"There It Is": Narratives of the Vietnam War. Tom Burns

Vecchio’s The Thirteenth Valley (1983). They relate stories similar to those of the novels discussed in Chapter Eight, but are more concerned with both describing and justifying the war. My last example of the combat novel, Karl Marlantes’ Matterhorn (2010) is the most recent work and serves as an Epilogue to this chapter, perhaps the last traditional combat novel to be written about Vietnam. It exemplifies how the combat novel of realism is a perennial and popular form, taking up so many of the characters and themes of both this and previous wars.

      Finally, more oblique narrative approaches to the representation of war, commonly known as postmodernist, can be seen in the imaginative works discussed in Chapter Ten, where “Deviations” from traditional realism are examined, and Chapter Eleven, “Inventions,” where even more radical narrative strategies of fantasy and metafiction point to a possible future of the Vietnam novel. It is argued that the fictions discussed in these two chapters—unlike those of Chapter Eight and Nine—could only have emerged from the Vietnam War.

      Part III, “Alternatives,” discusses other types of narratives, as well as fictions about the postwar period. Chapter Twelve features works by journalists, which are generally critical of the political motives behind the war, and, unlike the works discussed in Chapter Three, not just the way it was fought. The political stances and the reporting styles of novelists Mary McCarthy and James Jones are contrasted, as well as those of journalists Harrison Salisbury and Jonathan Schell. Finally, Michael Herr’s postmodernist Dispatches (1977), a widely praised work that challenges traditional journalistic narratives, calls into question the notion of the narrative representation of the war itself.

      Chapter Thirteen discusses the less “literary” oral narratives of veterans, a form, it is argued, which is crucially intermediated by journalist-editors. Chapter Fourteen, “The Return of the Repressed,” concludes this book with discussions of fictional works produced by soldier-writers about their experiences as returning veterans. Chronologically, these novels—some of which are among the most critically well-received of all the writings about the war—have expanded time schemes that cover the postwar lives of their characters, typically moving from home to the war and back again. Some of these works, notably Stephen Wright’s Meditations in Green (1983), could have been discussed in Part II for their interesting generic features and innovative narrative strategies, but the thematic emphasis, the reflection on the war in retrospect, seemed me to justify their being included here. Conversely, Tim O’Brien’s critically acclaimed The Things They Carried (1990) takes up the theme of the veteran after the war, but I have included it in an earlier chapter on narrative inventions. It seems likely that the important works on Vietnam now being written, and to be written in the future, are likely to be of this kind. We probably already have too many gritty combat novels—even while popular culture has churned out a seemingly endless series of what might be called Vietnam action stories—but there may never be enough analytical and imaginative works to help us reflect better on the meanings of the war and its important place in the history and culture of the United States.

1 March 5, “This day in history.” www.history.com

2 Hobsbawm, Eric, The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914-1991 (New York: Vintage, 1996), p. 434.

3 Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes, p. 434.

4 The term is taken from the title of Marilyn B. Young’s The Vietnam Wars 1945-1990.

5 Mary McCarthy, in a discussion of the terms used to designate the National Liberation Front, points out that although the term “Viet Cong” (Vietnamese Communist) was a derogatory label (like “Commie” in the US in the 1950s) and therefore unacceptable to the North Vietnamese, for whom the correct term was “People’s Liberation Army,” it became the common term “in the Western World” to refer to the insurgent forces. She writes that “the derogatory term was “Charlie,” an abbreviation for Victor Charlie, or radio parlance for the Viet Cong. She also writes that just the initials VC were a “half-affectionate diminutive, like ‘G.I.’” McCarthy, Hanoi (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1968), p. 74. In my discussions of the literary works in succeeding chapters, I usually refer to the fighters of the National Liberation Front (NLF) as Vietcong or VC, owing to the greater familiarity of these terms, but, based on that literature, I cannot distinguish any real difference, positive or negative, in VC, Vietcong, Viet Cong, Victor Charlie, or just Charlie, terms that American soldiers seemed to use indifferently, although they understandably never called their enemy the NLF.

6 The Pentagon Papers, as published by The New York Times (New York: Bantam, 1971), p. 54.

7 Ellsberg tells the story in his memoir Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers (New York:Viking, 2002).

8 Summarized, with quotes, from the Introduction by Neil Sheehan, pp. ix-x. The Pentagon Papers cited in this and subsequent chapters always refers to the Times collection in the form of the Bantam paperback of 677 pages. The Pentagon Papers are often the source for the facts cited in many histories of the war.

9 Schulzinger, Robert D. A Time for War: The United States and Vietnam, 1941-1975 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 17-21. It is sadly ironic that Ho Chi Minh worked for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)—the predecessor of the CIA--during World War II, helping to rescue downed American pilots.

10 Herring, George C., America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975. Second Edition (New York: Knopf, 1986), p. 25; Halberstam, David, The Best and the Brightest; Halberstam, David, The Best and the Brightest (New York: Ballantine, 1992), p. 145

11 The Rector of the important Vietnamese University of Hué told the American reporter and writer Ward Just on his trip to that city that the war was really between the Americans and the Chinese., saying that “the Vietnamese had no real part to play except to offer the state”. On the same trip, Just interviewed a revolutionary student leader “who did not feel a part of what the war was supposed to be about, nor especially anxious to die for what they regarded as American foreign policy objectives.” Just, Ward S., To What End—Report from Vietnam (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1968), pp. 132, 134.

12 Butterfield, Fox, “The Truman and Eisenhower Years 1945-1960,” Chapt. 1, Pentagon Papers, p. 10.

13 Butterfield, Pentagon Papers, pp. 3-4.

14 Qtd. in Herring, America’s Longest War, p. 47.

15 Schulzinger, A Time for War, p. 46.

16 Herr, Michael, Dispatches err (New York:Vintage edition, 1991), p. 49.

17 Young, Marilyn B., The Vietnam Wars 1945-1990 (New York: Harper’s, 1991), p. 42.