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Jesus Christ, man. What a book.
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Dispatches
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Written on the front lines in Vietnam, Dispatches became an immediate classic of war reportage when it was published in 1977.
From its terrifying opening pages to its final eloquent words, Dispatches makes us see, in unforgettable and unflinching detail, the chaos and fervor of the war and the surreal insanity of life in that singular combat zone. Michael Herr’s unsparing, unorthodox retellings of the day-to-day events in Vietnam take on the force of poetry, rendering clarity from one of the most incomprehensible and nightmarish events of our time.
Dispatches is among the most blistering and compassionate accounts of war in our literature.
From its terrifying opening pages to its final eloquent words, Dispatches makes us see, in unforgettable and unflinching detail, the chaos and fervor of the war and the surreal insanity of life in that singular combat zone. Michael Herr’s unsparing, unorthodox retellings of the day-to-day events in Vietnam take on the force of poetry, rendering clarity from one of the most incomprehensible and nightmarish events of our time.
Dispatches is among the most blistering and compassionate accounts of war in our literature.
260 pages, Paperback
First published January 1,1977
This edition
- Format
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260 pages, Paperback
- Published
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August 6, 1991 by Vintage
- ISBN
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9780679735250
- ASIN
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0679735259
- Language
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English
About the author
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Michael David Herr was an American writer and war correspondent, known as the author of Dispatches (1977), a memoir of his time as a correspondent for Esquire (1967–1969) during the Vietnam War. The book was called "the best book to have been written about the Vietnam War" by fellow author C.D.B. Bryan in his review for The New York Times Book Review. Novelist John Le Carré called it "the best book I have ever read on men and war in our time."
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Rating(4.1 / 5.0, 100 votes)
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One of the greatest Vietnam narratives I've ever read. Michael Herr was a screenwriter for both Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket. It is no surprise after reading this that Coppola and Kubrick would select Herr for this task. He is amazing.
I am a huge fan of Full Metal Jacket. Of course, Gustav Hasford's Short-Timers (an out-of-print book that is impossible to find for less than $80 online) was the basis for that story. However, this book felt almost like an extended sequel or spiritual twin, where instead of being a Marine, Joker was a war correspondent working for Esquire magazine. I could hear Joker's voice channeling through Herr, which I totally dug.
Herr's writing is beautiful and expressive. He brings you a grunt's-eye-view of the action. I never understood what was happening in the battle of Khe Sanh until I read this. I would read five more books about Vietnam if they were all this moving and good.
I am a huge fan of Full Metal Jacket. Of course, Gustav Hasford's Short-Timers (an out-of-print book that is impossible to find for less than $80 online) was the basis for that story. However, this book felt almost like an extended sequel or spiritual twin, where instead of being a Marine, Joker was a war correspondent working for Esquire magazine. I could hear Joker's voice channeling through Herr, which I totally dug.
Herr's writing is beautiful and expressive. He brings you a grunt's-eye-view of the action. I never understood what was happening in the battle of Khe Sanh until I read this. I would read five more books about Vietnam if they were all this moving and good.
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Charlie.
V-C.
Gooks.
Grunts.
DMZ.
LZ.
R & R.
Pucker, motherfucker. (Alright, can't say I've ever heard of this one)
As I'd never read a single thing on the Vietnam War before - why it took me this long I've no idea, the last time I would have heard any of these mentioned was probably the last time I re-watched some of the classic Nam movies from the 80s. And that must have been almost 20 years ago.
Wow. This is simply one heck of a book. A bona fide masterpiece. I've heard others say it's arguably the greatest ever firsthand account from the front lines of the conflict, and I'm starting to wonder whether I even need to read another. I'll probably wake up in the night in a cold sweat thinking of blood and bone fragments and acid-rock whilst trying to slap imagery Mosquitos. It felt like being there, right in the heart of its horrors, more than any film. The sonic force of this book was just so immense.
It was also, probably more than anything else, genuinely sad. Sad to the point that it almost brought a tear to my eye. The fact that Herr lost friends not only in Vietnam - Sean Flynn, Errol Flynn's son being one of them, but also back home whilst he was still covering the war. On top of that, it may be the case that for a journalist the transition of re-entering the world can be more of a tough and lonely business when compared to those in battle. For a serving soldier or marine there are the medals and flag-waving parades. But what of the correspondent?
