“Maybe nothing's so unfunny as an omen read wrong.”

June 30, 2016 12:42 PM

Michael Herr, author of Dispatches, dies aged 76. [The Guardian] Michael Herr, the American writer and war correspondent famous for writing Dispatches, described as “the best book I have ever read on men and war in our time” by John le Carré, has died aged 76. Born in 1940, Herr was one of the most respected writers of New Journalism, the novelistic reportage pioneered by the likes of Tom Wolfe and Truman Capote, where the journalist is as much part of the story as their subject. He practised this most famously in his book Dispatches, about his time working as a war correspondent for Esquire magazine in Vietnam between 1967 to 1969.
posted by Fizz (19 comments total)

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posted by Fizz at 1:08 PM on June 30, 2016

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posted by Pendragon at 1:16 PM on June 30, 2016

Dispatches blew my 15-year-old mind back in the day. Major influence on me,

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posted by jonmc at 1:41 PM on June 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

Dispatches blew my twentysomething mind, and I recommend it to people to this day. What an amazing writer.

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posted by languagehat at 1:55 PM on June 30, 2016 [3 favorites]

I didn't realize this until recently, but Dispatches was the basis for much of the second half of Full Metal Jacket. IIRC both the "How can you shoot women and children?" "Easy, you just don't lead 'em as much!" and "Anyone who runs is VC. Anyone who doesn't run is well-trained VC." exchanges came from the book.
posted by asterix at 2:58 PM on June 30, 2016 [3 favorites]

Not that I want to derail my own thread, but more as a celebration of this style of journalism and the type of reporting that Mr. Herr was known for, I'd love any suggestions for contemporary war correspondents that are similar. Either here or in my DM. Thanks.
posted by Fizz at 3:34 PM on June 30, 2016

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posted by Flashman at 3:53 PM on June 30, 2016

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posted by Chichibio at 4:07 PM on June 30, 2016

I didn't realize this until recently, but Dispatches was the basis for much of the second half of Full Metal Jacket. IIRC both the "How can you shoot women and children?" "Easy, you just don't lead 'em as much!" and "Anyone who runs is VC. Anyone who doesn't run is well-trained VC." exchanges came from the book.

He did a script pass on Apocalypse Now too, there's a scene in there (the VC attack and the ghostly guy with the grenade launcher) that's verbatim from Dispatches.
posted by Sebmojo at 4:42 PM on June 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

About every ten years I reread Dispatches, Tim Page's NAM, and Webb's Fields of Fire to see how much things have changed.

The Short Timers by the late Gustav Hasford, was the other novel Kubrick used for Full Metal Jacket.

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posted by ridgerunner at 4:45 PM on June 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

Oh man, I took a class on Vietnam-era literature once, and I remember how much, out of everything we read for the class, it was Dispatches that totally blew my (also twentysomething) mind.

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posted by teponaztli at 5:26 PM on June 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

Michael Herr wrote a great deal if not all of the voice-over narration in Apocalypse Now.

He wrote a lovely book, "Kubrick", about his friendship with Stanley Kubrick. A must read for Kubrick fans.
posted by conrad53 at 5:37 PM on June 30, 2016

I remember as I read it, i would ask my (vietnam veteran) dad about various pieces of jargon and acronyms in the book and he still knew what they ment almost twenty years down the line from his tour.
posted by jonmc at 5:46 PM on June 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

My American Lit prof had us read quite a bit of Vietnam era writing, and it's Dispatches I remember the best, even 20 years later. Truly excellent writing.

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posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 7:12 PM on June 30, 2016

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posted by scruss at 7:52 PM on June 30, 2016

I used to teach Dispatches and it was one of the few texts that always, always moved the students.

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posted by TwoStride at 8:04 PM on June 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

I say without reservation that Dispatches is one of the most indelible books on that war I've read, a superb book in a class with Going After Cacciato or A Rumor of War. It's unforgettable to me, comparable to With the Old Breed: At Peliliu and Okinawa or War is A Force That Gives Us Meaning in impact. We're very lucky, as observers, to have this as a record. Thanks for your post; his is a passing that definitely merits observance.
posted by ivanthenotsoterrible at 8:54 PM on June 30, 2016 [3 favorites]

I have not yet read Dispatches, just purchased it on Audible. A book I've meant to read, not gotten to it but now it's in my hot little hands; I'm looking forward to reading it, also looking forward into learning more about Herr.

Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War by Karl Marlantes is a novel written by a man who lived it; Marlantes graduated Yale, was a Rhodes scholar, left Oxford after one semester to volunteer for the Marine Corps, trained to become an officer, served with distinction as a 2nd and 1st lieutenant in Vietnam.

I absolutely believe the characters in that novel, it's really well-written and it rings true. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Marlantes also wrote the non-fiction book What It Is Like To Go To War and that book definitely is about what it is like to go to war. But it is also -- and perhaps more -- it is also about what it is like to come home from war. Today you're in a Humvee on an incredibly dangerous piece of dirt in Afghanistan, 22 hours later you're in an airport in Cincinnati and your wife and kids have yellow ribbons and huge smiles and you've got your best friends blood on your boots maybe, and who knows how much blood on your hands, and how the fuck can you make this transition without going insane? Or can you. Marlantes writes about the lack of space/time between here and there and the lack of any sort of ritual(s) to help these ppl unwind etc and etc. Hell of a book.

I know that this is Herr's thread but also have seen reference to other war books and Marlantes has given us two great ones.

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posted by dancestoblue at 4:03 AM on July 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

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posted by Autumn Leaf at 5:36 PM on July 3, 2016