Customer Reviews

Meditations in Green

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4 star:		(3)
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James Griffin uses drugs, not to forget the Vietnam War, but to remember. Home, in the United States, James finds life rife with loneliness and alienation. The Vietnam War, he tells us, really didn't mean anything; all of the fighting was, and will become, fruitless.

James' girlfriend, Huey, is a painter of sorts who paints graffiti on walls, graffiti she calls "soulographs." These soulographs are huge abstractions of the war. James' wall is covered with them, so he whitewashes all of his walls and asks Huey to paint something new. But while she is in the process, the old soulographs begin to bleed through, causing James to experience a flashback to his Vietnam years where he imagines himself in the middle of battle with flashes and flares and rifles all around.

In a surrealistic and utterly brilliant and original manner, Wright manages to show us all the similarities of the Vietnam War and life as we lead it on a day-to-day basis. His protagonist, James, realizes these connections and begins to meditate, to escape these similarities, to escape the absurdity of life, both then and now.

Meditations in Green is a highly symbolic and surreal book. Wright, one of the most brilliant and original writers of the twentieth century, writes this novel in a very elusive manner, using very elusive narrative strategies and structural principles, organizing the book in interesting, overlapping, spiraling circles, which often echo, duplicate and bleed through one another much in the way Huey's soulographs do.

By attempting to devolve himself down to a plant form, James hopes to purge himself of his memories and antipathy towards nature and its eternal cycle of birth and death and rebirth. He is, like all of Wright's characters, very flawed, but these very flaws are what make him so human and let us identify with him and his sufferings.

Stephen Wright is a brilliant writer, but one whose extremism has caused him to be sadly undervalued by the general public. For some reason, I don't believe Wright care much about this. We should care, however, for Wright is brilliant, original, creative and absurd. His books are surrealism, black comedy, absurdism and postmodern literature of the very highest order. Wright is a writer not to be missed by anyone even remotely interested in great literature, postmodern or otherwise.

I've now read all of the Stephen Wright novels that I know to exist--except his latest as of this writing *The Amalgamation Polka* --and the sad thing is that there aren't more of them to discover. A writer like Wright ((yes, how appropriate the name)) is the reason the English language was invented beyond the grunts and whistles necessary to have someone at the end of the table pass you the salt. There are hardly more than a handful of authors writing today--or any day--who can make words burn incandescent and illuminate our consciousness the way Wright does. Don DeLillo is another such writer, and the two share many similarities, but Wright is the more poetic; his prose glows at every turn of phrase with revelatory images, like matches in the dark on a journey that begins anew with virtually every sentence and ends in a place you've never been before. His *Going Native,* which I read before I started writing Amazon reviews, is a brilliant, shocking, and disturbing novel, hands-down one of the best contemporary novels and my favorite of Wright's work--possibly up to now. *Meditations in Green* is every bit it's equal, if not its superior. Here's why.

As a war novel, *Meditations in Green" stands with the great ones--the true classics: *The Naked and the Dead,* *All Quiet on the Western Front,* *The Thin Red Line,* *The Red Badge of Courage,* *Catch 22,* as well as any and every novel that has heretofore staked a claim as *the* novel of Vietnam. For my money, *this* is the novel to read about Vietnam--the one I think will be read in the future.

James Griffin is a soldier assigned to a branch of military intelligence located on the ground in Vietnam. His job is to study reconnaissance photos of the surrounding terrain in order to locate enemy positions in the dense jungles that are systematically being bombed and subsequently poisoned by Agent Orange. The novel switches back and forth between Griffin's time in-country and after his discharge, where he lives a marginal and fractured post-war existence in a rundown apartment in Manhattan's Lower East Side. *Meditations in Green* also shifts its focus on the kaleidoscopic cast of characters with whom Griffin serves--a positively staggering number of viewpoints that seem to encompass virtually the entire war experience. It's difficult to keep track of all these characters and I don't think you're really meant to do so--Vietnam was a fracturing and incoherent ordeal and to convey that disorienting "center does not hold" experience is a good part of Wright's intent at every turn. Soldiers come, they go, they come back again, they die, they go crazy, they go "native," they spiral away into alcoholism, drug abuse, suicidal recklessness--they try to get to the end of their time in Vietnam any way the can. You can't blame them.

