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A review by tittypete
Dispatches by Michael Herr
5.0
Had this book on my to-read list for a while. Can't remember how it got on there. Some recommendation or list I read years ago. But it's the now the first step down into a Vietnam rabbit hole.
Written like a Hunter S. Thompson piece, it's the fragmented glimpses into the war from the eyes of a correspondent for ... Esquire Magazine. Yeah. Herr is aware of is odd credentials and takes shit for it. But he's in it. In the shit. Visceral depictions of the insanity, the brutality and the awful climate. Severed ears, napalm burns, piles of bodies and a self consciousness that sees the author contemplating his parasitism, making his mark by pointing out the utter misery and ultimate misfortune of others. There are pieces about the average grunts, about Saigon, about the community of other correspondents, about the siege of Khe Sanh and the disparity of what the powers that be say about the war and what the soldiers fighting it are experience. It's bloody, it's raw. There's gore and there's weed. I couldn't stop till I was finished.
One note, journalists Dana Stone and Sean Flynn are mentioned in detail but nothing is said thier disappearances. Seems that would have made a poignant epilogue to Dispatches. A running theme is that everyone finds Herr to be nuts for being in the middle of the Vietnam war BY CHOICE. I feel it's worth noting that these reporters risk and sometimes lose their lives to bring the truth to light.
Anyway. This was a heavy one. But such a good one. Superbly written. A book full of death with a fiercely beating heart.
Written like a Hunter S. Thompson piece, it's the fragmented glimpses into the war from the eyes of a correspondent for ... Esquire Magazine. Yeah. Herr is aware of is odd credentials and takes shit for it. But he's in it. In the shit. Visceral depictions of the insanity, the brutality and the awful climate. Severed ears, napalm burns, piles of bodies and a self consciousness that sees the author contemplating his parasitism, making his mark by pointing out the utter misery and ultimate misfortune of others. There are pieces about the average grunts, about Saigon, about the community of other correspondents, about the siege of Khe Sanh and the disparity of what the powers that be say about the war and what the soldiers fighting it are experience. It's bloody, it's raw. There's gore and there's weed. I couldn't stop till I was finished.
One note, journalists Dana Stone and Sean Flynn are mentioned in detail but nothing is said thier disappearances. Seems that would have made a poignant epilogue to Dispatches. A running theme is that everyone finds Herr to be nuts for being in the middle of the Vietnam war BY CHOICE. I feel it's worth noting that these reporters risk and sometimes lose their lives to bring the truth to light.
Anyway. This was a heavy one. But such a good one. Superbly written. A book full of death with a fiercely beating heart.