get it out.
Herr writes powerfully using different techniques for different sections, including normal narrative description, anecdotes and an attempt to analyse why war reporters go report on war.

The style reminded me of Thompson’s Fear and Loathing.., which I didn’t like. But here, for such a traumatic subject, it conveys the horror, the fascination, the doublespeak.

Mayhew turned it up. It still wasn’t very loud, but it filled the bunker. It was a song that had been on the radio a lot that winter.
There’s something happening here,
What it is ain’t exactly clear.
There’s a man with a gun over there,
Tellin’ me I’ve got to be beware.
I think it’s time we stopped, children,
What’s that sound?
Everybody look what’s goin’ down . . .

(There is language that is specific for its time and place, even if that is only forty or fifty years ago, but if you don’t immediately understand, flow with it and it becomes clear)

This book is the most haunting, visceral account of the Vietnam War that I have yet read. Michael Herr captures the essentially surreal character of the war, from the isolated and strange atmosphere in the Saigon drug scene to the absurdities of the "five o'clock follies", to the front-less fighting against the Viet Cong in both the jungles and in set battles. I felt in reading this that I got a real sense for how crazy it must have felt to be involved in the war from an American perspective, and what mental gymnastics were required to continue to justify a U.S. presence that became increasingly absurd as time went on. This is a highly readable account from a journalist who was there, who doesn't have any ideological or professional agenda to redeem or explain.

NA

This is an incredible accounting of a time period about the Vietnam War, told with such descriptive clarity by journalist Michael Herr.

The journalist conveyed the horror using such descriptive language you could smell the fear, feel empathy for these children who wore the uniform of of military. He descrobed the young men as young but their eyes were old, old before their time having witnessed horrors no one should ever see.

He rode in choppers that were under fire and those filled with bodies of dead marines. He had humorius stories about the converstions with the men and frightening moments when they were targeted by incoming missles. Drugs, drink, death and sadness.

“I went through that thing a number of times and only got a fast return on my fear once, a too classic hot landing with the heat coming from the trees about 300 yards away, sweeping machine-gun fire that sent men head down into swampy water, running on their hands and knees towards the grass where it wasn’t blown flat by the rotor blades, not much to be running for but better than nothing.”

Herr didn't have to be in Vietnam and soldiers and Marines who realized this were gob smacked. One Marine stated once he was back in the States his own mama could be sent over and he'd never come back.

It took him years to write the book Dispatches as he came home with crippling depression. Writing this was probably theraputic.

The Nonfiction Reader Challenge hosted by Shelleyrae at Book'd Out.
This is for the category Wartime Experiences.

There are some authors that can just write and it reads like it is made out of the best silk you can buy. This is one of those books that just read like this.

Not only this, but it also gives an amazing view into the Vietnam war from the point of view of a reporter. It shows very well how completely fucked up everything was down there.

Highly recommended, almost a must read.

Some Difficult Sections, Rings True Overall

"Dispatches" is a collection of six short stories from the author's time in Vietnam during the war. Parts of the book are very difficult to read for one of two reasons: either there are very technical military terms that don't help the casual reader, or there are stream-of-consciousness sections that go on for pages at a time. When Herr slips into those stream-of-consciousness sections, the book is particularly hard to read. If the reader can get through those difficulties, the book is worthwhile. Herr spends a great deal of energy describing the psychological effects of the war on American soldiers, such as their loss of thought and emotional tiredness. Certainly not all soldiers behaved like the ones Herr describes, but their psychological problems ring true.

Un gruppo di giovani marines appena reclutati e duramente addestrati dal sergente Hartman con metodi brutali, parte per il Vietnam, dove sperimenta gli orrori della guerra nella battaglia intorno alla città di Hue (fonte: Mymovies)

This is a tremendous book. It reminded me of All Quiet on the Western Front in terms of its emotional impact, but was probably even a bit stronger.
To me, its strength is in its capacity to see and discuss the emotional impact of war and senseless slaughter on the otherwise good, gentle young men who would ordinarily never have done such things.
There are many books about war written by historians, journalists and others, but few written with the authentic gut wrenching pain that can only come from someone who has been there.
Both the Vietnam War with its 58,000 dead American casualties and WW I were senseless stupidities entered into not for the good of the country, but for the good of the “military industrial complex” described by Eisenhower.
This books mentions US bombers dropping 120,000,000 pounds of explosives on a small area in one week and accomplishing nothing militarily important except reinforcing the resolve of the “enemy” to expel us from THEIR country. How much money did the “defense” contractors make on 120,000,000 pounds of explosives? Why is life so cheap?

This is a tremendous book. It reminded me of All Quiet on the Western Front in terms of its emotional impact, but was probably even a bit stronger.
To me, its strength is in its capacity to see and discuss the emotional impact of war and senseless slaughter on the otherwise good, gentle young men who would ordinarily never have done such things.
There are many books about war written by historians, journalists and others, but few written with the authentic gut wrenching pain that can only come from someone who has been there.
Both the Vietnam War with its 58,000 dead American casualties and WW I were senseless stupidities entered into not for the good of the country, but for the good of the “military industrial complex” described by Eisenhower.
This books mentions US bombers dropping 120,000,000 pounds of explosives on a small area in one week and accomplishing nothing militarily important except reinforcing the resolve of the “enemy” to expel us from THEIR country. How much money did the “defense” contractors make on 120,000,000 pounds of explosives? Why is life so cheap?

Because Herr and Gus Hasford both contributed to the scripting of Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket, their two works on the Vietnam War, Hasford's The Short-Timers and Herr's Dispatches, will always be linked and compared. And there are a great many similarities, although Hasford's novel is fiction and and Herr's an imaginative example of New Journalism. Both books, for example, track the story of war correspondents from Hue to Khe Sanh in 1968. And both writers experiment with the formal nature of their works, Hasford's prose poem and Herr's poetry-filled recreation of the turning point of the war, Tet in 1968.

But there is a significant difference. As a work of fiction, The Short-Timers erases the boundary between the reader and the subject. The essence of all becomes reflected in the point of view of Hasford's Joker. Herr never does that. He comes so very close to it but never makes the final leap. The journalist always remains there, a thin film, sometimes just a vapor, separating readers from the war, from the dead, the dying, the living-dying. It's a club whose membership requirements are all too strict for a mere reader to attain. And sometimes we need the distance in order to take it all in, in order to keep from being trapped in Hasford's "world of shit."

The sections on the battles for Hue and Khe Sanh are some of the best journalism ever written on those major turning points in the (perception) of the war. But the best section is that which deals with Herr's colleagues, his fellow journalists and war photographers. And of those, three stick out. The descriptions of Sean Flynn, Dana Stone, and Tim Page are haunting. Literally. For Flynn, the son of Hollywood movie star Errol Flynn, along with Stone, simply disappeared one day while motorcycling Phnom Penh in Cambodia back to Saigon in 1970. Fellow photojournalist Tim Page, Flynn's close friend, has since made it something of a lifelong mission to discover their fate. As late as 2010, Page was still chasing their ghosts.

Chaotic scenes for pages on end, hard to digest. Probably the purest, most honest way of writing about war. There are film that achieve this even better, but the part about the correspondents' role and position in this war is brilliant and covers all the controversies including Herr's own doubts about what to write.