Brilliant prose and incredible insights. Easy to see why it's considered one of the best war books ever written

"I went there behind the crude but serious belief that you had to be able to look at anything, serious because I acted on it and went, crude because I didn't know, it took the war to teach it, that you were as responsible for everything you saw as you were for everything you did."

What a book. The first section, "Breathing In," is one of the most astounding things I've ever read. Relentless, harsh, lyrical, and filled with more insights than some writers achieve in an entire lifetime. I marveled over every line and dog-eared so many pages the book doubled in thickness. If the idea of reading an entire memoir about the Vietnam War doesn't appeal to you, maybe just try "Breathing In." I guarantee you've never read anything like it.

After you've read "Breathing In," take a little break and come back to the book later. The blessing and the curse of Dispatches is that the rest of it doesn't match the intensity of "Breathing In." This is a curse because the rest of the book is a little more ordinary, but a blessing because I'm not sure either the writer or the reader could keep up that pace for another 200 pages.

That doesn't mean those other 200 pages aren't worth reading, though. A lengthy section on Khe Sahn provides an excellent sense of what it was like to be there, and given America's habit of invading small countries, the questions it raises are as relevant now as they were then. ("Would you rather fight them here or in Pasadena?" someone asks Herr, and he thinks but doesn't say: Maybe we could beat them in Pasadena.) A chapter on reporters in Vietnam is fascinating and instructive, the official "spin" contrasted with what really happened on the ground in a way that will sound very familiar to anyone who's been paying attention for the past 15 or so years. Herr was an "embedded" reporter before we called it "embedded," but there was no special treatment back then. You went in the field, you experienced what the soldiers experienced, no more or less. You went where you wanted and drew your own conclusions. Some soldiers hated the embedded reporters because they didn't have to be there and could leave whenever they wanted; some soldiers admired them for the same reason. We owe a debt to these reporters: Much of what we now know was true about the Vietnam War is due to their persistence and bravery. Better to see, says Herr. I didn't go through all of that not to see.

I honestly struggled with this book. At first I was enamored and consumed by the language and imagery Herr presented of his time as a correspondent in the Vietnam War, but the further I read the more alien I felt to what I was reading. As a non-American, the Vietnam War isn't a historical event I was ever taught about in school or university, and so my knowledge of it is sparse. I can't help but feel that if I'd known more about the war and events Herr was describing, I would have appreciated his insight more. But I just felt removed from it, and couldn't really get into the writing after a while. My favourite moments were when he discussed his colleagues though, because I felt like I was really getting to know the people and their own quirks and personalities. Anything about the troops themselves and their movements though left me cold.

Absolutny sztos. Reportaż jak reportaż, ale jak to jest napisane!

Powerful book...esp the first half...not just the content, which is raw, but the language and punctuation even that captures brilliantly the maniacal be-bop riot of this heart of darkness ride into the horrid past.... Easy Rider (as, in fact, Sean Flynn quite literally was) comes to Saigon, Khe Sanh, Hue....

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.

Bardzo dobra rzecz o tym, co znaczyło być w Wietnamie. Trochę tripowa, bardzo z wewnątrz, spomiędzy tych wszystkich piechociarzy i marinesów, skąpana w dymie trawy i riffach Hendrixa i całej reszty muzyków tamtych lat. Specyficzna, bo nie za bardzo wyniesiesz z niej poczucie, co tam właściwie Amerykanie robili i po co - ale to właśnie o to chodzi. Najlepsza w jakichś scenkach, obrazach, impresjach, które potem zostają gdzieś pod korą. Tym bardziej sprzyjająca zanurzeniu, że pochłania swoim językiem, fantastycznie przełożonym przez Krzysztofa Majera (choć przyznam, że do konwencji uwspółcześnienia języka żołnierzy musiałem się przyzwyczajać - ale ostatecznie kupiłem).

A jednak mam jakiś lekki niedosyt. Jakby nie tąpnęło mnie tak mocno, jak sądziłem. I to w sumie nie jest absolutnie wina Herra, tak myślę. Po części to jednak kwestia hajpu (bo w tej chwili wydaje się, że "Depesze" czytają lub właśnie przeczytali i wszyscy są zachwyceni), który siłą rzeczy nadmuchuje oczekiwania do monstrualnych rozmiarów, a po części na pewno faktu, że nie umiałem czytać tej książki "samej w sobie". Miałem przyjemność tłumaczyć Prawdziwa wojna. Wietnam w ogniu, która lada chwila ukaże się na naszym rynku - reportaż zupełnie inny, również doskonały, skupiony nie na doświadczeniu bycia żołnierzem i reporterem w Wietnamie, ale etycznym i politycznym wymiarze tej wojny. Tłumaczenie tego tekstu, który niniejszym polecam jako świetnie komponujący się z "Depeszami", siłą rzeczy sprawiło, że przeżyłem temat mocniej niż podczas "zwykłej" lektury. Ale za to nie mogę mieć pretensji do Herra. Przeczuwam, że ta książka może jeszcze we mnie kiełkować.

