Black Virgin Mountain: A Return to Vietnam [Paperback]

Larry Heinemann (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 6, 2006

In 1967 Larry Heinemann was sent to Vietnam as an ordinary soldier. It was the most horrific year of his life, truly altering him—and his family—forever. In his powerful memoir, Heinemann returns to Vietnam, riding the train from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh city and confronting the memories of his war year. Black Virgin Mountain confirms Heinemann’s legendary plain-spoken reputation as one of the essential chroniclers of our war in Vietnam

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This may be the only book written by an American veteran that harshly condemns Gen. William Westmoreland and sings the praises of Vietnamese Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap. Heinemann's autobiographical Close Quarters (1977) is one of the most underappreciated in-country Vietnam War novels; Paco's Story (1987), a biting tale of the war's brutal emotional aftermath, won the National Book Award for fiction. Part memoir, part travelogue, part personal political treatise, Heinemann's first nonfiction effort is also a winner. His evocative look at his eventful 1967â€"1968 tour with a 25th Infantry Division mechanized infantry battalion contains a bitterly strong indictment of the politicians and generals who waged the war, and tracks his transformation from a nonpolitical son of the working class into a disillusioned young soldier who became virulently politicized. That narrative is framed by a trip Heinemann took to Vietnam in 1992 with fellow American Vietnam veteran writers as guests of the Vietnam Writers Association. What he found on that and subsequent visits jibes with nearly all of the other "going back" books by American veterans: a warm welcome from a nation at peace. The book's title refers to an epiphanic climb in 1992 to the top of Black Virgin (Nui Ba Den) Mountain - a talisman of sorts to many Americans who served in Tay Ninh Province during the war: "I'm home, I say to myself; I have arrived home; this place is home." (Apr. 19)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Heinemann, a Vietnam vet, is the author of Paco's Story 1987), the National Book Award-winning novel about a returning vet. His latest work, a memoir, describes his return visit to Vietnam, hosted by the Vietnam Writers' Association in 1992. In some ways, it's old news: the bickering, a la Norman Mailer, with other writers; the jazzed-up prose reminiscent of Michael Herr's Dispatches; and the generalized, almost ritual anger. More usefully, Heinemann might have waxed acidic on what lessons from Vietnam the U.S. has brought forward, or forgotten, in Iraq. In any case, once he calms down, Heinemann proves to be an observant, even amusing, essayist. For instance, there is his delightful sojourn in Hanoi, where he explains the economy, meets with General Giap, and tries to eat dog. Having thus engaged the reader, Heinemann explores Vietnam right down its middle on an ancient, French-built train, which chugs slowly toward the author's old area of operation, Tay Ninh. Hulking in the distance, as it was in the 1960s, is the topographical oddity of Black Virgin Mountain--a Buddhist holy place that becomes holy for Heinemann, too, and brings some peace to his middle-aged soul. This pilgrimage makes for some fine, perceptive writing. It's travel writing, really, but with the depth of a Jan Morris or Paul Theroux. Read Heinemann's memoir along with the Lonely Planet Vietnam guide, and plan a trip to one of the few places, irony of ironies, where the locals like Americans. John Mort
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (June 6, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400076897
• ISBN-13: 978-1400076895
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #728,807 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Larry Heinemann was born and raised in Chicago. His award-winning first novel, "Close Quarters", has been called the seminal work to come out of the war in Vietnam. "Paco's Story", his second novel, received the National Book Award for fiction and the Carl Sandburg Literary Arts Award for fiction, among other honors. "Cooler by the Lake", a Chicago novel, was published 1992. "Black Virgin Mountain: A Return to Vietnam", a memoir and the third book in what Mr. Heinemann refers to as his accidental Vietnam trilogy, was published in 2005.

In 2010 "Paco's Story" was published by the Womens Publishing House (Hanoi), translated by Pham Anh Tuan with an introduction by celebrated author Bao Ninh; "Chuyen Cau Paco" is the first American-written war novel to be published in Vietnam.

