Tom Burns - There It Is - Narratives of the Vietnam War

ibidem-Press, Stuttgart

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

i. The Vietnam War

ii. The Soldiers

iii. The Narrative Literature of the War

iv. The Present Study

Part I Partisans

Chapter One Early Adventurers

i. Lieutenant-Colonel Landsdale

ii. Graham Greene, The Quiet American (1955)

iii. William J. Lederer & Eugene Burdick, The Ugly American (1958)

iv. M. J. Bosse, The Journey of Tao Kim Nam (1959)

v. Jean Lartéguy, Yellow Fever (1962; English Translation, 1965)

vi. Epilogue: Ward Just, A Dangerous Friend (1999)

Chapter Two Fictional History & Historical Fiction: The Fall of Diem

i. President Ngo Dinh Diem

ii. Stuart Hempstone, A Tract of Time (1966)

iii. Robert Vaughn, The Valkyrie Mandate (1974)

iv. Morris West, The Ambassador (1965)

v. Conclusions

Chapter Three Advisors & Friendlies: Pro-War Novels

i. Optimism in the early phases

ii. Robin Moore, The Green Berets (1965)

iii. Scott C. S. Stone, The Coasts of War (1966)

iv. Richard Newhafer, No More Bugles in the Sky (1966)

v. Gene D. Moore’s The Killing at Ngo Tho (1967)

vi. James Crumley, One to Count Cadence (1969)

vii. Charles Larson, The Chinese Game (1969)

vii. Conclusions

Chapter Four Advisors & Friendlies II: Ambivalent Warriors

i. Doubt sets in

ii. David Halberstam, One Very Hot Day (1967)

iii. Daniel Ford, Incident at Muc Wa (1968)

iv. John Rowe, Count Your Dead (1968),

v. Alan Clark, The Lion Heart: a Tale of the War in Vietnam (1969)

vi. Josiah Bunting, The Lionheads (1972)

vii. Bo Hathaway’s A World of Hurt (1981),

viii. Donald McQuinn, Targets (1980)

ix. Conclusions

Chapter Five Soldiers & Civilians

i. Protestors & Reporters

ii. Norman Mailer, Armies of the Night (1968)

iii. Pamela Sanders, Miranda (1978)

iv. Thomas Fleming’s The Officers’ Wives (1981)

v. Joan Didion, Democracy (1984)

vi. Takeshi Kaiko’s Into a Black Sun: Vietnam 1964–65 (1968, English trans. 1983)

vii. Bernard Kalb and Martin Kalb, The Last Ambassador (1981)

viii. Conclusions

Part II Modes and Genres

Chapter Six Combat Memoirs

i. Autobiographical War Writings

ii. Ron Kovic, Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

iii. Philip Caputo, A Rumor of War (1977)

iv. Tim O’Brien, If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home (1975)

v. Frederick Downs, The Killing Zone (1978)

vi. W.D. Ehrhart, Vietnam-Perkasie—A Combat Marine’s Memoir (1983)

vii. Robert Mason, Chickenhawk (1983)

viii. Tobias Wolff, In Pharoah’s Army—Memoirs of the Last War (1994)

ix. Conclusions

Chapter Seven Allegory

i. Allegorical Vietnam

ii. Jonathan Rubin, The Barking Deer (1974)

iii. Asa Baber, The Land of a Million Elephants (1971)

iv. Victor Kolpakoff, The Prisoners of Quai Dong (1967)

v. Norman Mailer, Why Are in Vietnam? (1967)

vi. Robert Stone, Dog Soldiers (1974)

vii. Joe Haldeman, The Forever War (1975)

viii. Conclusions

Chapter Eight Combat Realism

i. Conventions of Realism

ii. Robert Roth, Sand in the Wind (1973)

iii. Stephen Philip Smith, American Boys (1975)

iv. Tom Suddick, A Few Good Men (1974)

v. William Pelfrey, The Big V (1972)

vi. William Turner Huggett, Body Count (1973)

vii. Larry Heinemann, Close Quarters (1974)

viii. Conclusion

Chapter Nine Combat VS. Ideology

i. Two Authors

ii. James Webb, Fields of Fire (1978)

iii. John Del Vecchio, The 13th Valley (1983)

iv. Comparisons & Conclusions

v. Epilogue: Karl Marlantes, Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War (2010)

