It was pretty raw reporting about war and it did a great job of telling the glories and the sickness that war brings. Some of the anecdotes are horrifying and others are thrilling. It would be hard to report on war in a better way.

I unfortunately was not as into it as I could have been as I have been overloaded with Vietnam literature and hearing about the war so much has been tiring as I feel surrounded by the brutality and senselessness of it.

The book isn’t especially critically minded but it does leave room for judgment and I feel that I understood life at war ever so slightly better after having read it.

Couldn't get past the "Breathing In" part, too depressing! Not all of us were murdering whore mongrel dope heads, although there were those, but never met or knew any. 8th RRU Phu Bai 66-67.

An interesting, thought provoking, memorable, unsentimental, sometimes entertaining account of the Vietnam War in 1967 and 1968 from a war journalist's perspective. Herr provides a good account of what it was like to be there. Like many war journalists, Herr is in Vietnam by choice and he comes close to being badly injured and killed on more than one occasion. Herr provides a sympathetic account of regular soldiers -providing descriptions of their fear, nerve, ennui, cynicism and thrill seeking behaviours. He writes about the soldiers coping mechanisms - drugs, alcohol, music, radio and sporting activities. There are descriptions of many interesting characters. A worthwhile read.

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.

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.

Jesus Christ, man. What a book.

A volte ti fanno una domanda e l’unica risposta che puoi offrire è: “Dipende” (segue nella mente un noto motivetto spagnoleggiante). Tipo, c’è stato un periodo in cui avevo delle pretese da fotoamatore serio e molto compunto, e regolarmente qualcuno mi domandava: “Chi è il tuo fotografo preferito?”. La risposta, ovviamente, “dipende” da un sacco di fattori, primo fra tutti la tipologia di immagini. Mi state chiedendo di un ritrattista da studio, di un artista immerso nel sociale (nettamente Lewis Hine)o di un fotografo in grado di catturare l’anima e l’essenza di un irripetibile momento musicale (e qui mi tocca dire mio fratello)? Appunto, dipende.

Ma se proprio, per motivi che in questo momento non riesco neppure a immaginare, mi trovassi di fronte ad una tragedia evitabile solamente con una mia risposta secca alla domanda “Chi è il tuo fotografo preferito?”, probabilmente farei il nome di Don McCullin.

Dispacci, il libro di Michael Herr che mi ha accompagnato in questi ultimi giorni di vacanza, è una fotografia di McCullin sviluppata su 292 pagine di racconti dal fronte. Corrispondente di guerra durante la guerra del Vietnam, Herr ha dato vita a quello che – con ogni probabilità – è uno dei migliori tre libri sui conflitti armati che siano mai stati scritti (e, parentesona, è giustamente inserito nella lista dei 1001 libri da leggere a tutti i costi). Avete presente “Apocalypse now” e “Full metal jacket”? Ecco, senza Herr non sarebbero mai venuti alla luce, e non solo per il suo ruolo (definito decisivo dallo stesso Kubrick) nella realizzazione del film. Herr ha segnato un’epoca identificando un modo nuovo, vero, tremendamente agganciato alla realtà di raccontare gli orrori che spensero un’intera generazione a stelle e strisce. Dispacci è privo di qualsiasi forma di pietismo, infinitamente lontano da una ossessione malata per il macabro, splendidamente in grado di raccontare la totale distanza fra il “raccontato” e il “vissuto”.

CITAZIONI
“Ovunque tu andassi ti sentivi dire: «Be’, spero che troverai una storia», e ovunque andassi la trovavi”.
“Continuo a pensare a tutti i ragazzi che son stati rovinati da diciassette anni di film di guerra prima di venire in Vietnam a farsi rovinare per sempre”.

--- versione illustrata su http://capitolo23.com/2017/01/09/rece...---

I know, I know I am only betraying my own ignorance by giving this book one star. I read the first 50 or so pages and I can see it all too clearly. You feel like you're there, in Vietnam, with the troops, experiencing all that horror, that hell. Well, guess what? After a long day and I'm ready to settle in with a cozy read,I can't face the nightmare. Maybe someday I'll be in the mood to feel sick to my stomach and I can brag that I have read this but as for now...No thanks.

I'm trying to say that he writes exquisitely but it's too painful.

„Depesze” to mistrzostwo literackiego reportażu wojennego. Dosadny, bardzo obrazowy, wręcz filmowy język oddaje koszmar wojny w Wietnamie. Czytelnik czuje całkowite niezrozumienie celów, amok, a czasem narkotyczny haj towarzyszące rzuconym tam amerykańskim chłopakom. Mocny pacyfistyczny wydźwięk bez cienia dydaktyzmu to siła tej pozycji. Słuchałam w świetnym odczytaniu Andrzeja Ferenca.

This is one of my 2 or 3 favorite books on the US perspective of the Vietnam War. No surprise that I found it just as compelling on re-read.

A combat journalist's account of his time in Vietnam, "Dispatches" combines harrowing realism with insightful observation, often unwound in stream-of-consciousness prose. It is an exercise in what is sometimes referred to as "New Journalism", and while it is more memoir than hard history, it is an invaluable immersion into the Vietnam conflict that lends depth and color to more traditional works on the topic.

"Dispatches" should not be the only book you read about the Vietnam War, but it very definitely should be ONE of the books you read. Herr effectively breathes life into all of the people and situations included in his stories, and simply put, there is no other book about the conflict like it. I have read "Dispatches" several times, and I cannot recommend it more strongly.

(One side note: astute readers may notice a number of quotes in "Dispatches" that were used as lines in Stanley Kubrick's late 1980's film "Full Metal Jacket." Michael Herr was one of the screen writers for "Full Metal Jacket", and it is a measure of the twisted reality he encountered in Vietnam that words and situations from his own life would fit so well into Kubrick's dark and almost bleakly satirical film.)

Really powerful nonfiction account of the Vietnam War. Intense.

Though by no means the central point or theme of this book (which was something like war is hell) the problems of the free press struggling against direction from business, government leadership, and military is notable particularly because of our current political problems.