Paco's Story

by Larry Heinemann

This novel focuses on Paco Sullivan, the lone survivor of a massacre in Vietnam, who travels back to the United States, becomes a dishwasher in a short-order restaurant, and is haunted by the ghosts of the men killed in battle

Genres: Fiction, War, Historical Fiction, Literature, Military Fiction, Literary Fiction, Novels

Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Larry Heinemann (1944-2019) was an American novelist born and raised in Chicago. His body of work is primarily concerned with the Vietnam War. Mr. Heinemann served a combat tour in Vietnam from 1967 to 1968 with the 25th Infantry Division, and has described himself as the most ordinary of soldiers. Mr. Heinemann's military experience is documented in his most recent work, Black Virgin Mountain (2005), his only nonfiction piece. Black Virgin Mountain also chronicles his return trips to Vietnam and his blunt personal and political views concerning the country and the war. He has often referred to his books about Vietnam as an accidental trilogy.

While serving in Vietnam, Mr. Heinemann fought in a battle near the Cambodian border in which filmmaker Oliver Stone also participated. Mr. Heinemann writes of the battle in his first novel, Close Quarters (1977), and in Black Virgin Mountain, and it also forms the basis for the climactic battle scene in Stone's Platoon.

His fictional prose style is uncompromisingly harsh and honest, and reflects his working class background. His second and critically acclaimed novel is Paco's Story (1986), which won the 1987 National Book Award for Fiction, topping Toni Morrison's Beloved in a decision that some thought controversial.[1] At the time, Mr. Heinemann's only response to the controversy was that the prize, a check for $10,000, was already cashed, and that the Louise Nevelson sculpture, a gift from the National Book Foundation, was not likely to be returned. Paco's Story relates the quasi-picaresque postwar experiences of its titular protagonist, who is haunted by the ghosts of his dead comrades from the war. These ghosts provide the novel's narrative voice. The story deals with the role of the American GI as both victim and victimizer. It is interesting to note that ghost stories are common in both American and Vietnamese literature about the war.

His third novel, Cooler by the Lake (1992), departed from the topic of Vietnam and was not very successful, either critically and commercially.

Mr. Heinemann's short stories and non-fiction have appeared in Atlantic Monthly, GRAPHIS, Harper’s, Penthouse, Playboy, and Tri-Quarterly magazines, as well as Van Nghe, the Vietnam Writers Association Journal of Arts and Letters in Hanoi, and numerous anthologies including The Other Side of Heaven, Writing Between the Lines, Vietnam Anthology, Best of the Tri-Quarterly, Lesebuch der Wilden Manner, The Vintage Book of War Stories, and most recently Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace edited by Maxine Hong Kingston. His work has been translated into Dutch, German, French, Spanish, and Vietnamese.

Heinemann learned the craft of writing at Columbia College, Chicago which he attended from 1968 to 1971. In 1971 he began teaching creative writing at Columbia, a position he held until 1986, the year Paco's Story was published.

He has received literature fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2002-03 Mr. Heinemann was granted a Fulbright Scholarship to research Vietnamese folklore, legends, and mythology at Hue University.

Mr. Heinemann served as the Visiting Writer-in-Residence at Texas A&M University until 2015.

He died December 11, 2019, of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Reviews

[Irene · Rating 4 out of 5]

The writing mesmerized me while much of the content repulsed me. The language was absolutely musical with its rhythm and assonance. The descriptive passages were pure poetry from a lengthy discussion of menu styles to the contents of a small town hardware store. Paco is a Vietnam vet drifting across America. We watch him for a few months while he is living in a cheap motel washing dishes at a little diner. He is doped up on pills and liquor to mute the brutal pain that cripples his body and psyche. The story is told by a ghost that hovers near Paco, one of his dead platoon mates. He narrates both Paco’s story as well as that of the medic who found him, the tattooed soldier, Gallagher, the self-destructive young girl who spies on him and so many more. We are asked to watch the gang rape of a Vietnamese teenaged girl and an old Eastern European jeweler talking to his long dead wife through the same lens of gorgeous and vulgar prose. This is a violent, haunting novel, deserving of its awards, but uncomfortable to read.

[Rob · Rating 1 out of 5]

what an awful piece of writing. the voice is the most irritating i have ever encountered. on the same page, the tone careens back and forth between pretentious pseudo-literary over-writing (words like "lilting" and "echo-ous", endless strings of adjectives, dumb similes, and lists of meaningless descriptive details) and larry-the-cable-guy haw haw blather (bangin pussy, smokin dope, gettin some, know-it-all winking nonchalance). and there is no doubt that it is supposed to be a single voice. the owner of the voice is finally confirmed on page 137, and it is one more dumb, pointless gimmick.

interestingly, the voice is abandonded for the last 10 pages, granting a small measure of solace to the reader.

how this won the national book award is totally mind-boggling. at least it was short.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book written by an old graduate school instructor of mine (an instructor whose last class meeting of the quarter nearly got all of us drunk graduate students kicked out of school and arrested [as it turned out, only one of us got arrested (not me) and we all got kicked off of campus. But that's a story for another day, as Larry would say]). My bias aside, however, it's a terrific war (post-war) story told by a ghost. Literally.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

How does one write in such a way that every sentence is poetry...?

