n  But of course we were intimate, I'll tell you how intimate: they were my guns, and I let them do it.n

I wrote a poem to a coworker last Friday--long story--and in part of it, I tried to tell her how much I admired Dispatches and how deeply I responded to it: I said that the book itself felt like poetry, that it had that kind of density of insight. With any other form of journalism, this level of beauty would be condensation that fogged up the glass and made it harder to see the subjects, but with Herr's writing, the style itself is the window, or rather something less clear and more visceral. Dispatches tattoos the Vietnam War on your mind.

I had trouble reading too much of this at a time, in part it's more experience-driven than narrative-driven and in part because of the aforementioned weight, with the end result that this is a short book that nonetheless feels bottomless. Herr talks about the atrocities of the war and his love for the men who committed them. He never flinches and he never backs away--his successors in fiction, for our more recent wars, are probably Ben Fountain and Phil Klay--and as a result, he finds and tells incredible stories. He mentions jouranlists who referrd to "no-story operations," and talks about how foreign he finds that concept: "Those were the same journalists who would ask us what the fuck we ever found to talk to grunts about, who said they never heard a grunt talk about anything except cars, football and chone. But they all had a story, and in the war they were driven to tell it."

The mix was so amazing: incipient saints and realized homicidals, unconscious lyric poets and mean dumb motherfuckers with their brains all down in their necks; and even by the time I left I knew where all the stories came from and where thy were going, I was never bored, never even unsurprised.

The stories are here: the grunt who keeps an actual calendar drawn on the back of his helmet, the guy who checks Stars and Stripes religiously for a death from his hometown because he figures it's such a podunk place two people from it won't die in Vietnam, the space blanket that gets forced on Herr because he mentions being cold, the journalist who is incredulous about the charge to take the glamour out of war, the soldier who keeps wandering away from the airstrip and the plane that's supposed to take him home. The effect here is of the illumination rounds he mentions--arcs of clarity with real impact. But I should emphasize, because this is rare for me, that the stories here, though memorable, significant, haunting, funny, varied, and pretty much everything else under the sun, stood out less than the remarkable clarity of Herr's style and philosophy. It's strange to read a book and come away effectively wanting the author as your biographer, which of course can't happen now--RIP, Michael Herr, another victim of 2016--but that's the feeling I had here, because Herr is such an intelligent, unsentimental, loving interpreter of what he witnesses, because he feels the weight of it all and records it in such a way that I felt it too.

"We all had roughly the same position on the war: we were in it, and that was a position."

AMAZING

if it wasnt bad enough to step into the heart of hell during day you got cat sized rats scampering over you at night. u can almost smell the camphor as you read.
amazing book about 'Nam.

An exceptional piece of journalism/memoir from the frontlines of the Vietnam War, with an effective, jumbled chronicling of the tragedy, humor, horror, and psychological fallout of that particular war. The best takeaway is its inspiration for this reader to pursue the subject matter further as well as investigate the lives of the author's fellow correspondents (many tragic).

Kniha reportáží z Vietnamské války poprvé vyšla již v roce 1977 a stále vychází v nových a nových vydáních a překladech. Aktuálně vychází ve slovenském překladu u kultovního nakladatelství Abynt. Ale stejně dobrá je i v podobě polské audioknihy.
— Mimochodem originální název Dispatches je snad nejgeniálnější název knihy vůbec, protože jde vyložit mnoha způsoby a Depeše je jen jediným z nich. V polském vydání věnoval překladatel několik odstavců jen tomu, jak lze název knihy interpretovat.
— Autor knihy Michael Herr pracoval ve Vietnamu jako válečný reportér pro časopis Esquire a válku poznává opravdu důkladně, protože s vojáky se účastní i poměrně nebezpečných misí a tak má možnost poznat tvář moderní války opravdu hodně zblízka. Zkušenosti, které Michael Herr získal ve vietnamském konfliktu později zúročil jako spoluautor filmů Apocalypse now a Full Metal Jacket. A podobně jako v těchto filmech i ve zmiňované knize je válka a působení americké armády v ní viděno hodně kriticky a naturalisticky.
— Autor na válku nahlíží z mnoha úhlů, pohledů a střídá celkový pohled na válku s drobnými portréty vojáků, které během svého působení ve Vietnamu potkal. Popisuje pocity, chování a psychologii i kolegů z řad válečných zpravodajů, načrtává karikatury nejšílenějších případů z řad vojenských velitelů a sem tam nechá čtenáře vydechnout při popisu krás místní přírody aby za chvilku popsal i nepříjemné stránky pobytu v tropické džungli.
— Možná se malinko usmějete při líčení toho, jak se vojáci v poli stávají pověrčivými aby vám autor vzápětí vyrazil dech ranou na solar při líčení toho, jak válečný konflikt rozvrací psychiku vojáků, zpravodajů i civilistů. Vyprávění je prostě hodně rozmanité a proto se čte celkem svižně a i jazyk je košatý a uchu příjemný. Prostě perla žánru, důkladně prověřená časem a i já osbně ji mohu s klidným vědomích doporučit.