It's an easy 5/5 for me.
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Michael Herr's book Dispatches describes the author's experience as a war correspondent during the Vietnam War. Dispatches allows the reader to understand the experiences of the soldiers in the Vietnam War. You as reader should experience the emotional side that a GI went through in this war.There was a lot of emotion described of the GI but the writing of it lacked cohesion. It had little structure and I felt disappointed. The first fifty pages are extremely hard to comprehend. There is a stream of information that comes across in bits and pieces of memories that are not sentences but rambling babble. For instance, page 44 "If milk snake could kill you,you might compare the mission and its arms to a big intertwined ball of baby milk snakes mostly they were there that innocent and about the conscious and a lot, one way or the other, had some satisfaction." Can anyone out there who read this book tell me what I have just read? Huh? It doesn't make sense. There are other numerous ramblings on in this book that make no sense at all either. Maybe this book would have a deeper meaning if your are a veteran of that war. It just seems Herr is writing in some drug induced dream. Reference to his own drug use and that of GIs are in this book. Maybe that was the intention of his writing to characterize Vietnam War as one unfocused mess. Thank you Vets that have served in Vietnam. I rather hear the story from you than this one.
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I read this book once long ago. I still consider it a great book, but I found something missing this time around: humanity. I got the feeling Mr. Herr was just looking for quirky quotes to make soldiers look like fruit loops or, worse, psychotic killers. He totally missed anything about the other sides of their personalities. I have been around enough veterans to know that other side exists. I pictured him rushing off to a pen and paper every time he heard someone say something unusual and ignored any talk about, oh I don't know, maybe girlfriends? I will try and point out some sections which may or may not show what I mean.
Here's a war story it took him "a year to understand."--"Patrol went up the mountain. One man came back. He died before he could tell us what happened." Herr asked, "So what happened?" The guy just walks off in disgust. I guess it reflects the general hatred of newspeople trying to get stories. And, of course, the man already told him he didn't know what happened.
A correspondent once said to some soldiers in the jungle, "Gee, you must really see some beautiful sunsets in here." The soldiers "almost pissed themselves laughing."
A chopper is pulling soldiers out of a losing battle. Not everyone can fit. American GIs start shooting ARVN soldiers hanging on to the helicopter and pulling it down.
Famous story: Some reporters ask a door gunner, "How can you shoot women and children?" He responds, "It's easy. You just don't lead 'em so much." Get it? Pretty funny, huh? But I wonder, "Are the reporters making a false assumption? Do the reporters get that they are being pranked?"
Herr claims a "serious tiger lady" was "going around on a Honda shooting American officers on the street with a .45." I have never been able to substantiate that story. One commander thought it was a man dressed in an ao dai because a .45 was "an awful lot of gun for an itty bitty Vietnamese woman."
Almost everyone had some sort of good luck charm. I know I had a St Christophers medal someone gave to me.
At Khe Sanh a man gets killed by a grenade rigged on the outhouse door. Everyone knew it was really a GI that did it.
"Going crazy was built into the tour."
"Load all the Friendlies onto ships and take them out to the South China Sea. Then you bomb the country flat. Then you sink the ships."
"Most Vietnamese and most Montagnards considered each other inferior." I knew North Vietnamese who looked down on the South Vietnamese as sort of farmers or hicks. The North was more industrial.
The daily briefing was known as the Five O'Clock Follies.
Westmoreland did not want to lose at Khe Sanh. Johnson did not want "any damn Dinbinfoo." They assured the country that Khe Sanh would be held at all costs. The defenders became hostages, nearly 8,000 Americans and Vietnamese. Herr compares Khe Sanh to the "planted jar in Wallace Stevens's poem. It took dominion everywhere."
At a camp called Langvei, the defenders were overrun by Russian tanks.
The grunts seemed to run around more when they knew a television crew was around. Reminds me of a scene in Apocalypse Now.
Here's a war story it took him "a year to understand."--"Patrol went up the mountain. One man came back. He died before he could tell us what happened." Herr asked, "So what happened?" The guy just walks off in disgust. I guess it reflects the general hatred of newspeople trying to get stories. And, of course, the man already told him he didn't know what happened.
