Gunning For Ho: Vietnam Stories (Western Literature Series) [Paperback]

H. Lee Barnes (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The past--harrowing, traumatic, mesmerizing--encroaches on the present again and again in this lean, mean, fighting first collection of seven stories, all of which are set during or in the long shadow of the Vietnam War. Barnes, who served in the elite U.S. Army Special Forces, writes of a character, "The more he resists memories, the more they intrude." In contrast to Tim O'Brien or Larry Heinemann, whose work paved the way for this book, Barnes waited a long time before writing about 'Nam: he has been a deputy sheriff, a PI, a casino dealer and only recently a writer grappling with the discombobulation of combat. The result is that the fighting is mostly secondary in his stories, while the relationships between the men who served take central focus. In the collection's finest piece, the harrowing novella "Tunnel Rat," talk in the jungle invariably centers on home. Fine lyric descriptions of the landscape's beauty ("diaphanous thermals shimmered where the sun bore down on the emerald paddies in the lowlands") make the carnage somehow unreal; yet "they measured days by casualties." A father in "A Return" grasps vainly for memories of his son, an MIA for 15 years, whose body is belatedly coming home. Resignedly, he understands that "the world ends one life at a time. Who decides when a boy's world ends?" And a vet in "Plateau Lands," on the eve of being reunited with his handicapped 'Nam buddy, winner of a Silver Star, and now running for Congress, learns the truth: "Mel didn't save me. It was luck." Not for the first time (as we know from Civil War accounts), a white flag is raised in the midst of combat and a pick-up game of baseball ensues between the Delta Company Yankees and the North Vietnamese Giants ("A Lovely Day in the A Shau Valley"). Though Barnes's work does not finally outshine previous Vietnam-based fiction, his writing is clean-cut and vibrant, and his stories ring true.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Barnes' stories have a strong sense of a dark, dreamlike state where the strange and bizarre go head to head with the very real terror of war. In "Stonehands and the Tigress," a tiger cub becomes a pet of one of the men. His confrontation with the mother could be all in his head, or it could be real. "He held the rifle but had no intention of shooting. Her body twitched. She flicked her tail once again and an instant later disappeared into the fog. What would he tell his squad? Who would believe it?" A few seconds later Stonehands must call in a mortar round as he is suddenly surrounded by Vietnamese soldiers. In "The Cat in the Cage," an American POW is paraded from village to village in a cage. The edge between dream, nightmare, and raw reality is very thin in most of these stories. Just when you thought you had heard the last of the Vietnam War, another voice demands to be heard. Marlene Chamberlain

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: University of Nevada Press; 1ST edition (March 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0874173469
• ISBN-13: 978-0874173468
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,453,042 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gunning For Ho, March 23, 2000

By 

Tonja Page (Las Vegas, Nevada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gunning For Ho: Vietnam Stories (Western Literature Series) (Paperback)

I read Gunning For Ho from a unique perspective...I've known the author, H. Lee Barnes, for some twenty three years. I can truly say (and should, in honesty for this review) he is a rare jewel in my current group of lifetime friends. But...when I met him, he was impenetrably wrapped in the shield of his own personal darkness...the major souvenir he (and so many others) brought home from Vietnam. I cared for him, and wanted to know him...but there is no caring for a man who cares for nothing...and there is no knowing a man who has lost faith in everything he ever believed he knew. Lee and I lost touch with each other for over eighteen years. In those years, this man, who I predicted to do a slow and certain self destruction, was busy rebuilding and refilling himself. He achieved academic degrees by going to school at night while working full time in the emotionally and intellectually draining environs of a casino. He learned that he loves the language, and the sculpting of it. He found that he enjoyed and was gifted at sharing knowledge and imparting skills to the young and bright and eager. He became a writer, then a teacher, and then a professor. Eventually he grew to use his new comfort with words as self-therapy, and somewhere during this healing (exorcism?), he emerged with a full and freed soul. He is now a man with much to say about the experience that so tainted his youth; indeed, tainted all the youth of our nation for a decade. This book contains the essence of his considerable insight about the unique experience that was the war in Vietnam. You have never in read any other author's work the same perspective that you will find here. Lee's mastery of characterization is unequalled. You not only believe these young men he offers you, you earnestly care for them. You agonize for them, and your heart is warmed by them, often unexpectedly. This author has refused to be pulled into the trap of polishing his subjects, or glorifying their motives or results...he steadfastly writes them as they surely were; scared, brave, ethnic, dumb, smart, real. You will never read anything on Vietnam that more accurately conveys the uniqueness of this conflict; the simple geography of it, the unconscious sociology of it, the fragile humanity of the boys our nation dispassionately sacrificed to the experience of it. Read this book. It's not a war novel; it's a seriously creative collection of stories about a surreal experience that was arguably the grittiest and most definitive reality of a generation. I expect many more books of quality from H. Lee Barnes, but I don't expect any more work on this subject. This man survived, returned home, reclaimed himself, and acquitted himself. He now offers his exceptionally literate view of the experience and the men who died in it, the men who lived through it, and those who just got lost in it. H. Lee Barnes no longer qualifies as one of those lost. I think his Vietnam tour is finally over and complete, and his upcoming horizons are free of it...and this book is both his parting shot and his heartfelt tribute to the Vietnam War.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Truth, March 20, 2001