War is mind-numbing boredom interrupted by occasional orgies of horrifying violence--add a few ingredients particular to the Vietnam recipe, including the relentless heat, smothering humidity, and oppressive omnipresence of the jungle, the ghostly elusive VC, and the liberal use of narcotics to escape it all and you have a nightmare from which there is no escape--even after the war is officially long over. For the war in the mind never ends in peace. Wright does as good a job as anyone writing "under the influence" of pharmaceuticals--by which, I mean, mimicking the hallucinatory state of drugged consciousness in fiction. Each object in the world literally becomes a metaphor for something else, nothing is only what it seems, everything is everything. In fact, the drugged state is a good metaphor for the war itself.

*Meditations in Green* is an anti-war novel but anti-war in a way elevated above mere politics and rant. Wright allows war to make the best argument against itself--the violence, the absurdity, the cruelty, the inhumanity, the senseless tragedy of war as an assault on the human being is what we're shown in plain detail. Here is the green hell we've made ourselves on earth, the anti-Eden not even Agent Orange can subdue, the inferno that collectively as a nation we build wherever mankind wages war. And here, described in Dantean detail, are the tortures of the innocent damned of those we throw into this hell to fight for their lives...and for the sins of our way of life.

*Meditations in Green* is a beautiful novel, a horrific novel, an epic novel--a testament brought back from the wilderness by a wild-eyed prophet whose seen whatever lies at the end of the long dark night of the soul. I cannot recommend it highly enough. I cannot give it too many stars. The last forty pages are as harrowing and as moving as anything you'll ever read. The contemporary American `literary' scene is virtually nonexistent, and where it does exist, it's littered with a gaggle of much celebrated pseudo talents and outright no-talent hacks who can't scribble close enough to the center of the road or try hard enough to say what's already been said, which is just another way to say nothing at all. Stephen Wright is--as the line in the recruitment ad says--an "army of one." He's fighting an undeclared war against stupidity and complacency and easy answers to questions that have no answers. It's a losing battle, but he's got the courage of his convictions. I salute him.

A book like this comes all too infrequently. I picked it up a decade ago in a Bangkok bookstore, and when I put it down I felt like I had been struck between the eyes with a 2x4. The book revolves around the Vietnam War and its aftermath, but like "Catch-22", "Meditations" simply uses the war as a backdrop to focus on the modern human condition. Darkly humorous and insightful, I recommend it to every friend.

The fact that this book is receiving so little attention encourages me to start a ten-page rant, but as that will never be reproduced, let me just say that it's an absolute travesty that this author is being essentially neglected.

Any comparison to Mailer or Vonnegut or O'Brien is absolutely superfluous. This is a unique American voice, a John the Babtist crying in the wilderness and feeding on locusts, but the blind will never hear. This is an Artist in the strictest sense who moves and shapes print in ways that others cannnot hope to emulate. I have no reservations in raising his standard in whatever rung of hell we find ourselves in at present. This is the real deal, people. Put away your childish things and read the message of a true modern prophet, crying from the confines of Hades, urging us to at least look closely at ourselves, even if it drives us mad.

Yes, the chilling disillusionment; the banker who didn't have your best interest at heart; the preacher man denouncing gays with his male escort service assignations on the calendar. The list is long. The Vietnam War still divides America, and will, longer than my lifetime. So much ink has already been expended: the scholars who handled the geo-politics, and the passing of wind of the political and military leadership; the numerous journalists who cranked out augmentations to their first script of history; and the soldiers themselves, some still wrapped in the medals and comradeship of their units, and the belief that we would have won, only IF... , and the other side, the soldiers who came, and truly saw what was before them, and could not forget; in a nation that had never learned and remembered in the first place.