[Sheehan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Started out really liking (4stars) the book, which follows a lone surviving vet in his returning travails to the States, but waned to just liking it (3stars) as the resolution of the story sort of deflated the first 2/3rds storyline. Most of the characters kind of monologue in a not entirely plausible way, but the topics, time frame and perspective of the returning vet and the people he met, were very interesting, and a bit novel from other things I have read.

I had initially thought this book rivaled, "The things they carried" in tone/scope and wondered how I had never heard of this book before picking it up used; then the end sort of summed up to me why this book wouldn't really be taught in a classroom. I'm not gonna spoil the ending, but it has a less satisfying resolution than other veterans novels; and of course I didn't expect a happy ending, but I also didn't feel like the journey was over when the writing ran out either...

[Richard Schaefer · Rating 2 out of 5]

At the beginning of Paco’s Story, the narrator (the unnamed ghost of a soldier who died in the battle that spared only Paco), tells us this is not a war story. He then goes on to talk about war (Vietnam specifically) for a number of pages, but all in all he’s right; this isn’t a book about war, and it’s worse for it, because Heinemann’s prose only comes alive when he is writing about combat. Paco, discharged from the army and wandering America without purpose, is a cypher whose personality we never come to know during the novel. Sure, he’s haunted by these ghosts, but that doesn’t produce a lot of tension, to be honest. And while the point of the book seems to be a comment on how unsupported returning Vietnam veterans were upon their return to the States, it renders it in a thoroughly boring way. There is little to no character development (Paco comes to a random town, stays a while, then leaves without making any enduring connections), and the narration is padded with thoroughly frustrating tangents (such as a three page essay on what the appearance of a menu says about a restaurant) and unnecessary monologues from side characters. There is a voyeuristic element in the form of a young woman who watches Paco from a distance, paying cruel sexual games with him from afar (they never actually speak), but this too lacks tension because Paco himself is so lacking in anything approaching a personality. I tend to be pretty good at self-selecting books I’ll enjoy, but once in a while a book like Paco’s Story slips through the cracks; the prose was half-baked and bloated, the plot lacked momentum or purpose, and Paco didn’t have much of a story to tell. Too bad.

[Dennis Henn · Rating 1 out of 5]

National Book Award winner? The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote, "Exceptional for its bleak, shared unexceptional reality." It was bleak. Eliminate the gratuitous profanity and the book shrinks by a third. Exceptional for its unexceptional reality. An odd statement. Maybe I didn't get the book. I have read much better books on Vietnam.

[Addy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book follows the mantra “if you don’t upset people; then what are you writing for?” None of the war stories I have read have been a walk in the park by any means, but this one was perhaps the most upsetting, in part because the majority of the action takes place outside the jungles of Vietnam.
As the titular Paco attempts to adjust to his life after the war, an omnipresent, omnipotent narrator introduces him and his exploits. This narrator has a habit of addressing the reader directly, which I enjoyed, because it implicated me in the events of the story. There was very little breathing room between our reality and theirs, which made the trauma of war feel all the more real. I also appreciated how the structure advanced the distressing tone of the novel. Paco would go from standing in his hotel room in small town Texas, to being transported back to a hut in Vietnam and reliving some of his most traumatic memories. To me, this felt like a very true to life depiction of PTSD, and it kept the trauma of Paco’s past painfully present.
I am very glad I read this book; I think it added a lot to my understanding of the Vietnam war narrative by addressing the struggles faced by veterans upon returning to a country that was not even supportive of their contributions to the war effort. But it is such a cynical, depressing novel, that this will probably be the only time I read it. In the capable hands of Larry Heinemann, even a mundane restaurant menu becomes something despicable, as though this is a commendable skill as an author, it is hard to read more than once.

[Sarah Funke · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's no "The Things They Carried," but then it's not trying to be. Depressing but good.

