Illumination Rounds: from Dispatches

by Michael Herr

Fresh in his boots and three days in-country, Michael Herr is in a Chinook when a young soldier across from him is gunned. “It took me a month to lose that feeling of being a spectator to something that was part game, part show.”   Written in unforgettable and unflinching detail, Herr captures the chaos and fervor of the war and the surreal insanity of life in that singular combat zone. Selected from Dispatches, one of "the best book to have been written about the Vietnam War" (The New York Times Book Review) and an instant classic straight from the front lines.A Vintage Shorts Vietnam Selection. An ebook short.

24 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 8, 2017

About the author

Michael David Herr was an American writer and war correspondent, known as the author of Dispatches (1977), a memoir of his time as a correspondent for Esquire (1967–1969) during the Vietnam War. The book was called "the best book to have been written about the Vietnam War" by fellow author C.D.B. Bryan in his review for The New York Times Book Review. Novelist John Le Carré called it "the best book I have ever read on men and war in our time."

Reviews

[Φλεγύας · Rating 3 out of 5]

3/5

A very short story about the Vietnam war. I'm sure it must have been more effective in past decades and, even more so, to Americans. As it is now, I can only judge it on writing style and the emotions it stirs.

It didn't work for me. Not very well. I was hooked at first, at how the story teller describes the detachment from reality and going through the experience of being shot at as something that wasn't real. I also felt a few of the other details, like the doctor who was thinking he smiled when he said "thank you" but his face didn't change at all.

However, I feel like we've had better deliveries of the horrors of war.

3/5

[Christian Cederberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Merely about 40 pages all taken from Dispatches, which in it self isn't a long book.

[Luke Crawford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Others have complained... but I really like the 'vintage short' style of grabbing some chapter out of a well-known book and editing it a bit to be it's own thing? It's a great way to get a flavor of the thing.