By 

A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Gunning For Ho: Vietnam Stories (Western Literature Series) (Paperback)

Despite having been born in the latter years of the Vietnam War, and not having read deeply in the field, I am confident this collection of six short stories and a novella by a former Green Beret, is destined to be a classic of Vietnam War fiction. Destined because they resound with the truth--and aren't really concerned with making any political statement. Barnes's stories tell you about the young men who went off to war in an alien landscape, and how they--and those they left behind--were transformed forever. The first three stories are thematically joined by strong surreal elements that speak to the wider confusion and disorientation felt by many who served. More like Kafka than Conrad. The fourth and fifth stories are more straightforward tales of aftermath and picking up the pieces. I found the novella ("Tunnel Rat") to be somewhat more elusive than the stories, and less forceful. It may take a re-reading or two to really get at it. The final (and title) story is a direct descendant of Heart of Darkness, and succeeds in spite of traveling that well-worn path. As a whole, this collection is a testament to the humanity of the men who went to Vietnam.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Powerful Book, October 3, 2000

By 

Charles M. Nobles (Tulsa, OK United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Gunning For Ho: Vietnam Stories (Western Literature Series) (Paperback)

There are now well over 700 novels and short stories published about the Vietnam War. It seems that everyone that was ever involved, even peripherally, and a number who were not, in that tragic war has written a book. Most can be found, and deservedly so, on a remainder table in a used bookstore. However, every now and then a book comes along that is destined to find it's place on a bookshelf along side the precious few truly good Vietnam War stories. This is such a book. H. Lee Barnes is a combat veteran of Vietnam.He earned the Combat Infantry Badge as a member of the U.S. Army's Special Forces "Green Beret" units while serving near the Laotian border. He was on the ground, up-close and personal. It has taken him some 30 years to sort out his feelings, earn a MFA in writing, and write this superb collection of short stories. What distinguishes this work and makes it unique is the author's uncanny ability to have the characters seem real and believable, sometimes in the face of almost unbelievable circumstances, real and imagined. They are not talking to the reader but to each other. The reader is an observer that is ultimately drawn into the conversation or action in an almost imperceptible manner. The object of the character's attention is not the political correctness of the war or why and how they got there. Multitudes of other books have done that. Rather it deals with their emotions and feelings and how they individually and collectively managed to survive the madness. It is at times humorous, tragic, maddening, gentle, uplifting and unsettling. Come to think of it, much like everyday life. The book contains six short stories and a novella. They all deal with how both the combat participants and family at home cope with the hand fate has dealt them and ultimately, on somve level, prevail in the spirit. This is one powerful book. I have read it twice now and seem to get something different from it with each reading. This is destined to be a classic collection of Vietnam War stories. It should also be noted that Gunning For Ho is another example of the fine books being published by University Presses. Such presses may not get the attention afforded the major houses in the east but they do compete in the quality of their releases.