[Scottnshana · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recall the early ‘80s explosion of Vietnam novels that occurred shortly after Mark Baker sat down with vets and compiled the interviews into the compulsively readable “Nam). I swiped this book from my father’s nightstand and got sucked in immediately. My circle of 14-year-old friends larded our conversations with phrases like “pop a cap” and “frag” as the book got passed around and its physical condition quickly eroded. Later, in the Army, my Sergeant Major, who was drafted into the 101st in 1967, was keen on addressing the captains as “Dai Uy” and regaling us with cadences about Ho Chi Minh’s venereal diseases. My point is that post-Boomers like me are still fascinated by our fathers’ conflict. Twenty-three years have passed since Larry Heineman published “Paco’s Story”, and I’ve been through a couple of wars of my own and graduate school, but I still find myself burning through the entire Ken Burns documentary series in a weekend. This era—with its slow-motion photography of F-4s blistering the jungle with retarded Snakeye bombs, OD-clad Marines blowing holes through concrete walls at Hue, and Coppola’s famous Air Assault scene from “Apocalypse Now”—still represents an absolutely fascinating epoch in modern history. Did the ‘60s end with Charlie Manson or the Stones concert at Altamont? I would argue vets like Paco experienced that sensation long before either event. I seriously believed I had seen all this genre had to offer after Karl Marlantes’ “Matterhorn”, but I found Heineman’s book engrossing when I picked it up this winter. Like “The Deer Hunter” it is less about the firefight than the aftermath. The long description in Chapter 3 (“The Thanks of a Grateful Nation”) of being prepped for and then waking up from a traumatic surgery is wrenching, but spot-on: “…they smeared the first doses of surgical soap on his chest and arms, then commenced to scrub him raw. When the shot finally took full effect, Paco felt only a vague grinding sensation, that was all, as though someone were gouging the stringy meat and seeds from a ripe pumpkin with a blunt wooden spoon; it sounded as though they were scrubbing coarse cloth, bearing down with great vigor.” The chapter also contains a humorous 5-page monologue from a bus driver, and so I think Chapter 3 serves as a microcosm for the rest of the novel—marrying up disturbing details of long-term pain with the day-to-day numbness of routine, then sporadically hitting the reader with an uncomfortable laugh. To be succinct, I liked this Vietnam novel, with its aching but patient protagonist; its raw depictions of dirt, blood, and fragments of spent shell casings ground into flesh; as well as its economy of words (when Heineman writes phrases like “guys smelling of cheap, fishing-trip beer” there’s no need to expand on it). For a narrative on going through a meat grinder, it is clean, honest and worth a recommendation, I think.

[Deb]

I read it long ago. I remember it was very vivid and sad.

[Audrey-Uyen Hoang · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paco's story is written with graphic, lyrical language that brings his horrific war memories, and his trying to fit in as a veteran of a war that nobody really understood, to life. Heinemann writes in an unusual, dream-like way that just draws the reader in, until they feel like they are feeling what Paco feels. He writes of Paco's seemingly mundane experiences and transforms them into something cathartic.

Paco's story has some clever conceits: there is the narrator, who only reveals himself slowly and carefully, as a ghost from Paco's decimated company in Vietman, and appears to have some companion who he calls James; but we are never told who James is, and why it is necessary for the narrator to tell him Paco's tale. Paco himself is a type of ghost. For the protagonist of an entire novel, we get extremely little insight about Paco qua Paco. Even his odd name, Paco Sullivan, hints at some wider, more humorous story, which is never exploited in this novel. Paco acts more like a ghoul than the narrator, who in compelling ways, is more fleshed out than Paco. We know Paco is wounded physically and psychologically, but we never get his own voice. It is reflected through others, but it lacks immediacy. Yet even with this vital flaw, Paco's story is a moving elegy to war, its victims, both dead and alive, and the confounded human ability to forget the horrible price of waging war itself.

A must read for anyone interested in Nam.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Paco’s Story is the simple tale of a soldier who is grievously wounded during the Vietnam War. Heinemann begins the novel by showing us Paco’s horrific physical injuries, but really the book is about the equally debilitating mental injuries he carries with him. The writer uses the blunt simple speech of the soldier and small town denizens of Boone, Texas to great effect. His prose is lean and hard. The plot of the story is incredibly simple and is designed not to get in the way of one of the novel’s themes, the blind eye that society turned on Vietnam vets upon their return. It is a somewhat ugly book about an ugly subject, and the author tends to make his point in a fairly heavy handed manner at times. Heinemann makes an interesting choice with his narrator that is revealed a little over halfway into the book. Suffice it to say that it isn’t Paco, and the story is being told to someone named “James”. In the preface the author indicates that he viewed the story as the sort of thing that would be told on a back porch from one person to the other.

I listened to this book on audio, and I found the reader to be excellent. The story was hard to put down once I really got on a roll with it. The novel won the National Book Award. Did this book deserve to win over Toni Morrison’s Beloved? Since I haven’t read that book, I can’t really speculate about it. I will say that at 224 pages Paco's Story is worth your time.

[Serena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paco's Story by Larry Heinemann chronicles the war experiences of Paco, the only surviving soldier of the Fire Base Harriette massacre from Alpha Company. The narrative is unusual in that Paco does not tell his own story of his survival or his recovery and ultimate return to the United States from the Vietnam War. Though readers get to know Paco through the eyes of others and his nightmares, Paco is a vivid and lost character in search of peace.

