Delirium about ”Dispatches” by Michael Herr.
Literary hardcore. The only book that Michael Herr wrote - a war correspondent in Vietnam and a co-writer of the "Apocalyps Now. A story told in an atmosphere saturated with smoke from marijuana, opium and hashish with the addition of odor of corpses, fear, fumes of white phosphorus called "Willy Peter", exhaust, sweat, "Agent Orange" and ubiquitous napalm.
A land of 19-year-olds or 20-year-olds who have already seen everything.
The heroes of the notes are a group of freaks and originals, connected by forced or, as you can see especially from the journalistic brothers, a voluntary addiction to adrenaline. Herr is not interested in big names or military rankings. The selection criterion seems to be rather the character's eccentricity. And this is usually a side effect of long-term functioning in inhumane conditions. The report from the general's speech must, therefore, reflect the place of the serial history, which, under the influence of post-traumatic stress, is afraid of returning home. Viewed from a psychological perspective, Dispatches can be read as a collective case study - a description of progressive madness caused by stress and a constant sense of threat.
This is not a book for a lazy Sunday afternoon and I definitely do not recommend it to people with weak nerves and sensitive stomachs. Excess plastic imagination can also bring unwanted results. With this book, James Jones's with his The Thin Red Line appears as a reading for virtuous schoolgirls.
There is nothing here about heroism, sacrifice for the Homeland (obligatory by the big "H”) patriotism and other "isms" overflowing books of authors who not only seen the real battle, but even the close back of the front did not see from a distance of less than several hundred kilometers.
There is a lot about fear, pain and sense of nonsense.
About young boys who were coming back for next turns because they could not find themselves in family homes. They returned to Vietnam, to the relief of their own and their relatives. Because how to find a sense of meaning in something that the Author perceives as:
You were there in a place where you didn't belong, where things were glimpsed for which you would have to pay and where things went unglimpsed for which you would also have to pay, a place where they didn't play with the mystery but killed you straight off for trespassing
This is one of those books that should be a compulsory reading for all "genetic patriots", War Ministers and other politicians, recognizing Clausewitz's thought as their own creed that "war is only a continuation of politics by other means".
Subjective selectivity also accompanies the description of American warfare. I am not sure if after the reading of the reportage the reader will be able to recall the names of Vietnamese cities covered by the toughest fighting. But will be able to recreate the claustrophobic atmosphere of the trenches and the surreal sense of absurdity that accompanied the witnesses of these events (which has been perfectly used even in the classics of Coppola and Kubrick).
Today we are sure that devotion to this atmosphere required extraordinary literary talent, rare journalistic instinct and solid, humanitarian sensitivity. For lovers of reportage, militaria and contemporary history - a must-read.