Don't Mean Nothing: Short Stories of Vietnam [Hardcover]

Susan Kramer O'Neill (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 30, 2001

In this debut story collection–the first by a woman who served in Vietnam– Susan O’Neill offers a remarkable, unprecedented glimpse into the war from a female perspective. All the nurses who served there shared a common bond: to attend to the wounded. While men were sent to protect America’s interests at any cost, nurses were trained to save the lives of anyone–soldier or citizen, ally or enemy–who was brought through the hospital doors. It was an important distinction in a place where killing was sometimes the only objective. And since they were so vastly outnumbered, women were both revered and sexually craved.

For these women and the men among whom they worked and lived a common defense against the awful onslaught of dead and dying, wounded and maimed, was a feigned indifference, the irony of the helpless. “Don’t mean nothing” became their mantra, a small bunker in the real war–the war against total mental breakdown.

Powerful, provocative, and often wonderfully funny, each of these tales offers new and profound insight into how the war in Vietnam forever changed the lives of everyone who served there. “Broken Stone” is an astute look at the relinquishing of faith and the sacredness of sex. The tremendously touching “Butch” is a story of love, loss, and the native casualties of war. And the darkly hilarious “Monkey on Our Backs” follows the escapades of a much-maligned and detested pet primate who causes one Lieutenant so much grief that she asks a Marine to kill it. But like the cat that came back, the monkey remains–a reminder that taming a jungle is an exercise in futility.

A moving contribution by a woman to the literature of Vietnam, Don’t Mean Nothing is eye-opening and unforgettable. Here is a book that enlarges our understanding of the American experience in Vietnam

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

It's a pleasure when a new writer has something to say and says it well. Former army nurse O'Neill's debut story collection captures the physical and psychological tensions of her 13-month tour of duty in Vietnam with refreshing maturity and a profound sense of compassion. The title, she explains in her penetratingly honest introduction, is "an all-purpose underdog rallying cry a sarcastic admixture of `cool,' comedy, irony, agony, bitterness, frustration, resignation, and despair." It addresses the need of the Americans in Vietnam to harden themselves while maintaining their humanity a battle that often seems as unwinnable as the war. O'Neill presents a portrait gallery of nurses, soldiers, and natives, grouped into three sections reflecting the three hospitals where she worked. In "The Boy from Montana," a veteran nurse recalls a casualty of war along with her na‹ve assumptions about medical conditions under fire; "Butch" details the attachment an American soldier forges with a little Vietnamese boy. "Monkey on Our Backs" follows a nurse's efforts to rid the world of her commanding officer's annoying pet, and features a bizarrely funny confession and some unexpected entrepreneurial ingenuity. In another darkly humorous tale, "Commendation," an archetypal schemer named Scully provides a cynic's guide to bureaucratic logic. While many of the images Bob Hope's USO show, the secret war in Cambodia, the music of the times are familiar, they are made fresh through the nurse's viewpoint. O'Neill's stories are both entertaining and thought-provoking, especially when she depicts feigned indifference to all kinds of pain. Focused and sympathetic, this is a valuable contribution to the mostly macho literature of Vietnam. Agent, Nat Sobel. 5-city author tour.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School-O'Neill served as an operating-room nurse in Vietnam from the spring of 1969 till early summer 1970. At the time, her anger and the need to forget kept her from writing about her experience. Now in middle age, she has the perspective to see the situation more clearly and offers a stark, often darkly humorous picture of her Vietnam War. Her stories are fictional accounts of her recollections from three very different hospitals in which she served. O'Neill reminds readers that while soldiers suffered the guilt of killing, the nurses felt the pangs of survivor's guilt. They faced dying and maimed soldiers, many of them in their teens, as well as Vietnamese men, women, and children caught in the war's destruction. Possibly most complex of all, as the only females in a world of battle-charged young men, they faced unrelenting, strident cravings for sex from the men with whom they served. Some women were used, abused, and even raped. These stories offer snapshots in the lives of a series of characters facing war's bloody results and dealing with it as they can-through drugs, through sex, through flaunting the rules, or even by putting a hit contract out on a monkey. Most of the players are barely beyond their teens and their attitudes and actions will strike a chord with most young adults. This is a fascinating glimpse of the Vietnam War from a very different perspective.
Carol DeAngelo, Kings Park Library, Burke, VA
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; 1st edition (October 30, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345446089
• ISBN-13: 978-0345446084
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #657,872 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I was born in Indiana when dinosaurs walked the earth. In those ancient times, it was not uncommon for young lower-middle-class women to be told that they should either learn to type or study to be a nurse. I did both.

So eager was I to leave the flatlands and travel the world, that I believed an Army recruiter who told me he could snag me a hitch in Hawaii or Germany or, at the very least, Fort Huachuca, Arizona, if I just signed this little paper.