Mr. Heinemann's short stories and non-fiction have appeared in a variety of publications both here and overseas, and numerous anthologies including "Humor Me", "The Other Side of Heaven", "Writing Between the Lines", "Vietnam Anthology", "Best of the Tri-Quarterly", "Lesebuch der Wilden Manner" (Germany), and "The Vintage Book of War Stories". His fiction has been translated into Dutch, German, French, Spanish, and Vietnamese.

He has received literature fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation,and the Fulbright Scholarship Program. Mr. Heinemann is the Writer in Residence at Texas A&M University.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Power of Revisitation, February 12, 2006

By 

B.A. Brittingham (Michigan, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Black Virgin Mountain: A Return to Vietnam (Hardcover)

Although it did not garner national attention or give rise to any widespread outpourings of remembrance, this past April marked the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of Saigon. The most lasting impression we have - aside from that gleaming granite commemorative engraved with 58,000 plus names on the Washington Mall - seems to be the quintessential "bug-out" photo of a chopper on the roof of the American embassy, a too-long tether of people desperate to clamber aboard.

As is often the case, the years have been kind to Vietnam annealing some of its sharpness, if not in the memories of the generation that served there, then at least in terms of the original stigma attached to it. Perhaps as a country we have mellowed enough to see that it had some unpleasant but necessary lessons to pass along. All wars do, though it is the young who must purchase that knowledge for us. But even with that, there remains the lasting stench of defeat, along with the awkward doling out and acceptance of blame by aging politicians, whenever the word 'Vietnam' is uttered.

According to the record books, American soldiers were long gone by the time those frantic Vietnamese began queuing up for the last chopper out. But when it comes to war in general and Vietnam specifically, the records aren't always on mark. Which is why three decades later books like Heinemann's Black Virgin Mountain are still being written and read. We simply cannot get enough of the subject to affix it with a permanent, acceptable label and then hang it away like an out-of-fashion coat.

The mountain of the title was the focal point of Heinemann's year in hell. He had already returned to the country a number of times in the 1990s, often in conjunction with writers' conferences, when he and another writer, Larry Rottmann, took the trip to what is known in Vietnam as Nui Ba Den.

The text crackles with an anger that, by Heinemann's own admission, remains unabated despite the passing of thirty-seven years since his tour in `Nam. Having lost two brothers to those residual emotional conflicts that simmer long after the actual combat is over, he is brutally frank about his experiences ("Every human vitality is taken from you as if you'd been skinned; yanked out like you pull nails with a claw hammer; boiled off, the same as you would render a carcass at hog-killing") and his opinions concerning the conduct of the war. It is difficult to decide which leader bears the greater brunt of his scathing commentary - LBJ or William Westmoreland.

Happily, the entire book does not focus solely on the author's lingering revulsion for the war. There are large travelogue segments, life slices of rich imagery showing how the Vietnamese have moved along with far less lingering acrimony than have we since the end of what they call the "American War." Included is a wonderful description of the French colonial era bureaucrat's home-turned-guest-house at which they stayed in Hanoi. Its exotic past (koi pond, louvered windows with a dozen coats of paint) resonates like something straight out of 1940s cinema - "Casablanca" on a different continent. Heinemann includes engaging snippets of a portion of one trip involving the Vietnam Railway and its sometimes idiosyncratic train station employees. Something we don`t expect after all those plane loads of bombs and Agent Orange, is the spectacular scenery. Perhaps most revealing of some kind of personal transformation is a statement he makes after watching the Southeast Asian panorama from the train`s window, "And there it was, the country at peace, the thing I had come to see."

In contrast to the many positive things Heinemann has to say about that nation, in the latter part of the book there is the unnerving visit to the tunnels at Cu Chi. Juxtapositioned next to his own middle-aged physical discomfort at "duckwalking" through a small section of the enlarged-for-tourists-maze, Heinemann gives us a palpably frightening description of what it was like for an outfit's smallest soldier to be pressed into service as a tunnel rat. Fear, claustrophobia, the myriad things to remember to listen for, to smell, to see in order to scope out a tunnel and stay alive - if after reading it you don't come away with the distinct itch of something crawling on your skin, the feel of dirt sticking to the sweat on your bare back, then you may already be dead.

