Dispatches (Picador)

Michael Herr, who wrote about the Vietnam War for Esquire magazine, gathered his years of notes from his front-line reporting and turned them into what many people consider the best account of the war to date, when published in 1977. He captured the feel of the war and how it differed from any other theatre of combat, as well as the flavour of the time and the essence of the people who were there. Since Dispatches was published, other excellent books have appeared on the war--may we suggest The Things They Carried and The Sorrow of War--but Herr's book was the first to hit the target head-on and remains a classic. --Simon Kelly

Reader Reviews:

Quite simply, Astounding (0/0 people found this helpful)

If you're a fan of films like Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket, you'll appreciate the origins of the cynical, drugged out view of Nam. The style of writing is direct and conversational, while still managing to portray the madness of the war. What makes this account most compelling is not the political backdrop or the quiet criticism of the army's conduct during the war, but the rich tapestry of wacky characters Herr came into contact with; Kilgore and Kurtz pale in comparison.

Essential reading.

Pure stream-of-consciousness genius (0/0 people found this helpful)

If you're looking for a straight ahead factual narrative of the Vietnam war, then look elsewhere (please do, that sort of book needs to be read). If you're looking for a book that captures the disjointed, hilarious, terrifying and disgusting only partly comprehended reality of the war from the point of view of a closely involved non-combatant, then please read this masterpiece. Some of the best English-language prose of the last forty years is in this book. I'd put my mortgage on it.

On balance, a valuable glance at the war in Vietnam. (1/1 people found this helpful)

A very vivid account of what life on the ground was like in Vietnam. I have some knowledge of the war, which was at times necessary to understand a number of references in the text. Hence, I'd suggest reading a more conservative history of the conflict before taking on 'Dispatches'.

The sections at the beginning and end of the book are rather garbled and I did not enjoy reading what, in my opinion, represent little more than rather pretentious ramblings. However, these do not form a large proportion of the text, and the rest is very good and incredibly atmospheric. The battles at Khe Sahn and Hue are featured and I have never read anything that conveys the spectrum of experiences and views of the men involved, both soldiers and reporters, as well as this book.

A considerable achievement in fewer than 300 pages.

Frenetic, flickery-eyed genius (2/2 people found this helpful)

This is the sort of writing that tosses into a mixing bowl the fluid, stream-of-consciousness style of Kerouac and the clear-eyed cynicism of Conrad. The end result is often confusing, garbled, shocking, violent, disconnected, but is an eye-opening account of what it feels like to be fighting an unwinnable war. This is not the strategy, logistics, politics and posturing that often surrounds our modern view of the Viet Nam War. It is what it was really like for the American fighting man on the ground, regardless of how you feel about the morals of the war or those men in the first place. And it also provides some uncomfortable parallels between what happened in Viet Nam then and what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan now.

A masterpiece (8/9 people found this helpful)

If you want to find out why the Vietnam war happened, don't read this book, because it won't tell you. If you want to find out how the course of the war unfolded, don't read it - same reason. If you want to find out about how utterly bizarre it was to fight in the war on the American side, then read it. That's what it does better than any other book I've read.

Michael Herr was a war correspondent who went to Vietnam and reported on what he found there in a style that can best be described as 'disciplined gonzo'; no wonder he was hired by Coppola to work on the script of 'Apocalypse Now', that other mad, trippy, scary account of the American end of the war. Herr is not interested in strategy, justifications, the rhetoric of America's heroic mission to liberate the Vietnamese from themselves. Like most of the soldiers he meets, he takes it for granted that that's all a crock of manure. From his perspective, the war is a futile and drug-soaked mess, in which America's participation lacks any kind of honour and dignity. The fact that that's a perfectly rational perspective is still often forgotten by people who like to pretend that the Vietnam war was a well-meant affair that just went astray because those pesky GIs smoked too much grass.

There are other, perhaps more crucial perspectives on the war, not least that of the Vietnamese, who were not only the true victims of it but also, most importantly, the winners - the peasant nation that kicked the crap out of a superpower and forced it into a humiliating retreat. But if you want to understand something about the damage Vietnam did to the aggressors, read 'Dispatches'. Only an illiterate person would deny that it's some of the finest American writing of the last century.

Michael Herr

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