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4.14 AVERAGE
4.14 AVERAGE
dark
reflective
tense
medium-paced
I can appreciate the skill of the author and the gorgeous way he can string a sentence together. However, this was a bit too real for me. Reading books (although "collection" feels more accurate in this case) like this help give me an appreciation for what soldiers went through during Vietnam and why it has had such a lasting affect on them. I read in some other reviews that Apocalypse Now, among other films, was based on some of this writing and I can believe it. That movie was a bit too real for me as well.
The vivid, unvarnished portrait of war and Herr's exceptional writing make this book a classic. But for all its attention to detail there is also an emotional vacancy which makes the death and destruction appear like part of a whimsical adventure. Herr tells us that films have distorted everyone's picture of war yet he paints his as extreme sport where casualties only serve as props to the vaudeville. Very fine writing all the same.
Michael Herr was a front-line journalist in Vietnam in 1967-1968, and this account of his year and of his colleagues, both journalists and soldiers, is as good a first-person portrait of the actual feel of that war as I have ever read. Speaking in the first person, and in the voices of the warriors and writers with whom he shared life and death, Herr captures the essence of that place and time (including the siege of Khe San) brilliantly. A must read for anyone interested in the reality - not just the historical implications - of the American War in Vietnam.
I don't know how I managed not to hear about this book sooner. It's not as though it isn't famous, but it had never caught my attention until it was picked as a group read for Reading With Style. I loved the writing style here. This was honest reporting and war journalism of a kind that I haven't read much before. Like [b:The Things They Carried|133518|The Things They Carried|Tim O'Brien|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1424663847s/133518.jpg|1235619], the book describes real experiences in heartbreaking detail. Unlike that book, the author here relays his own story of the effect that being in Vietnam had on him and the story of how journalists were perceived. Very interesting book and I'm really glad that someone picked it.
The narrator of the audiobook did an excellent job with this.
The narrator of the audiobook did an excellent job with this.
much like the war it attempts to describe, it is confused, brutal, and utterly sad. herr's roots are in orwell and hemingway, and he does not surpass their lyricism. biased, oddly sexist in the few dismissive descriptions of women, and caught on the line between glorification and self-disgust, this is nevertheless an honest book, and well worth the read.
fast-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racial slurs
dark
This is war reportage as heartbreaking poetry. One of the roughest pieces of writing I have ever encountered. Beautiful, angular and harsh stylistically. There is a wonderfully (and terrifyingly) immersive quality to this book.