comment #1

MilkMan says ...

Maybe he would like Tim O'Brien's THE THINGS THEY CARRIED instead.

comment #2

MilkMan says ...

Gabe Hudson's DEAR MR. PRESIDENT is a pretty good book about the 1rst Gulf War.

comment #3

lbeale says ...

Milkman is right, Jeff. Have him try 'The Things They Carried.' Or the brilliant story in it, 'Sweetheart of the Song tra Bong.'

comment #4

Jack South P.I. says ...

I personally love 'The Things They Carried' more than any other piece of Vietnam fiction and the title story above all else. 'Dispatches' is brilliant in a different way. It is the spiritual father of both 'Apocalypse Now' and 'Full Metal Jacket, which makes sense since Herr co-wrote both those screenplays. 'Short-Timers' by Gustav Hasford is great too. 'Tree of Smoke' by 'Denis Johnson' is overrated and, in the end, not worth the time since it is so long. I'm sitting on O'Brien's 'Going After Cacciato' and will read eventually.

comment #5

MilkMan says ...

I'm glad you said it, Jack South. I am a sucker for 'Nam fiction and I love Denis Johnson and I could not make it past the first 60 pages of Tree of Smoke, and I've tried to get past that first 60 pages three different times. There is something about Johnson's voice in Tree of Smoke that I can't stand. It's just way too hard boiled. I can't tell if the book is supposed to be some kind of pastiche. I mean, maybe that's the point, but that's not a point I'm really interested in getting right now. Johnson obviously has no idea what he is talking about when it comes to 'Nam.

comment #6

erniesouchak says ...

"Dispatches" is a great piece of writing.

comment #7

lbeale says ...

Wow, guys. I think 'Tree of Smoke' is brilliant - and moving. I gobbled it down.

comment #8

buster keaton says ...

Maybe if you told him that Herr was responsible for some of the dialogue/narration in Apocalypse Now he might get into it. But the Vietnam war is about as interesting to your kid as the Korean war was to us -- not very.

comment #9

larry braverman says ...

Philip Caputo's 'A Rumor of War' is another good one that was published around the same time. And a pretty easy read...

comment #10

George Prager says ...

Hey, fuckheads....the whole point is that he wanted his kid to read DISPATCHES! If he wanted his kid to eat a lobster and his kid took a pass, would you be making comments like "you should buy him some fish sticks!" No you wouldn't.

comment #11

Jack South P.I. says ...

I really really really wanted to like 'Tree of Smoke' but in the end have to say it didn't work for me. There were moments of greatness (like almost anything with the crazy uncle) but for the most part it felt way too rambling and unfocussed. I know that this was by design, but it just didn't add up to anything for this reader and I spent weeks trying to do the math.

I implore anyone interested in this stuff to pick up 'The Things They Carried' and read the first story. Read it while standing in the store if you're not certain. It is the most moving thing I've ever read about soldiers of any war. It is absolutely poetic and doesn't resort to sentimentality.

I also love "How to Tell a True War Story" which is the greatest defense/explanation of the importance and role of exaggeration in telling stories you will ever find. By chance, I just googled it and found a link. Not sure if it is the same as in the book but I'm guessing it is close enough. Must read.

http://us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/pdocs/obrien_story.pdf

comment #12

Jack South P.I. says ...

And George, this fuckhead thinks maybe if Wells can find some other gateway drug in this genre that his kid is more into, Jett might discover he is more interested in the subject than he originally thought and give 'Dispatches' a try somewhere down the line. It's not rocket surgery.

comment #13

Jack South P.I. says ...

Milkman, give me your list of favorites. I guess I could have included 'Dog Soldiers' by Robert Stone even though it is more about the era than the war itself. Greene's 'The Quiet American' reads like a damn prophecy.

comment #14

George Prager says ...

I say fuck it.

comment #15

bmcintire says ...

Jack South - "It's not rocket surgery."
Totally stealing that. Thank you.

comment #16

George Prager says ...

This is a good book.

"Stoner" by John Williams

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoner_(novel)

comment #17

MilkMan says ...

Meditations in Green - Stephen Wright

A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain - Robert Olen Butler

Going After Cacciato - Tim O'Brien

The Things They Carried - Tim O'Brien

The Forever War - Joe Haldeman

Carpenter's Gothic - William Gaddis

Sympathy for the Devil - Kent Anderson

Ray - Barry Hannah

Dirty Work - Larry Brown

In Pharoah's Army - Tobias Wolff

I strongly recommend Meditations in Green, Dirty Work, and In Pharoah's Army.

comment #18

MilkMan says ...