Chapter Ten Deviations

i. Alternatives to Realism

ii. William Wilson, The LBJ Brigade (1966)

iii. James Park Sloan, War Games (1971)

iv. John Clark Pratt, The Laotian Fragments (1974) & Vietnam Voices (1984)

v. Ward Just, Stringer (1984)

vi. Lloyd Little, Parthian Shot (1975)

vii. Gustav Hasford, The Short-Timers (1979)

viii. Conclusion

Chapter Eleven Inventions: Fantasy & Metafiction

i. Literature of the Optative Mode

ii. William Eastlake, The Bamboo Bed (1969)

iii. Tim O’Brien, Going After Cacciato (1975)

iv. Nicholas Rinaldi, Bridge Fall Down (1985)

v. Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried

vi. Conclusions

Chapter Twelve Correspondents

i. Reporters in the Nam

ii. Library of America collection: Reporting Vietnam (1998)

iii. John Sack, M (1966)

iv. Harrison E. Salisbury, Behind the Lines—Hanoi (1967)

v. Jonathan Schell, The Village of Ben Suc (1967) & The Military Half (1968)

vi. Gloria Emerson, Winners and Losers (1976)

vii Mary McCarthy, Vietnam (1967) and Hanoi (1968)

viii. James Jones’ Viet Journal (1973)

ix. Michael Herr, Dispatches (1968)

x. Conclusions

Chapter Thirteen Ordinary People: Oral Memoirs

i. War Stories & Oral History

ii. Al Santoli, Everything We Had: an Oral History of the Vietnam War by Thirty-Three Soldiers Who Fought It (1981)

iii. Mark Baker, Nam—The Vietnam War in the Words of the Men and Women Who Fought There (1987)

iv. Keith Walker, A Piece of My Heart: The Stories of Twenty-Six American Women Who Served in Vietnam (1985)

v. Wallace Terry, Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Black Veterans (1984)

vi. Conclusion

Chapter Fourteen Vets: The Return of the Repressed

i. A.R. Flowers, De Mojo Blues (1985)

ii. Jack Fuller, Fragments (1984)

iii. Bobbie Ann Mason, In Country (1985)

iv. Larry Heineman, Paco’s Story (1986)

v. Stephen Wright, Meditations in Green (1983)

vi. Michael H. Cooper, Dues: a Novel of War and After (1994)

vii. Tim O’Brien’s In the Lake of the Woods (1994)

viii. Conclusion

Bibliography

Primary Works

Secondary Works

Parts of this book in modified form have appeared elsewhere:

A shorter version of Chapter Six: “Combat Memoirs of the Vietnam War,” in: VIA LITTERAE. Vol. 5, N o. 1, jan/jun 2013. Universidade de Goiás. Anápolis, Goias, PP. 257-280.

A shorter version of Chapter Seven: “Allegorical Narratives of the Vietnam War,” in: REVISTA ESTUDOS ANGLO-AMERICANOS. Abrapui, S. Paulo. Edição 35, 2012.

A modified and expanded version of Section ii, Chapter Eleven: “Deviations from Realism in the Vietnam War Novel,” VERTENTES São João del-Rei, MG, Brazil, no. 34, July-December 2009, pp. 42-52.

A shorter version of Chapter One: “Art Imitates Life: Edward G. Landsdale and the Fiction of Vietnam,” in: ACTA SCIENTARUM—Language and Culture. Vol. 31, No. 1, Jan-June 2009, pp. 95-102

A modified version of Section ii, Chapter One, “American Interference: A Political-Cultural Reading of Graham Greene’s The Quiet American . VERTENTES. São João del-Rei, MG, no. 30, July-December 2007, pp. 129-137.

I would like to give thanks to several people who were helpful in the research and writing of this book: to Prof. John Clarke Pratt, with his unmatched knowledge of the literature of the war, my advisor who guided me in the planning and writing of the first half of the book during my stay as visiting scholar at Colorado State University, and to the college, which lent me an office and computer, and the library and staff of special collections at CSU; to the Department of English and Corresponding Literatures at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) and Prof. Eliana Àvila, my advisor there; to the College of Letters (FALE), of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), which granted me six months sabbatical leave on those two occasions; to my colleagues of the Center for Study of War, Literature and the Arts (NEGUE), especially José Otaviano Mata Machado, Marcela Gontijo, Elcio Cornelsen, and Volker Jaeckel, for their help and many useful discussions.