Seems like that in the early '90s there was a revisit Vietnam with documentaries and in movies and those inspired me to take a look at some of the books written about that era, and indeed Dispatches was written in the time period, 1967. It is a good read though some of the passages appear somewhat psychedelic, which might explain why they are used in the movie 'Apocalypse Now' (Herr was also a writer on the movie).

For me, one book about Vietnam seems to lead to another. So I was lead directly from Fields of Fire to Dispatches. In spite of it position on the must-read list for a lot of people, I was not familiar with Dispatches. So I was a little disappointed when I discovered that the book is written through the eyes of a correspondent, a writer. Michael Herr was the Sebastian Junger (see WAR at http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/75...) of Vietnam but maybe more so. As an independent journalist, Herr could control where he was in Vietnam; he would catch helicopters between locations and often hung out with other writers. But he was also in the midst of the ground war and regularly “in harm’s way.” I wonder if Michael and Sebastian ever met and talked with each other.

Herr uses the lingo of the war: my favorite is Lurps which stands for long range recon patrollers “who did it night after night for weeks and months, creeping up on VC base camps or around moving columns of North Vietnamese.” Herr likes the alphabet soup of the military: H&I, DMZ, KIA Travel Bureau, NVA, TDY, ARVN, MACV. Don’t ask me what all of them mean.
And what did the press corps think of their experience in Vietnam?

A few extreme cases felt that the experience there had been a glorious one, while most of us felt that it had been merely wonderful.

Michael Herr was an observer of war while Jim Webb Fields of Fire was a participant in war. I found Fields of Fire to be the better book in the War-Is-Hell category. Both men are excellent writers: Herr could put himself in the minds of the grunts; Webb, immersed in the action, could still step back and see the bigger picture. Neither painted a complementary picture of those in command. Both agreed that there is something distressingly addictive about war for the men on the ground fighting the war. Those pulling the triggers would never be the same.

My hat's off to anyone who can sum up this book in a review. It is beyond anything I've ever read in its portrayal of men at war as witnessed by the war correspondents who accompany them on the front lines. Unlike the embedded journalists of our own time, the writers and photographers who covered Vietnam were much closer to being free agents, restricted only by their ingenuity and fearlessness to seek out the action that would represent the essence of America's military presence in southeast Asia ("There it is . . ."), while the evidence everywhere was of an irrationality raised to such a pitch that it had become something driven only by itself.

Unable to remain objective or even conceive of objectivity, Herr and his colleagues yield to a kind of hallucinatory experience, depicting the war as a phantasmagoria, a really bad trip that also seduced them with what one of them insists is a compelling glamour. To read this book is to experience Vietnam not as a historical record or analysis, or even a personal memoir, but as a kind of hypnotic nightmare from which many, including survivors, never wake.

I could say this is one of the best memoirs I've read. I could also say it is one of the most brilliant books on war I've ever read. It would probably be easier, however, for me to just acknowledge I haven't read many books that have the power, the poetry, the intensity, the vividness, the bathos and the pathos that Herr pushes through every single page of this amazing book. This is a book that haunts you hard while you read it and resonates both the horror of war and the surreal qualities of war and the men who fight it.

3,5*, όχι γιατί δεν είναι (πολύ) καλό, απλά γιατί έχοντας διαβάσει και σοκαριστεί τόσο από τους μεγάλους πολέμους και την απόλυτη φρίκη τους, ο πόλεμος του Βιετνάμ, μία παράλογη εποχή και μία εξαιρετικά σπάνια ήττα των Αμερικανών, μοιάζει με ένα ακόμα πολύχρωμο επεισόδιο της ανθρώπινης τρέλλας. Ένα όμως.

Παράλληλα, αφού κάποιος διαβάσει το The things they carried, μία ελαφρώς λογοτεχνική (και καταπληκτική) απεικόνιση του πολέμου του Βιετνάμ και δει το απρόσμενα (λόγω της νηφάλιας αποτύπωσης όλων των παραμέτρων) πολύ καλό ντοκυμαντέρ The Vietnam War, έχει αποκτήσει όλα τα παραισθησιογόνα στοιχεία που απαιτούνται για να μπει στο νοσηρό κλίμα της εποχής εκείνης. Και φυσικά το "Full Metal Jacket" και "Αποκάλυψη τώρα!", έργα που δανείστηκαν από το ύφος του παρόντος βιβλίου. Βέβαια ο κινηματογράφος δεν είναι ούτε λογοτεχνία ούτε πολεμικό ρεπορτάζ (το τελευταίο υπηρετεί με τρόπο κατάλληλα σουρεαλιστικό το Dispatches) απλά το Βιετνάμ χρειάζεται, νομίζω, και εικόνα, ή τουλάχιστον πολύ ισχυρή "πένα". Ο Michael Herr, βυθίστηκε, συνειδητά, στις ψυχές των Αμερικανών στρατιωτών που πολεμούσαν για κάτι τελείως ακατανόητο. Cudos to him. Αξιόλογο, αλλά συμπληρωματικό.