Another great book, tangentially related to Vietnam, is CAMBODIA: A BOOK FOR PEOPLE WHO FIND TELEVISION TOO SLOW, by Brian Fawcett.

Too bad this isn't a book blog, I could recommend stuff all day long.

comment #19

actionmam says ...

Michael Bay optioned The Things They Carried. It will come to cineplexes in 2013 - hopefully with shiny robots replacing all those ugly little gooks!

comment #20

MilkMan says ...

Too bad James Ellroy didn't serve in Vietnam. I would love it if he tried to tackle a 'Nam book anyway. His style would lend itself perfectly to the war, mostly for meta-textual reasons, his voice being an homage/parody/ total-fucking-absorption of the very voice (think Jack Webb) that the generation serving in Vietnam was trying to eliminate from their brainspace.

comment #21

George Prager says ...

If Ellroy served in Vietnam he would've died.

comment #22

MilkMan says ...

If Ellroy served in Vietnam he would've been a LURP, done three tours, walked around with an Ear-Necklace, sired ten different children from ten different Vietnamese women, and been involved in the Phoenix Program. James Ellroy is a rarity - a bonafide sociopath who channels his impulses and obsessions into fiction.

comment #23

Breedlove says ...

Anyone looking for some good non-fiction should try Dave Cullen's COLUMBINE. Reading it right now. Riveting.

comment #24

actionmam says ...

Michael Bay also optioned Columbine. But these crazy colorful robots are going to shoot those kids instead of those 2 losers. Michal Bay never casts ugly people. I am ditching my anniversary dinner and will be in front row with a giant popcorn!

comment #25

MilkMan says ...

I just finished COLUMBINE, Breedlove. Yeah, it was good. I had no idea what really went on in that school. It was actually worse than I thought. Eric Harris wanted to blow up the world, not just his school. He gives new meaning to teen angst.

comment #26

Jack South P.I. says ...

Ear necklace, Milkman? This wouldn't be a 'Blood Meridian' reference would it?

I agree with everything you've said about Ellroy. That is why it is all the more heartbreaking for me that his prose has become so over-stylized as to be unreadable. I couldn't get more than 40 pages into 'The Cold Six Thousand' and was depressed for days. 'American Tabloid' is as good as it gets. I wish he could dial it back.

comment #27

MilkMan says ...

Yes, American Tabloid is the apex of his style. And I agree with you about Cold 6K. I read Tabloid in one sitting, all 587 pages, on a train from NYC to Memphis. It took me weeks to finish Cold 6K. The thing I find most irksome about his style right now is the overuse of illiteration.

comment #28

MickTravis says ...

Jack South, sometime try "Cold Six" again. I loved "American Tabloid" but it took me a couple passes to get into the sequel.

Eric Harris wanted to hijack a plane and fly it into the World Trade Center. Seriously. Not that he could've pulled it off, but it's odd that he actually wrote that plan down.

comment #29

George Prager says ...

As with American Tabloid, you have to read Cold Six fast, skip over words, passages if they don't make any sense. That's the only way to get through it.

comment #30

MilkMan says ...

Planes as Missles is one of the greatest innovations in the history of war. If people think that one is going to sit on the shelf for the next 60 years like the Atom Bomb they're nuts. The toothpaste is out of the tube. That idea was locked inside of the collective Id for God knows how long. I remember turning on the television that morning and when I saw those planes plow into the Towers my first reaction wasn't that it looked like a movie. It was that it looked like something out of a nightmare I would've had, that anyone would've had. Watching a plane that large fly into a building that large is so strange that I actually think it caused severe, short-term cognitive dissonance in millions of people. And I kind of found it odd that people said it reminded them of something out of a movie, because the people who make movies wished they had an imagination that powerful.

comment #31

Travis Crabtree says ...

Not to sound like I have that great of an imagination, but I'd been thinking about that scenario for some time. (perhaps I should send my resume to the CIA)
My first thought on 9/11 was "wow, somebody actually did it".

Ever since the Egyptair 767 crash in 1999 it seemed even more plausible. (a theory is the pilot committed suicide by nosing the plane into the ocean)

It seemed that all you needed was a pilot who decided to take himself out with whoever else he could take with him.

