Dispatches [Hardcover]

Michael Herr (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 12, 1977

Michael Herr went to Vietnam in 1967 as Esquire's correspondent. From the very first with the publication of his famous article, "Hell Sucks", he was accorded widespread, fervent acclaim. Dispatches confirms what his early admirers already knew: no one else has written so eloquently, so powerfully, so terrifyingly about what it was to fight in (and to survive) that ghastly war.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 260 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1st edition (October 12, 1977)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394417887
• ISBN-13: 978-1568658094
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #501,227 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My fourth copy, June 8, 2011

By 

NDASH "NWIO" (WANATAH, IN, US) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Dispatches (Hardcover)

For anyone who lived through the sixties, this should be in their personal library. Yes, it is about Vietnam, and yes, the language is often stunningly electric, but for time and place and for the character of that decade it is
indispensable. If you were a draft age male back then, caught on the wrong side of the deferment circus, Vietnam
aside, there is some one or some thing in this that touches on your own sense of identity as it was back then.
Of three prior paperback copies, I gave two away and the third fell apart.
If you can bear the unpleasantness it aims at you, read it. It's vulgar, rough, and always on the edge of losing
control. If you approach it anticipating some grand political oversight, forget it. In all their naked, vulgar, honorable misery, it reveres grunts. Those among us who can be counted upon when this world's dirty work needs doing.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The truth lies in the eye of the storm., March 8, 2011

By 

Zed Is Dead - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dispatches (Hardcover)

-Dispatches- is a masterwork of war literature, capturing something of the heat, muck and hypocrisy of Vietnam, precisely because of its abuse of language, its drifting prose, and its dark, sardonic humour... like James Webb's -Fields of Fire-, the truth is not simply contained within nonfiction, neatly packaged for the bureaucrats, but is sought in the imaginative recollection of being-there, of existing, simply, in the lowest circles of hell, which is where Herr finds himself, and thus crafts his text, wandering doggedly through a conflict seemingly without end....

To say -Dispatches- has not aged well, to critique its contextual vernacular, or to hold it up to the standards of Queen's English, would be like arguing that Hamlet has not aged well because men no longer wear tights. It completely misses the point. Moreover, the frequent use of commas is hardly such a grave occurrence---not all prose must sound like the staccato telegraph of Hemmingway. Long live Proust....

The entire critical point of New Journalism was not only to use literary techniques to relate nonfiction---has not journalism done precisely this since Addison and Steele's The Spectator?---but to disrupt and shake up Establishment reportage from being a mere mouthpiece of the US war-machine. In this respect, the only fault with this book lies with our times; it has become all too easy to read accounts of Vietnam War with a false nostalgia, and in this respect the style of -Dispatches- could be read as an uber-cool reflection on an all-too romanticized war (-Jarhead- made precisely this comment in the scene where Gulf War soldiers watch the helicopter attack scene from -Apocalypse Now- and cheer on its violence).

The parallel between -Dispatches- and -Apocalypse Now- is deserving. Herr did not merely "contribute" to the script of -Apocalypse Now-; save for the end of the thing, he wrote it, and is credited as such (also listen to the commentary with Herr and Coppola to the -Redux- version). The reason -Apocalypse Now- rings somewhat true, especially the -Redux- version which lays bear the madness, is because of Herr's script, which is drawn from -Dispatches-.

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars DISPATCHES by Michael Herr, March 26, 2008

By 

thepaxdomini "The Book Review" (Tulsa, OK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dispatches (Hardcover)

Dispatches is former Esquire writer Michael Herr's book about his experiences in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. The book chronicles Herr's many in-the-line-of-fire experiences there, as well as his conversations with American soldiers.

At first, it appears that Herr is not writing chronologically, but jumping around with little rhyme or reason. Eventually, though, it becomes clear that things are relatively chronological. From there, the book settles into something of a pattern whereby Herr chats with combat-tested young grunts, does some drugs, listens to some rock music and quotes some song lyrics. This repeats, countless times, until the end of the book.

One of the most excellent things Herr has done here is capture the dehumanizing, personality- and behavior-changing aspects of war. Many of the soldiers Herr talked with had developed eccentricities or mental illness from their experiences. The overall effect is that the reader is left with a profound sense of the many crazy things that people did in Vietnam.

Dispatches is a piece of New Journalism, which was en vogue in the 1960s and 1970s. In this style, people write nonfiction using devices from literary fiction, including using scenes rather than historical narrative and using conversational dialogue. Herr does this and more, writing in a "cool", scattered, borderline incoherent style.

Herr was either not well-acquainted with the semicolon, or he eschewed its use in an attempt to strike another blow for New Journalism. He often strung complete and independent sentences together with commas, sometimes three and four at a time. Somewhat distracting also is Herr's constant use of the word "spade" to describe black people, which is at the very least mildly derogatory, and at worst overtly racist.

It is rather obvious to draw the parallel between Herr's writing style and the nature of the Vietnam War: both were disorganized, scattered, and lacking a coherent flow. On the one hand, this purposeful stylistic selection on Herr's part helps to underscore to the reader what Vietnam was really like. On the other hand, it is used as an unchecked license not to write according to any accepted guidelines, and even to use words like "spade" needlessly.

Herr's book was well received upon its release, but it does not hold up so well now. Herr used songs, lyrics and drugs to try to stretch the boundaries of what writing can be, but it does not quite work. Stephen King is another writer fond of frequently inserting song lyrics into his writing. The problem with this is, the songs and lyrics that have special meaning to the author may not have any significance whatsoever to the reader. So while the author may be accurately recreating even the background details of his experiences, as far as drugs and music are concerned, the reader typically cannot fully relate, if at all.

Herr certainly got plenty of mileage out of his Vietnam experiences - he also contributed to the screenplays for the films Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket.

Certainly, Dispatches is not as good as the gushing reviewers on the jacket would have us believe; at least, not any more. If, at the time it was published, it truly did offer revelatory insight into American culture, it has not held up so well. Yet Dispatches remains valuable and interesting, particularly as a journal of American culture in wartime Vietnam, but less so as a piece of New Journalism.

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