{"id":1746,"date":"2016-09-13T08:52:00","date_gmt":"2016-09-13T08:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uniofglos.blog\/?p=1746"},"modified":"2024-11-05T14:00:20","modified_gmt":"2024-11-05T14:00:20","slug":"literature-history-and-the-vietnam-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/2016\/09\/13\/literature-history-and-the-vietnam-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Literature, History, and the Vietnam War"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_1751\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1751\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1751\" src=\"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/159\/sites\/446\/2018\/05\/herr.jpg\" alt=\"herr\" width=\"300\" height=\"450\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1751\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Michael Herr (1940-2016)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1748 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/159\/sites\/446\/2018\/05\/dispatches.jpg\" alt=\"dispatches\" width=\"376\" height=\"570\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Writing a preview of the Cheltenham Literature Festival, I suggested all History students should read literature.\u00a0 I was reminded of this today when I read the (belated \u2013 he died in June) obituary of Michael\u00a0 Herr in <em>The Guardian<\/em>.\u00a0 Herr\u2019s book, <em>Dispatches<\/em> (1977), was one of the most powerful pieces of writing dealing with the war in Vietnam and provided the basis of one of the best Vietnam war films, <em>Apocalypse Now<\/em>.\u00a0 Reflecting the \u201cnew Journalism\u201d that emerged in the 1960s, Herr was in Vietnam as a reporter for <em>Esquire <\/em>magazine between 1967 and 1969. He didn\u2019t just give facts but located himself in the narrative, reporting what he saw and conversations he had with the \u201cgrunts\u201d, American GIs, and what he experienced, often in a stream of consciousness style of writing. Herr often just lets the men speak for themselves, thus providing voices for the ordinary soldier. But his style and language sums up much of the war and its pointlessness:\u00a0 looking at a map of Vietnam he remarks \u201cfor years now there had been no country here but the war.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 A GI describes America\u2019s role in the conflict:\u00a0 \u201cVietnam, man. Bomb\u2019em and feed \u2018em, bomb \u2018em and feed them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Animals - We Gotta Get Out Of This Place\" width=\"1290\" height=\"968\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/wJVpihgwE18?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Vietnam was the rock n\u2019roll war, a \u201cheadset war\u201d \u2013 the soldiers went into conflict carrying tapes of Jimi Hendrix, the Animals, Rolling Stones, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan \u00a0\u2013 the most popular song was the Animals \u201cWe Gotta Get Out of this Place\u201d\u00a0 but \u201cCertain rock and roll would come in mixed with rapid fire and men screaming.\u201d\u00a0 When Herr was overcome by a flashback, his friend says it is nothing to worry about \u2013 \u201cJust your nineteenth nervous breakdown.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 In the end Herr \u201ccouldn\u2019t tell the Vietnam veterans from the rock and roll veterans. The Sixties had so many casualties, its war and its music had run power off the same circuit for so long they didn\u2019t even have to fuse.\u201d In a conversation with one soldier Herr is told simply \u201cPatrol went up a mountain. One man came back. He died before he could tell us what happened.\u201d\u00a0 Herr doesn\u2019t tell us what happened, but what the experience of war felt like. As one reviewer said, \u201cMichael Herr paid the men he encountered a substantial tribute by reporting the details as they would understand them.\u00a0 Just the truth, no message.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 A must read for the History student.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Writing a preview of the Cheltenham Literature Festival, I suggested all History students should read literature.\u00a0 I was reminded of this today when I read the (belated \u2013 he died [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[765,386,243,456,457,262,767,376,367,770,368,769,228,768,772,775,433],"class_list":["post-1746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-american","tag-american-history","tag-american-literature","tag-antiwar-movement","tag-bob-dylan","tag-civil-rights","tag-events","tag-higher-education-2","tag-journalism","tag-libraries-and-archives","tag-media-2","tag-methodologies","tag-military","tag-modern","tag-neil-wynn","tag-publications","tag-vietnam-war"],"blocksy_meta":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1746"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3273,"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1746\/revisions\/3273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}