I always imagined it going into a stadium or something like that.

I'm really sick of the "like something out of a movie" comparison on TV news.

Reminds me of the L.A. riots when you had these 23 year old local news bimbettes fresh out of J-school saying that it all looked like "something from a war zone!" Oh really?

comment #32

actionmam says ...

If you havent heard of Dean Koontz, please check his books out also. Gripping thrillers. I borrowed some of his ideas when I made a fresh horror opus last year, Friday the 13th. Crazy new story involving some really beautiful boys and girls getting slaughtered. Koontz even asked for an autographed script.

comment #33

DeafEars says ...

lbeale,

I read THE THINGS THEY CARRIED and loved it, especially Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong. I've always thought it might make a good movie. After the joke about Michael Bay optioning THE THINGS THEY CARRIED, I thought "fuck that sounds pretty improbable but I better look into this just in case" and found that it WAS actually made into a movie. For friggin' SHOWTIME, no less, in 1998 starring Kiefer Sutherland. Variety gave it a good review, looks like it's not available on DVD.

comment #34

mccool says ...

Jeff---Entirely off-topic, but I know you're (or once were) into conservation...if you haven't seen Whale Wars, you've gotta check it out. I don't know what's more compelling....a group of do-gooders risking their lives to stop the horrific slaughter of whales, or that this group is so woefully unprepared, inexperienced, and caught up in playing eco-warrior that it's only a matter of time until at least one of them winds up dead. Either way, it's worth tuning in. I admire the gumption and the cause of these folks, but lord, I'm watching now and I can not believe that a group this amateurish and unskilled could take such irresponsible risks and escape unscathed.

comment #35

actionmam says ...

Michael Bay told me once that they killed at least 30 whales, sea lions and porpoises off the SF coast during the filming of complex explosion scenes for the Rock. He wasn't sad; in fact, he said their blood would spray red geysers in their air that heightened the insensity of the pyrotechnics.

comment #36

lipranzer says ...

It's funny - though I've seen a bunch of Vietnam War movies, I've never read any fiction dealing with it, except tangentially (John Sayles' "Union Dues," a couple of Frederick Forsyth's novels, and I think one of le Carre's - Honourable Schoolboy?), except for "The Short-Timers," which I remember liking (this was a while back). I have read a couple of non-fiction books on the subject ("Born on the 4th of July", of course, and "A Bright Shining Lie"). These are all great recommendations.

comment #37

frankbooth says ...

Shame to see the bad reviews of Tree of Smoke. Haven't read it yet, but I've been a fan on Johnson's work since a friend shoved Jesus' Son into my hands, leading me to plow through everything up to and including Already Dead. (Which means -- wow -- haven't read any of his stuff in nearly a decade.) Fiskadoro was the only one that really left me cold.

Speaking of Already Dead (we're off topic by now anyway, right?) does anyone else think it would make a good film? Kinda dreamlike and Altmanesque? Paging P.T. Anderson...

comment #38

Jack South P.I. says ...

The Bad News? Gustav Hasford's 'The Short-Timers', the basis of 'Full Metal Jacket' is out of print. (although you can pickup a mass market paperback on half.com for about $25 if you want). The Good News? It's available for free from gustavhasford.com (http://www.gustavhasford.com/ST2.htm). You want to read some crazy stories, check out this guy's bio. Even Kubrick couldn't work with him. Great book, and the third part isn't in the movie.

comment #39

MilkMan says ...

Nice, Jack South. Very nice. Thanks for the link. Solid, brother, real solid.

comment #40

Gaydos says ...

"Cutter and Bone." "Dog Soldiers."

Both are filled with characters whose actions speak volumes about the war as they go about their world-weary Stateside biz. Both made ace films, both films flopped, as the Lizard Rulers of the time decreed they must.

A little known bit of movie biz history:

The newly inaugurated Lizard ruler (took power in January 1981, announcing "IT IS MORNING IN AMERICA") was personally insulted when "Cutter" was released in March 1981 announcing "NO IT's NOT."

So the perfect Lizard/morning film, "RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK" was released and created a franchise and a way of doing movie biz/insuring Lizard rule that lasts to this day.

You can look it up.

PS: I watched "Dog Soliders" last night. As Jeff noted some time back, some of the greatest dialogue of the past decades of moviegoing, ie "I've been waiting all my life to fuck up like this."

comment #41

MilkMan says ...

Nice, Gaydos.

comment #42

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