"There It Is": Narratives of the Vietnam War

iv. The Present Study

The list of narrative works on the Vietnam War continues to grow (one bibliographer lists 3,500 titles since 1977 to his time of writing, although only a fraction of these are imaginative works),105 It is therefore obvious that every work, perhaps even quite a number of deserving ones, cannot be discussed by a single writer. Starting from a list compiled by Pratt, as well as his bibliographic commentary and personal suggestions, I have tried to include a much larger number of works than usual in the critical commentaries of previous books and articles. Such commentaries proliferated during an earlier period, but they seemed to me to constantly recycle criticism of a half-dozen of the same works. In the present study, I have therefore tried to discuss a much greater number of works than are usually discussed, including a few that have to my knowledge never been discussed. To do this required providing extensive plot-summaries, although these have been intertwined with the criticism of the novels in question. It is unlikely that any reader (except perhaps one writing a book like the present one) would read all these novels in their entirety; retelling their stories at length has the function of informing the reader of several works on the same subject or theme that he/she may not wish to read while helping him select one he/she might like to read. I myself have never particularly enjoyed reading articles or hearing lectures on works that I had not read but that seemed to presuppose that I had. At the same time, to appeal to non-academic readers, I have tried to keep Lit-Crit jargon to a minimum, introducing such terms only when it seemed useful for the discussion at hand. Finally, as Tobey C. Herzog did with his study of the combat literature, I have also tried to establish parallels with earlier works of war literature.

As for the organization of discussing these works, I have generally followed Pratt’s proposed bibliographical chronology, which has two axes: in reading Vietnam fiction, he writes, one “should establish two frames of reference...first, the approximate place and time period of the book’s internal action; and second, an external frame of reference that includes a knowledge of the basic historical events plus the book’s date of writing and publication.”106 The only difficulty to this admirable plan is that while the basic historical events ground the fiction in history, the date of writing (an indeterminate time after the events depicted) cannot always be established.

The early narratives on Vietnam discussed in Part I, “Partisans” (cf. Table of Contents), are more easily arranged chronologically. These works are particularly interesting for their varied political attitudes and perspectives, which are often missing in later narratives that take the war for granted and concentrate mainly on action and events. To begin the study of narratives of the Vietnam War, four novels are discussed in the first chapter. They are distinguished by their diverse national points of view—British, American, French, Vietnamese—and will be examined in the order of their historical chronology as determined by the time of their internal action. Three of these novels are said to have been based on the exploits of the quintessential American adventurer, Edward G. Landsdale. The first section, accordingly, focuses on his life and activity within the historical context of the early American participation in Vietnam during the 1950s and early 1960s.

Graham Greene’s seminal novel of 1955, The Quiet American, whose context is the French struggle with the Viet Minh during the years 1951-52, seems to have inspired both Lederer and Burdick’s Cold War tract, The Ugly American (1958), and a more recent response, Ward Just’s A Dangerous Friend (1999), a “rewriting” of Greene’s novel but about events that occur over a decade later. Both M. J. Bosse’s The Journey of Tao Kim Nam (1959) and Jean Lartéguy’s Yellow Fever (1962) give an imaginative glimpse into the historical events of the French colonial war in the mid-Fifties, albeit from opposite sides.

Chapter Two is devoted to five novels that have varied political stances on the Diem regime, its demise, and related military events in the year 1963. Chapters Three and Four discuss a fairly large number of novels that represent the fighting during the period of American advisors after Diem’s fall: the years 1963-64. Certain themes and character types are introduced in these two chapters as being pervasive in the works discussed, even while the individual novels vary widely both in literary value and political attitudes. The fictions examined in Chapter Three, mostly published in the pre-Tet mid-1960s, I have defined as “pro-war” (e.g. the best-selling The Green Berets, by Robin Moore, 1965). These novels are more optimistic and naïve about motivations and possible outcomes. By contrast, those discussed in Chapter Four, which were published in the late 1960s or even later, exhibit greater sophistication in handling the political and moral ambivalence of their characters, and, probably not coincidentally, seem to me to be more accomplished literary works.