Alas, it was a pack of damned lies.

I was walking primly down the aisle of my nursing school's chapel, white cap on my head and spanking new diploma in my hot little hand, when Hey, Presto! The military snatched me up, cross-dressed me, and shipped me off to Viet Nam.

In that strange, backward, put-upon country, I spent a year and a month covered in blood and amorous men. I ultimately married one of the latter. Many, many, many years later, I still can't get rid of the silly man.

Life got complicated, as life always does. I earned a BA in journalism over 16 years while birthing and raising three kids, spending a year in the Peace Corps, working as an RN, writing for local newspapers, volunteer-coordinating just about anything volunteer-coordinate-able, singing in dives, telling children's stories, and moving eight or nine times to keep up with my husband's career.

Now, the kids have flown and, thanks to that aforementioned husband's career, I've been able to cut down on my extracurricular activities and hunker down with my computer. Out of this new leisure have come a pile of reject slips and one major acceptance: a collection of inter-connected short stories about medical types in combat hospitals. It's called 'Don't Mean Nothing: Short Stories of Viet Nam' (Ballantine Books, Black Swan [UK] and UMass Press), and you can find it right here on this site.

It is a pack of damned lies.

When I'm not flogging this quirky little volume, I bike the world (one country at a time), edit the excellent flash fiction eZine Vestal Review, and agonize over the Red Sox.

And I write more damned lies.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stories Too Good to Be Made Up, April 2, 2004

By 

S. Annand (Alexandria, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Don't Mean Nothing: Short Stories of Vietnam (Hardcover)

Susan O'Neill wrote this collection of stories long after her tour in Vietnam. The author served in Vietnam as a nurse from 1969-70. Since I met her at a book reading at the Library of Congress, I got the straight dope on this book.

O'Neill decided to write a collection of stories similar to Tim O'Brien. It would be a collection of different stories that would reflect her tour, written chronologically. What is rather clever is that the author broke the book down into three parts. Each part regards where she served: Phu Bai, Chu Lai, and Cu Chi.

The fact is these stories just can't be faked. The first story,"The Boy From Montana," is basically an initiation. You learn the reason not to get too close to wounded soldiers. Just how do you cope, as a nurse, with seeing young men die every day? In this story, there was no conversation per se, as the wounded man made only one reply to a question. If you take this story in combination with "Prometheus Burned," you really understand the psychological pain nurses suffered by having the soldiers die literally in their arms.

The fun part was the recurring character of SP4 Scully, the devious company clerk. The protaganist, in "The Exorcism," is harassed by a ghost. The author takes you back to Vietnam with her ridiculous discussions with the young female Catholic Vietnamese girl who tries to help her get rid of the ghost. Only Scully can swing the deal--at the cost of her prized pizza mixes. Scully surfaces a couple of more times but the end, when he gives her a "big hand" for her tour, is priceless.

Other reviewers have written about the monkey, starting in "Monkey on our Backs." These things really were a menace. Some guys thought they were just so cute, getting them loaded, then watching them hop around throwing excrement at us. Yeah, real fun. The only "trained monkey" I remember was in the 2nd Bn, 5th Cav, when I went to visit a friend. I wasn't the only one who wanted to kill the monkey that day. (I am a cat person anyway.)

What is sad is that this book suffered from bad timing. It was released around 9-11, which meant nobody was paying attention to it. When the author got a call from England, her "good luck" held out and the Queen Mum died during O'Neill's book tour. So...we all have to buy this book in order to override the bad mojo of the author.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Goes right to the gut, October 20, 2002

By 

Mary Reynolds Powell (Shaker Heights, Ohio United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Don't Mean Nothing: Short Stories of Vietnam (Hardcover)

Susan O'Neill does a masterful job of capturing the feelings we nurses worked hard to suppress in Vietnam. Like Tim O'Brien, she does it with pure poetry. It's the closest anyone has come to conveying the gut feeling of being at a hospital in-country.Thank you, Sue!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Don't Mean Nothing" - A Wonderful Book, January 12, 2002

By 

Elizabeth Moray (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Don't Mean Nothing: Short Stories of Vietnam (Hardcover)

"Don't Mean Nothing" is a wonderful book. Susan O'Neill has a rare ability to bring the reader's heart to their throat just when she's lowered their defences with a good laugh. The book is full of laughter - and tears. There's the breathtaking "The Boy from Montana," a young nurse's first operating room experience, and the beautiful, moving "One Positive Thing," about a nurse's ambivalence over her unexpected, unwanted pregnancy. Every person who went to Vietnam came back changed, and every story in this book shows us how. These are compelling stories, and I recommend them highly.