Language rampages back and forth between politely literate and gritty street talk, oftentimes within the same sentence. Normally this would be where a caution against putting it into the hands of middle school children doing history papers would be placed. But there is little early teens have not already heard. For obvious reasons anything related to that period of time is best displayed in the lingo of the day. Heinemann's choice of words may have been his way of showing us that he can walk both sides of the line, i.e., that he is an accomplished writer with a well-developed, post-tour vocabulary, but whose awareness is forever etched with the earthy, peppery talk of men at war. He may also be enjoying his ability to keep the non-military reader a little off-balance: the seriously out-of-kilter, day-after-day world of the average soldier. And whoever predicted the pending demise of the semicolon, hasn't read Larry Heinemann.

But to the rest of those doing research on the embattled 60s and 70s, this is a seminal book, one that stands outside all the political posturing and sociological conjecture. It is an invaluable look into the dehumanizing influences of combat by someone who lived it.

So, once again to war and its lessons. Our unglamorous departure from Saigon over thirty years past remains a thorn in the side of many, though for an assortment of differing reasons. It is a picture we need to keep close to us as we devise our exit strategy for Iraq after destroying their corrupt, sadistic, but functioning political infrastructure. It would be lamentable if history were to look back on our crucial departure from Baghdad only to have it described by some future Heinemann as "an agony, and an orgy of unambiguous betrayal ... right to the end and still, a bungled tangle..."

24 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Return to Vietnam? Surprised the Author Didnt Stay, September 5, 2005

By 

G. E. Kugler "Ed Kugler - nomoreBS - Author o... (Big Arm, Montana United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Black Virgin Mountain: A Return to Vietnam (Hardcover)

As a veteran of two tours in Nam, consecutive as a Marine Sniper I have read everything I can about the war to better understand it from both sides so this was one I grabbed when it came out. I have really mixed emotions. Larry is a veteran and had some horrid experiences no doubt. He wrote Paco's Story which I really liked. But in this book his love of the Vietnamese, which is fine, is so lavish, his praise for every single thing they do on his journey so sappy, all at the expense of everything America did or does, leaves me with a sour feeling in the least. He questions John McCains service as a POW, every single thing we, America did was wrong, every single thing the North Vietnamese did was wonderful ... its more than a bit much for me. He conveniently leaves out all the atrocities committed by the NVA and their leaders. I for one am not a fan of our leadership at the time for sure. But the extent to which the Author goes to make the NVA out to be the patriots of all time and then denigrates the 'lifers' and 'patriots' in our armed forces ... well, I am only surprised he hasnt moved his family over to Nam.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Return to the Dark Side of a Life - and Back, November 9, 2005

By 

Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Black Virgin Mountain: A Return to Vietnam (Hardcover)

Larry Heinemann has long been a legend among those of us who served in the Vietnam War. His award-winning novel 'Paco's Story' told the public about the Vietnam War as it was - bitter, cruel, humiliating, destructive and unwarranted.

Now Heinemann brings yet another view of the atrocities of war in this memoir that references not only his war years, but also shares his responses to his return to Vietnam in 1990, this time with a different band of warriors - fellow writers of the Vietnam War who were invited to Hanoi to meet their Vietnamese counterparts. What he encountered during that and subsequent visits to the country he once viewed with disdain and tortured memories was a country of people who were full of forgiveness, providing Heinemann with a path toward healing. He even made the trek from Hanoi in the north to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) in the south, ending in a climb of the Vietnamese symbol of folk mythology - Black Virgin Mountain - where he recovered his sense of healing.

Heinemann's writing is lucid and still retains the raw vigor of his previous works, but his writing is now more tempered with time. 'Since Vietnam, other wars have come our way, including Iraq and Afghanistan...and I don't know about you, but I have watched and been appalled by the horror-struck nonchalance with which we seem to enjoy them. We are fascinated and repelled simultaneously by the endless loop of televised imagery and skimpy narration, oiled with the patina of exaggerated patriotism that begins with the dusty, desert-bred bogeyman, travels clean through the bloody wrath of the Old Testament, and ends with those prickly little tingles in the scalp, the moistened eyes, and the grand old flag...But there remained, still, the itchy, undeniable sense of unfinished business...'.

Heinemann's book is important. It speaks of healing while it still pleas for us to keep the watch for the opportunity to end the horrors of war. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, November 05