Wright conveys so many of the essential truths of the Vietnam War experience for Americans in his surreal account... a stoner's version of the war, but one that saw far deeper than most. And sometimes uniquely so. The subject quote is from the section that alludes to the torture of Vietnamese by Americans... worse than even drilling into health teeth. The author goes on to say: "Now an actual field phone interrogation was about to take place not six feet from where he sat. He didn't know what to think. He just hoped he wasn't going to be asked to turn the crank. `Doesn't hurt as bad as it looks,' explained Captain Raleigh. `Think of the lives we're saving.'" Wright describes the rationalization that wasn't really public then, that would be re-cycled for the so-called War on Terror. We torture to save lives. The higher purpose. It lingers with me still, that night at LZ Tom, in northern Binh Dinh province, the screams of the woman, the denial, as Wright describes, this couldn't really be happening, and yet it was, but it was Vietnamese on Vietnamese, taught and supplied with our latest techniques. So, you do nothing. A failure.

There were other parallels as well: the general's telephone request to locate the "maddeningly elusive 5th NVA Regiment." Ours was the maddeningly elusive 18th NVA Regiment, and having been in a tank unit, found it impressive that Wright included the correct specs on the M48 tank (p 6).

And there were the truths that have been expressed in other books, but Wright can charm with his own pithy formulations: "Has anyone ever bothered adding up those numbers," said Simon. "We must have wiped out the entire population of North Vietnam at least twice over by now." Or, "...the VA wouldn't give me a Band-Aid if I slit my wrists in their lobby." Or, "American military uniforms should be woven with money, fives, tens, twenties, stitched into combat durable shirts and pants, all most civilians saw anyway: a fool wrapped in cash." Or on our intelligence efforts: "A wish became a guess, a guess an estimate, an estimate the reality."

And for a stoner's view, he knows his history more than most of the journalists who covered the war, discussing the disillusionment of a former pastry cook at Escoffier after he found out Wilson was only advocating self-determination primarily for the white people of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. Wright also has seen Hearts and Minds - Criterion Collection and includes Dulles offer of a couple of nukes to help the French at Dien Bien Phu.

Comparisons with Catch-22 are appropriate, for each bring out the absurdity that is deeply embedded in the "logic of war," but Wright's vision is both darker, and more erudite. The American involvement in Vietnam was complex and multi-layered, and a view through a kaleidoscopic is as valid as any linear exposition. Wright's is such a vision, and should be considered in the very top ranks of books about the war.

As for prescience, Wright wins, hands down, for a book written in 1983. "Oh, there will definitely be a peace all right; the question is how long will it last. The smart boys are all learning Spanish." "I would have guessed Arabic." (p 309) (!) (Exclamation point added). A solid 5-star read, and in the top ten, of books, on "the `Nam."

If dark humor"specialist" Danny DeVito ever wanted to direct a VietNam genre "M.A.S.H." meets Kubrick's"FULL METAL JACKET",this book would be the blueprint.The feverish prose picks up where Micheal Herr's"Dispatches"leaves off.Remember the 1st person narrative of Capt.Willard's character in"Apocalypse Now"(especially written for the film by Herr)? This writer takes you to that dark place where,if you're not armored with an acid sense of humor for the profoundly absurd,we would surely go mad.