Finally, Chapter Five discusses works written by civilians that view the war from the “outside,” whether through the character of a journalist standing apart from it (Pamela Sanders, in Miranda, 1978) or involuntarily immersed in the fighting (Takeshi Kaiko, in Into a Black Sun, 1980). The war in these works is portrayed on a larger canvas—both in space (Miranda) and time (Thomas Fleming’s The Officers’ Wives, 1981). Kaiko’s work, as well as the earliest example analyzed in this chapter, Norman Mailer’s Armies of the Night (1968), take a step further by problematizing the status of the narrator-observer, and in so doing become good examples of the blurred line between fiction and non-fiction present in so many of the more interesting works to come out of the war. The Kalbs’ The Last Ambassador (1981) is included here to give closure to the historical sequence that began with Morris West’s The Ambassador (1965), discussed in Chapter Two.

Part II, “Modes and Genres,” as the title suggests, is less concerned with the historical sequence and more focused on types of narrative. It discusses novels and autobiographical works published mostly in the late 1960s or the 1970s. Written by combat veterans about events that took place starting with the intervention of American combat units from 1965 onward, these works—with the important exception of the numerous combat novels in the mode of realism—tend to be critical of the war. As suggested above, what makes the narrative literature of the Vietnam War interesting, as compared to that of World War II, is the great variety of types of fictions, the narrative strategies employed in fictional and non-fictional works, and the blurring of dividing lines between the two. The chapters in this part have accordingly been organized according to narrative strategies, both traditional and innovative.

Autobiographical memoirs are a traditional form of war writing. The Vietnam versions discussed in Chapter Six illustrate the traditional (Philip Caputo’s Rumors of War, 1977), the polemical (Ron Kovic’s Born on the Fourth of July, 1976), the comic (Tobias Wolf’s In Pharaoh’s Army, 1994), and the unorthodox (Tim O’Brien’s If I Die in a Combat Zone, 1975), as well as other examples. Chapter Seven discusses half a dozen allegorical novels, which is an unusual type of narrative for war novels but a traditional form of older literature. The extremes here may be illustrated by Norman Mailer´s Why Are We in Vietnam? (1967), a hunting tale that recalls classic American fictions, and Joe Haldeman´s The Forever War (1975), a science-fiction novel about an intergalactic war.

In terms of quantity, most fictional works about the war are combat novels written by soldier-authors that are also in the mode of traditional realism. These novels show the greatest continuity with the fictions of previous wars and the least variation in narrative structure. I have chosen nine examples of these for Chapter Eight, perhaps a greater number than is needed, in the hope that their common narrative themes and strategies, and their nearly interchangeable characters, become that more apparent. Chapter Nine discusses two examples of lengthy and more explicitly ideological combat novels that have been more highly praised in the press than the examples in Chapter Eight, as well as more widely discussed in the critical literature: James Webb’s Fields of Fire (1978) and John Del 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.

18 Sullivan, Marianna P., France’s Vietnam Policy: A Study in French-American Relations (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1978), pp. 51-54.

19 Qtd. by Butterfield, The Pentagon Papers, p. 13.

20 Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (1969; New York: Ballantine, 1992), p. 339. The term “containment” is attributed to the US Ambassador to the Soviet Union George F. Kennan.

21 Smith, Hedrick, Pentagon Papers, Chapt. 3, “The Kennedy Years: 1961-1963,” p. 79.

22 Pentagon Papers, p. 91.

23 Herring, America’s Longest War, p. 75.

24 Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest, p. 60.

25 Herring, America’s Longest War, p. 113.

26 Morganthau, Hans, “We Are Deluding Ourselves in Vietnam,” in: The New York Times Magazine (April 18, 1965), rptd. in: The Vietnam War: Interpreting Primary Documents, ed. Nick Treamor (New York: Greenhaven Press, 2004), pp. 176.

27 Smith, Hedrick, Pentagon Papers, Chapt. 4, “The Overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem: May-November 1963,” pp. 158-159.

