An angry yet ultimately moving journal of the quest for closure many Vietnam vets may never find.
Writing of his return to Vietnam almost three decades after he went to war and came home “pissed off and ground down by a bottomless grief I could not right then begin to express,” novelist Heinemann still vents rage and melancholia.
He’s not some old soldier trying to recapture the good old days, insists the National Book Award winner (Paco’s Story, 1986, etc.). Images of torn, shattered, and crisp-burnt corpses resurface along with the constant prod of the eternal question: for what? For roughly the first half, Heinemann can muster only tortured placeholders for an answer: generally, variations on the theme of war as the ultimate obscenity. (A close reading of his text should, incidentally, dissuade anyone who professed to believe that John Kerry single-handedly cobbled up stories of American atrocities in Vietnam.) Heinemann’s memories are vivid, almost brutally etched, particularly with respect to ordinary soldiers’ behavior as the wrong-headedness of the whole deal starts to sink in. Troops discovered, for example, that they had commonly arrived at the conclusion that the best way to expose anyone who gave a stupid order, from President Johnson or General Westmoreland on down to the “lifers” (career officers) on the front lines, was to follow it to the letter. Heinemann’s trip back in 1990 with a company of writers immediately began to prompt purgative effects—along with the horrific memories. He began a kind of “brothers in arms” reconstruction of what the Viet Cong were all about, how they moved in the night and through the dreaded Cu Chi tunnels. On a subsequent trip he was impelled to ascend Black Virgin Mountain (Nui Ba Den), which gave him a view of nearly the entire area in which his war year was spent. On the summit, he realized that he felt oddly but undeniably at home.
An angry yet ultimately moving journal of the quest for closure many Vietnam vets may never find.Pub Date: April 19, 2005
ISBN: 0-385-51221-X
Page Count: 196
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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