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).

This is a tremendous book. It reminded me of All Quiet on the Western Front in terms of its emotional impact, but was probably even a bit stronger.
To me, its strength is in its capacity to see and discuss the emotional impact of war and senseless slaughter on the otherwise good, gentle young men who would ordinarily never have done such things.
There are many books about war written by historians, journalists and others, but few written with the authentic gut wrenching pain that can only come from someone who has been there.
Both the Vietnam War with its 58,000 dead American casualties and WW I were senseless stupidities entered into not for the good of the country, but for the good of the “military industrial complex” described by Eisenhower.
This books mentions US bombers dropping 120,000,000 pounds of explosives on a small area in one week and accomplishing nothing militarily important except reinforcing the resolve of the “enemy” to expel us from THEIR country. How much money did the “defense” contractors make on 120,000,000 pounds of explosives? Why is life so cheap?

Michael Herr i Wietnam swoją drogą, ale ciekawa rzecz – w większości polskich recenzji przewija się nazwisko tłumacza, i to w jak najbardziej pozytywnym kontekście. Ewenement. Może więc też od tego zacznę. Krzysztof Majer zdobył za swoje tłumaczenie nagrody (i nominacje). Rzeczywiście trudno nie zauważyć, że „Depesze” czyta się nadzwyczaj gładko, a rozmowy żołnierzy brzmią bardzo naturalnie. Problem w tym, że jest to język XXI wieku, bardzo uwspółcześniony, i przez cały czas bardzo rozpraszało mnie to, że tak się 50 lat temu po prostu nie mówiło. Gdyby moi rodzice sięgnęli po tę książkę, której akcja rozgrywa się w czasach, które pewnie całkiem nieźle pamiętają, byliby zapewne zdziwieni, że zupełnie się w niej nie odnajdują. Ten przekład być może lepiej trafia do współczesnego czytelnika, ale moim zdaniem z powodzeniem mógłby być o wiele neutralniejszy – i jednocześnie ponadczasowy. Gdyby akcja toczyła się np. podczas obecnej wojny w Afganistanie, pierwsza ustawiłabym się w kolejce do obsypywania p. Majera pochwałami (ach, tłumaczenie przekleństw to niekiedy prawdziwa sztuka, a jemu wychodzi to na piątkę), a tak to jednak trochę mi tu zgrzyta. Trochę przesadzając: tak samo nie chciałabym czytać powieści o kowbojach, którzy pozdrawiają się swojskim „no siema, ziomuś”.
Mimo wszystko warto jednak będzie sięgać po jego kolejne prace. Na mojej liście "tłumaczy, których zauważyłam podczas czytania książki i chcę sobie zapamiętać" to chyba pierwsze nazwisko, które pojawi się tam nie dlatego, że powinnam je omijać szerokim łukiem, a wręcz przeciwnie. :)

No to teraz sama treść: duży plus. Nieprzegadana, dobrze pokazująca chaos wojny w Wietnamie (choć momentami tekst robił się trochę zbyt bezładny), oszczędna w słowach dla maksymalizacji efektu. Zbiór luźnych przemyśleń okołowojennych, zapisów krótkich spotkań na froncie, wymian zdań na pozór bez większego znaczenia, jako całość dobrze chyba oddający ówczesne realia.

I read this book completely high! And I loved it. Well not exactly as much as I loved 'The things they carried', but I loved it. I have no idea if being high had anything to do with how much I enjoyed listening to the guy describe a brutal fire-fight, but it was good anyways. It's amazing that someone can tell a story about death and filth and bullets so beautifully, and at the same time with so much useful detail. Never a dull moment in this book. I loved it!
Oh, and just FYI, the movie 'Full Metal Jacket' is loosely based on this book.

I’ve been waiting to read this for so long. It did not disappoint.

As I reached the end, I started wondering if I liked this or The Things They Carried more. I know, I know, the latter is “fiction,” but if you’ve read it, you know why I’m placing it in that in between space.

One of the main differences between the two books is in style. Herr’s writing is definitely poetic at times: “I watched the choppers I’d loved dropping into the South China Sea...and one last chopper revved it up, lifted off, and flew out of my chest.” But more often, as the title suggests, it feels like reading reports from the paddies and jungles of hell written by a modern day Dante. In keeping with that metaphor, Herr’s Virgils—I don’t believe there is a Beatrice to be found in ’Nam—are the grunts, the land, the water, the drugs, the noise, the music, and the intense fear of darkness. Herr’s prose, unlike O’Brien’s, has the cadence and diction of machine gun bursts, every sixth bullet changed out for an illumination round. Despite its brevity storytelling, it’s a hard read. I don’t mean that as in difficult or shocking, though it’s often both—I’m speaking more about the tough exterior of the men the jungle and the words...each is, to use Herr’s striking imagery toward the end, “like one of those little paper pills they make in China, you drop them into water and they open out to form a tiger or a flower or a pagoda.”

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.

very well-written and impactful, highly recommend!!!