28 Pentagon Papers, pp. 158-159.

29 Cable, Larry, Conflicts of Myths (New York: NYU Press, 1986), p. 225.

30 Butterfield, Pentagon Papers, Chapt. 2, “Origins of the Insurgency in South Vietnam,” p. 67.

31 Butterfield, Pentagon Papers, pp. 69, 73.

32 Sheehan, Neil, Pentagon Papers, Chapt. 5, “The Covert War and Tonkin Gulf: February-August 1964,” p. 235.

33 Sheehan, The Pentagon Papers, p. 238.

34 Sheehan, The Pentagon Papers, p. 239.

35 Sheehan, The Pentagon Papers, p. 242.

36 Sheehan, The Pentagon Papers, p. 243.

37 Vlastos, Stephen, “America’s ‘Enemy’: the Absent Presence in Revisionist Vietnam War History,” in: Rowe, John Carlos, and Rick Berg (eds.), The Vietnam War and American Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), p. 66.

38 All the quotes are cited from James Bamford’s review of Matthew M. Aid´s The Secret Sentry: The Untold Story of the National Security Agency: “Who’s Who in Big Brother’s Database?” in: The New York Review of Books (November 5, 2009), p. 30. The second quotation is taken from Aid’s text.

39 Schulzinger, The United States and Vietnam, 1941-1975, pp. 152-154.

40 Karnow, Vietnam—A History. 1983. (Revised Edition, New York: Viking Penguin, 1991), p. 432.

41 Boettcher, Thomas, Vietnam—the Valor and the Sorrow (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1985), p. 212.

42 Karnow, Vietnam—A History, p. 412.

43 Fussell, Paul, Wartime. Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 16. Fussell notes that 14% of the bombs dropped turned out to be duds.

44 Boettcher, Vietnam—The Valor and the Sorrow, pp. 209-212.

45 Boettcher, Vietnam—The Valor and the Sorrow, p. 262.

46 Cf. Chapter 12, below, for journalistic commentaries on this operation.

47 Schmitz, David F., The Tet Offensive: Politics, War and Public Opinion (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), p. xiii.

48 Bowman, John S. (ed.), The Vietnam War Day by Day (Hong Kong: Mallard Press, 1989), p. 120. For a detailed description of how the Tet Offensive failed as a military operation, see Chapter 10 of Victor David Hanson, Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power (New York: Doubleday, 2001), pp. 349-439.

49 Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest, p. 379.

50 Herring, America’s Longest War, pp. 221-223.

51 Qtd. in Pratt, John Clark, Vietnam Voices (New York: Penguin,1984), p. 551.

52 Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes, p. 436.

53 In a review of the 2017 documentary “The Vietnam War” by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, Frances Fitzgerald writes that Burns was asked why he had undertaken the project: “Burns said that more than forty years after the war ended, we can’t forget it, and we are still arguing about it.” Novick added that we are all “searching for some meaning in this terrible tragedy.” Fitzgerald, “The Pity of It All,” The New York Review of Books, November 23, 2017, p. 30.

54 Schulzinger, A Time for War, p. 285.

55 Young, The Vietnam Wars 1945-1990, p. 319. There seems to be an erroneous perception that World War II was also fought by teenagers, as reflected, for example, in the title of Paul Fussell’s memoir, The Boys’ Crusade: The American Infantry in Northwestern Europe, 1944-1945 (New York: Modern Library, 2003). As stated above, the average age of American soldiers in that war was 26, reflecting no doubt the universal participation of men in what was seen as a necessary war.

56 While only 2% of Americans in the 1960s came from towns with populations of fewer than one-thousand people, four times as many of those who died in the war (i.e. 8%) came from towns of that size. Appy, Christian G., Working-Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam (Chapel Hill, 1993), p. 14.

57 Appy, Working-Class War, p. 12.

58 Appy, Working-Class War, p. 37

59 Young, The Vietnam Wars 1945-1990, pp. 319-320; Appy, Working-Class War, p. 33. Appy adds that only 6% received training, mostly in elementary reading skills, as compared to the 40% trained for combat.

60 These various motives are commented on, with examples, by Appy, Working-Class War, pp. 44-85.

61 Appy, Working-Class War, p. 106.

62 Capps, Walter H., The Unfinished War: Vietnam and the American Conscience. Second Edition (Boston: Beacon Press, 1990), p. 1. A caveat here: poet-scholar-veteran William H. Ehrhart, LaSalle University Library Director, and veteran John Baky, spent considerable time tracing the origin of that statistic, which “seems to go back to a 1976 pamphlet put out by the AFSC…that offers no basis for the assertion, no footnote, no source; the ‘fact’ is simply stated without support” (Ehrhart, personal communication).

