1968: A Novel [Hardcover]

Joe Haldeman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1995

Spider, a confused young soldier, barely escapes the horrors of Vietnam and is nearly destroyed in the postwar psychomedical establishment, while his old girlfriend, Beverly, finds challenges in her antiwar protests. 10,000 first printing.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Evoking painful nostalgia, Haldeman's (The Forever Wars) tragic and depressing novel chronicles a year in the life of Darcy "Spider" Speidel, a combatant in and victim of Vietnam. A teenage college dropout, Spider is drafted and sent to Nam as a combat engineer. Spider is just a scared, uncertain kid reluctantly playing the game of war for keeps; after he's wounded during the onset of the Tet offensive, he's evacuated back to the States, where his real war begins. His onetime sweetheart, embroiled in the hippy counterculture, has taken up with a new, draft-deferred boyfriend. Confused and helpless, the traumatized Spider lacks the support of even his doctors and his family. Haldeman uses bold language, powerful images and a graphic style to tell his emotional tale, in which concentrated, diary-like entries intensify the drama and despair. He also takes every opportunity to engage in social criticism, ranging from the conduct of the war to draft inequities, from the sexual revolution to the failings of military medical care. He even tries unconvincingly to resurrect the conspiracy theories surrounding the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy. Affecting and compelling on several levels, Spider's story may nevertheless strike readers as a Forrest Gump without any hope or inspiration.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Haldeman has been one of science fiction's brightest stars for two decades but is less renowned for his Vietnam War novels. The third, 1968, deals with a year in the life of Snake, a combat engineer in the Central Highlands just before the Tet offensive. Wounded on a patrol, he is medevac'd to the U.S. and diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. He spends the rest of the year, both in the hospital and afterward, trying to come to terms with his family, the country, the war, and especially the memory of his last patrol. Haldeman's spare, flat prose is perfectly suited to a story containing so many tensions and so much emotion, and his ironic asides on weapons, customs, and psychiatric procedures provide not just background, but acrid commentary. A powerful novel, 1968 is worthy of careful reading, for although veterans will be instantly attuned to Haldeman's voice, what he has to say will also repay those who bring to it only a casual knowledge of the war. Dennis Winters

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Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: William Morrow & Co (June 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688090230
• ISBN-13: 978-0688090234
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #989,356 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Joe Haldeman has served twice as president of the Science Fiction Writers of America and is currently an adjunct professor teaching writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Very Moving Story, November 5, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: 1968 (Mass Market Paperback)

While I love many of Haldeman's science fiction novels, I think 1968 is his best work. He dealt with his Vietnam experience in a very different way in The Forever War by presenting it in a futuristic setting. Here, he confronts it head on, and I think that's what makes 1968 even more powerful than The Forever War. It's amazing to me how little has changed as far as military life goes after reading this book. I was in the Marine Corps infantry in the early nineties, and the same lingo is still being used--like taking "pogey bait" out to the field with you, for example. Even though I, nor others of my generation, can imagine what the Vietname war was really like, I think Haldeman's novel is one of the best at giving us a taste of what it was like. But there's much more to 1968 than just a soldier's Vietnam experience. Much of the book takes place after the main character, Spider, returns home. He arrives a changed man, and the home he remembered has also changed. Haldeman doesn't give us a neat, clean resolution to the story, but what he does give us--a bitter taste of reality--seems so much more real than most novels. I also really enjoyed Tim O'Briens The Things They Carried, but 1968 was slightly more powerful for me. If you also like science fiction, you might enjoy some of the details in 1968--at one point Spider is reading Glory Road by Robert Heinlein, and at another point a soldier is reading The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick. There's also a little bit of astronomy thrown in, if that's your thing. So personally, 1968 had a lot going for it in addition to its main motive. I think this is Haldeman's crowning acheivement, and I'd like to see it back in print. Also, I think Haldeman has at least one more good Vietnam novel in him.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 1968, November 28, 1999

By 

Michael Allan Scott (Scottsdale, AZ USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: 1968 (Mass Market Paperback)

1968 is wonderfully written, brilliantly clear and brutally honest -- my favorite kind of book. Having lived (barely) through my own personal hell that year, I can attest to this novel's piercing insight. I was captivated by the concise portrayal of Spider's suffering at the hands of the military industrial complex and Beverly's dazed trip through the counter-culture of Peace & Love. 1968 is a historical novel whose history is far more accurate that the 'official' accounts pawned off on the public. This book deserves no less than #1 'Best Seller' status.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most powerful book I have read in a long time., September 26, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: 1968 (Mass Market Paperback)

This is a great novel, and harrowing journey inside the soul of 1968. If you were there then this is you, or someone you knew. If you weren't then prepare take a step back to a very strange time. Haldeman tells it straight on Vietnam. No Full Metal Jacket bull here, this is what we did. The writing is superb, and the story intense. This is the book I'm giving my kids when they are old enough, to help them understand what their old man thinks about.