>>>> Article Review -- “Dispatches” <<<<

[Marcus Minucius Audens]

>>>> Article Review -- “Dispatches” <<<<

Michael Herr, “Pages of History,” Military Officer Magazine, (Oct. 2016), D. Vaughan;
“Dispatches,” Pub. 1997, (“to rave reviews”).

Hundreds of print and broadcast journalists covered the Vietnam War, but Michael Herr’s “Dispatches” was notable for its visceral depiction of the experiences of service members. Nearly 40 years later, it remains required reading for military journalists.

Herr went to Vietnam in 1967, as a correspondent for the Esquire Magazine and produced a handful of masterful stories over the course of his year in-country. Upon his return to the U.S., Her began to work on “Dispatches” but had to put the book aside when he fell into a deep depression.

“I flipped out,” he told the Los Angeles Times in a 1990 interview. “I experienced a massive physical and psychological collapse.”

An evocative combination of memoir, observational journalism, and fiction;

“Observed novelist John Le Carr’e,“Dispatches,” is the best book I have ever read on men and war in our time.”

“Dispatches” now is considered one of the seminal books to come out of the Vietnam War, but it wasn’t Herr’s only exploration of the two-decades-long conflict. He also contributed to the unsettling narration for Francis Cuppola’s Apocalypse Now, itself and adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and co-authored the screenplay for Full Metal Jacket with director Stanley Kubrick and writer Gustav Hasford, whose book The Short-Timers served as the movies inspiration.

Herr died June 23 following an undisclosed illness; he was 76 years old.

Respectfully Submitted;
Marcus Audens