"Paco is in constant motion, trying to get settled and comfortable with that nagging, warm tingling in his legs and hips." (Page 35)

Heinemann's language is raw, scraping down to the guts and bones in his readers, making them cringe, turn away, and stand agape. A number of readers may find the graphic scenes in this novel to be too much, but what makes them uncomfortable are the realities of war and the breakdown of humanity. Paco struggles not only with why he was the only survivor, but how to assimilate himself back into a society he no longer recognizes once stateside.

Read the full review: http://savvyverseandwit.com/2010/07/p... ‎

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Larry Heineman's Paco's Story, Paco was the only surviving soldier after a raid that decimated his unit. With both physical and mental scars, Paco re-enters society, going through the motions of life. Readers are offered a glimpse at how a soldier from that war was treated upon his return, both with disdain and occasional pride. We get an inside look at the horrors of war, and Heineman pulls no punches in describing the war in brutal and honest terms.

Paco's Story began strong, one of those books I was sure would be a five star book by the time I finished. However, I was a little put off by the shifting voice of the narrator as the novel went on. It was inconsistent at times, and therefore a bit disjointed. It is still a powerful book, one I am glad I read, and deserves a high rating and much of the praise it has received.

[Lois · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paco's Story is about young Paco Sullivan. Sole survivor of his unit's ambush, he has returned to the States to look for work. Left with painful injuries that require powerful painkillers every day, Paco encounters both curiousity and discrimination from the locals in the small town he ends up in.

Paco's story is written with graphic, lyrical language that brings his horrific war memories, and his trying to fit in as a veteran of a war that nobody really understood, to life. Heinemann writes in an unusual, dream-like way that just draws the reader in, until they feel like they are feeling what Paco feels. He writes of Paco's seemingly mundane experiences and transforms them into something cathartic. A must-read for anyone interested in Nam.

[Old Man JP · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story of a soldier in Vietnam who survived two days lying in the sun with the flies after being grievously wounded in a battle that killed everyone else in his squad but him. The parts of the book describing his survival on the battlefield, the chopper flight evacuating him and his hospital stay were outstanding with exceptional writing, the rest of the book was trash. The first couple of pages were atrocious, the writing so bad that I almost stopped there, but then it suddenly turned into an outstanding book worthy of the National Book Award. Unfortunately this didn't last. The last half of the book became a drudge to wade through, much of it seemed to be filler to lengthen it and the writing very pretentious.

[Rachael · Rating 5 out of 5]

the author was my creative writing professor at texas a&m & he was amazing. i was a bit desensitized to the book, as he had told our class about a few of the more gruesome scenes, so i wasn't as offended by the audacities of war that the american soldiers committed against the vietnamese, particularly the women. larry is a great writer. he also liked me a lot & gave me a's, so that helps. he really liked my hair.

[Johnny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Strangely hard to find even as we are again mired in a horrible, endless, an increasingly pointless war, "Paco's Story" represents another piece of the Vietnam literature canon, along with the works of Fussell, O'Brien, and other. The opening vignette could be a story in itself and propels the unique narrative within the story. Someday this novel will receive its due

[Eddie · Rating 3 out of 5]

if you could give 1/2 stars, this would rate a 3.5. it won the nat'l book award, and i really enjoyed it, but it was a little rough around the edges. still. anyone interested in vietnam lit has to read this.

[Ferris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Audiobook...........Stark, disturbing, evocative..........Try to imagine being a living ghost, whom no one really sees, disfigured by war wounds after supposedly fighting for your country, and the sole survivor of an attack on your unit in Vietnam. Enough said!

[Ana Cunningham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely fascinating and life-changing novel. Besides the fact that I actually finished this book for class, it was such a gripping and heart-wrenching tale. I cannot wait to read more from Larry Heinemann!

[Mrs. Palmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

An incredibly disturbing story, but powerful as well. There are some scenes of extreme violence, but the voice is true. An important novel for those interested in the soldier's experience of Vietnam-and after.

[Ann-marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elegant, brutal, timeless. Should be on more reading lists. If you've read or teach Tim O'Brien's work, assign this as well. Just read it.

[Sycobabel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Harrowing but mesmerizing. Well deserving of the National Book Award. Heinemann has an explosive, raw writing style. Reminded me a bit of Céline's Journey to the End of the Night.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

I still remember the haunting feeling I experienced when I realized "who" is the narrator of Paco's Story.

[Johnplavelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Larry Heinemann described the Vietnam Memorial long before it was designed and he hit it right on the head.

[Neil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another great Nam book.

[Tom Hooker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Account of the survivor of a Vietnam massacre, and his life after he returns to the U.S. Stark reading, but it gives a good feel for what these guys had/have to endure.

[Tony Perry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible piece of work!