Review: Dispatches

Dispatches by Michael Herr
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Wow.

I wasn't there "in the shit", but nothing I have ever read on Vietnam reads more authentic that this work by a correspondent that hunkered with "the grunts", was at Khe San, smoked weed and drank whiskey in the bunkers and got real with it in a way bordering on gonzo journalism.

I did a little research and was in no way surprised to learn that Michael Herr later became a Hollywood writer, lured to the movies by Francis Ford Coppola to work on Apocalypse Now. The tone and outlook of this book and that movie are very much aligned. The scene at the bridge is exactly as described, right down to the stoned M79 gunner killing the screaming VC with a single, instinctive shot in the dark. The movie was surreal based on a war that was surreal and Herr reported that surreal aspect as he experience it, it appears.

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