A correspondent once said to some soldiers in the jungle, "Gee, you must really see some beautiful sunsets in here." The soldiers "almost pissed themselves laughing."
A chopper is pulling soldiers out of a losing battle. Not everyone can fit. American GIs start shooting ARVN soldiers hanging on to the helicopter and pulling it down.
Famous story: Some reporters ask a door gunner, "How can you shoot women and children?" He responds, "It's easy. You just don't lead 'em so much." Get it? Pretty funny, huh? But I wonder, "Are the reporters making a false assumption? Do the reporters get that they are being pranked?"
Herr claims a "serious tiger lady" was "going around on a Honda shooting American officers on the street with a .45." I have never been able to substantiate that story. One commander thought it was a man dressed in an ao dai because a .45 was "an awful lot of gun for an itty bitty Vietnamese woman."
Almost everyone had some sort of good luck charm. I know I had a St Christophers medal someone gave to me.
At Khe Sanh a man gets killed by a grenade rigged on the outhouse door. Everyone knew it was really a GI that did it.
"Going crazy was built into the tour."
"Load all the Friendlies onto ships and take them out to the South China Sea. Then you bomb the country flat. Then you sink the ships."
"Most Vietnamese and most Montagnards considered each other inferior." I knew North Vietnamese who looked down on the South Vietnamese as sort of farmers or hicks. The North was more industrial.
The daily briefing was known as the Five O'Clock Follies.
Westmoreland did not want to lose at Khe Sanh. Johnson did not want "any damn Dinbinfoo." They assured the country that Khe Sanh would be held at all costs. The defenders became hostages, nearly 8,000 Americans and Vietnamese. Herr compares Khe Sanh to the "planted jar in Wallace Stevens's poem. It took dominion everywhere."
At a camp called Langvei, the defenders were overrun by Russian tanks.
The grunts seemed to run around more when they knew a television crew was around. Reminds me of a scene in Apocalypse Now.
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This is an extraordinary telling of a journalist’s experiences covering the Vietnam war. It’s basically a memoir, but it reads like something so much more important than that. It is powerful and moving, and reiterates the value and importance of the free press as a counter to the lies of our “leaders”. Ageless message, especially poignant in 2018.
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AMAZING
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I'd kind of heard of this, but didn't know its significance and avoided reading about it while reading it. Turns out he later wrote the screenplay for Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now, which makes sense because Vietnam film is 100% rooted in the language and stories of this book. I'm conflicted because it tells things as horribly as they were and yet within this book is the seed for the romanticism of the Vietnam war. All those movies and all those people I always felt were enjoying them for all the wrong reasons.
Vietnam. Crazy, huh? The last great boy's club. The last conscripted war. The first modern war.
Two-hundred pages and it took a long time to read. Because it crammed, and true. It's all true, so it hits hard, and if you skim you are missing real, harrowing stories. What a fucked up thing, a clearly defined period of time where a life is worth less than usual. A half-price sale on lives.
It's laced with contradictions, probably the most honest way to talk about war, especially war as murky as the Vietnam one. Herr takes all his internal mess and dumps it on the page. That is not a criticism.
(It's purely from an American point of view. Is it impossible for us to understand the East at war? At all? That film Eastwood made, the Japanese side of the Iwo Jima story, Letters from Iwo Jima. It was admirable, but the only clearly drawn characters in it were a general who'd spent a lot of time in the states and adopted a western mode of thinking and another young character who went against his orders.)
Vietnam. Crazy, huh? The last great boy's club. The last conscripted war. The first modern war.
Two-hundred pages and it took a long time to read. Because it crammed, and true. It's all true, so it hits hard, and if you skim you are missing real, harrowing stories. What a fucked up thing, a clearly defined period of time where a life is worth less than usual. A half-price sale on lives.
It's laced with contradictions, probably the most honest way to talk about war, especially war as murky as the Vietnam one. Herr takes all his internal mess and dumps it on the page. That is not a criticism.
(It's purely from an American point of view. Is it impossible for us to understand the East at war? At all? That film Eastwood made, the Japanese side of the Iwo Jima story, Letters from Iwo Jima. It was admirable, but the only clearly drawn characters in it were a general who'd spent a lot of time in the states and adopted a western mode of thinking and another young character who went against his orders.)
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