An enormously powerful country, with overwhelming military superiority, attacks a much smaller country, which has far fewer resources, but whose people face the assault with unquenchable determination.
Sound familiar?
Back in 1968, when the writer Michael Herr landed in Saigon on assignment for Esquire magazine, the powerful country was the United States and its determined opponents were the North Vietnamese.
Dispatches, Herr’s masterpiece describing men caught up in a war so wild that it seemed to destroy reality itself, has many resonances for all of us watching the news of Putin’s sordid, dishonest. viciously violent assault on Ukraine.
It tells us of the grand delusions of power, and the disenchanted ordinary soldiers who don’t buy the bullshit they’re being sold. It sets the language of literature - in this case a jazzy, hyped-up language that feels like the truth, a language inspired by the music that made Vietnam the first rock’n’roll war, whose soundtrack was created by Buffalo Springfield, Country Joe & the Fish, Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan - against the dead language of officialdom, which wraps its lies in boredom. It understands fear, and looks into the eyes of death, and feels as fresh today as when it was written (first in magazine articles for Esquite back in ‘68, and then in book form, after Herr has recovered from PTSD and deep depression, in 1977).
It’s a book that needs to be re-read right now by anyone who wants to understand the deranged psychology of war, and to have the experience that only great literature can offer - the sense of being there.
We now know that the Vietnam War didn’t turn out so well for the mighty superpower.
We don’t know how the battle for Ukraine will end.
But we can hope.
Don't blame Americans for Vietnam. Blame communists, New World Order. And.... When Catholics get a true pope, proper Consecration of Russia to Immaculate Heart of Mary...
Mankind will be granted a period of peace...
God bless everyone
I had an English professor recommended “Dispatches” to me when it came out so I read it right away. It was amazing then and Herr’s insights have held up. Looking back on America’s recent misadventures in the Middle East only makes the book more powerful. Usually the hype around any book leads to a letdown when you finally read but not with “Dispatches.” The only other nonfiction book that I can think is better than the hype is “The Power Broker” by Caro.