It's obvious, having read the two so close to each other, that Meditations in Green is heavily influenced and inspired by Catch-22, but it's also obvious that whatever its genesis, Meditations is a wholly unique work. Like Catch-22, Wright takes a massive array of characters and creates a book more about episodes than a cohesive narrative; while it's not as train-of-thought as Heller's work, it's still wandering from story to story, jumping from character to character. But while Catch-22 is laugh out loud funny, Meditations is filled with the sort of humor that always seems to arise from books about Vietnam - that dark, brooding humor than only results in uncomfortable silence from those of us who weren't there. There's also unimaginable horrors here, as well as copious drug use; in other words, it's definitely Catch-22 filtered through the Vietnam experience. But the feel of the book is wholly different. There are no innocents in Wright's world, only less damaged people, and no one comes out unscathed. "It meant there were cliffs where he once assumed there were fences," Wright writes about a character who discovers unpleasant truths about the war, and that feeling of trying to cope with and comprehend the horrors of Vietnam permeate the book. But what will always set apart Wright's work, especially Meditations, is the masterful writing. Wright brings a wholly new dialogue and language to the book, crafting images of the jungle as massive, abandoned hotels, or creating a nightmarish firework display and a torn, leaking sky out of a midnight gun battle as observed by stoned soldiers. The combination all adds up to a book unlike anything you have ever read, creating an experience that lingers in a visceral, vibrant way long after the book is done. There's no through message here, no central metaphor, no ability to laugh at the war; there are only survival techniques - be they drugs, insanity, routine - and horrors. What Wright creates is one of the finest, most literate, and most sadly neglected books about Vietnam ever written. An unknown masterpiece.

The premis of Meditations in Green is just the start of this journey into a book that rates the highest praise in the pantheon of Vietnam War literature. Some of the scenes created are so vivid, the sweat began to drip from my brow and I thought I was bleeding. It is that good. And that sad. The contrast of the steamy jungle battlefield and the blandness of the world back home is powerful. A truly great book.
Ron Lealos author of Don't Mean Nuthin'

As much as I hate to bludgeon the author with comparison to another writer, I will say this could easily be the book John Steinbeck would have given us had he served in the Vietnam War.

The other reviewers are quite right in pointing out that this is easily one of the most underrated works of American lit ever.

Phew - where do you start a review of a book like this?

I started reading this one and I found myself struggling. Too much coloring in and conscious stream had me rolling my eyes and rereading too many lines. About 50 or so pages in it started to turn for me. After that, I was devouring it.

Not having read Catch-22 (yet) I can't make the analogies some reviewers have. Here's my take, Meditations in Green is a cerebral novel of one man's (Private Griffin) journey through Vietnam interlaced with his life after Vietnam.

The book is by chapters and each chapter is loosely broken into 3 parts: 1. The musings of a plant. 2. Life after Vietnam. 3. Life in Vietnam as a soldier. All the players in the book are so well developed that you feel you know them. The writing style is, like the players, laid back but crisp some how. Very descriptive text allows you to somehow "Feel" the story as opposed to just view it. The conversations are real and flow with a banter that is common to all of us. Wright has 100% nailed the whole absurdity and incomprehensible BS that follows the military around and on which the military tends to thrive.

Griffin's character is one of intelligence and given to inward analysis along with viewing the world through a skeptical lens. His conversations with his buddies, and anyone in general, drip with sarcasm and a wit that makes you smile. You imagine him as always having that academically bored look all over his face and a sigh with every breath exhaled. Despite seeming older than his years, you feel a kind of naivete from him as he stumbles and resets his way through Vietnam and it's many follies.

He tells us stories of his acquaintances in Vietnam who either met untimely death, got sent home, went mad or just accompanied him through his tour. The skepticism he displays and reluctant respect he pays his superiors is spot on and reminded me so much of my time in uniform.

One exchange I particularly enjoyed went something like this (paraphrasing):
After a US plane crashed on take off and both occupants were killed. Two soldiers stood talking about one of the dead.
"Damn, he only got here last week"
"That would make a great epitaph: He only got here last week"

That kind of tired, unmoved and unimpressed sarcasm resonates through the book and, I have to admit, I enjoyed it....... a lot.

I'll try more of Stephen Wright's work as it's refreshing in a worn out and tired sort of way that pulls no punches and doesn't even start to attempt to be clever. We won't be remembering Wright as a "Shakespeare" or "Jane Austen" but, for those who read his work, he will hold a place in their top 10 I'm sure.