63 Hynes, Samuel, The Soldiers’ Tale—Bearing Witness to Modern War (New York: Penguin, 1997), p. 221.

64 Hynes, The Soldiers’ Tale, p. 222.

65 Baum, Dan, “The Price of Valor,” in: The New Yorker (July 12 & 19, 2004), pp. 45-46. The findings of Marshall, in Men Against Fire (New York: William Morrow, 1947) have had considerable impact on the US Army. Marshall also wrote a widely distributed manual for soldiers in the Vietnam War. For Marshall’s influence: Frederick D. Williams, SLAM: The Influence of S.L.A. Marshall on the United States Army (Ft. Monroe, VA: US Army Training and Doctrine Command, 1990).

66 Baum, “The Price of Valor,” p. 46.

67 Baum, “The Price of Valor,” p. 46. The study referred to is a PhD dissertation (1999) by Rachel McNair on the psychological effects of violence, using data from the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study, which interviewed 1,700 veterans in the 1980s. Reanalyzed P.T.S.D. data obtained from these veterans suggested that one in five veterans suffered from the malaise, rather than one in three, as formerly believed. Baum, however, thinks that this new analysis may have been motivated by the desire of the Veteran’s Administration to cut back expenses for their treatment (p. 46).

68 Shay, Jonathan, Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character (New York: Scribner, 1994), pp.108-109 and 111-115.

69 Bilton, Michael and Kevin Sim, Four Hours in My Lai (New York, Penguin, 1992), pp. 120-121. This book was an outgrowth of a British TV documentary and contains the photographs of the massacre by an Army Sergeant that served as proof at Calley’s trial. Many veterans naturally resented being called “baby-killers” by American civilians, but this terrible crime was evidence that the accusation was at least true for some soldiers in some documented cases.

70 Herzog. Tobey C., Vietnam War Stories: Innocence Lost (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 106.

71 Cronin, Cornelius A., “Lines of Departure: the Atrocity in Vietnam War Literature.” In: Jason, Philip K. (ed.), Fourteen Landing Zones: Approaches to Vietnam War Literature (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1991), p. 215.

72 Fussell, Paul, Wartime (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 113, emphasis in the original.

73 FitzGerald, Frances, Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1970), p. 359.

74 Just, To What End—Report from Vietnam, p. 71.

75 Qtd. in Appy, Working-Class War, p. 233.

76 Fox Butterfield, “Who Was This Enemy?” The New York Times Magazine (February 4, 1973), rptd. in: Reporting Vietnam: American Journalism 1969-1975 (New York: Library of America: 1998), pp. 408-409.

77 Roth, Robert, Sand in the Wind (New York: Miracle Books, 1974), pp. 563-564.

78 Herring, America’s Longest War; p. 243; FitzGerald, Fire in the Lake, p. 422-423. For Loren Baritz, the figure for hard-drug users is much higher: 28%. Baritz, Backfire: A History of how American Culture Led Us into Vietnam and Made Us Fight the Way We Did (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), p. 315.

79 FitzGerald, Fire in the Lake, p. 422.

80 O’Nan, Stewart, “Introduction” to The Vietnam Reader, ed. Stewart O’Nan (New York: Anchor Books, 1998), p. 1.

81 For example, Renny Christopher’s The Vietnam War/The American War: Images and Representations in Euro-American and Vietnamese Exile Narratives (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995).

82 Nguyen, Viet Thanh, The Sympathizer (New York: Grove Press, 2015). The quote is from page one.

83 O’Nan, “Introduction” to The Vietnam Reader, p. 3.

84 Hanley, Lynne, Writing War: Fiction, Gender, and Memory (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1991), pp.103-104. The internal quotations are cited by the author from Doris Lessing’s novel The Golden Notebook (1973).

85 Hanley, Writing War, p. 105; FitzGerald, Fire in the Lake, passim.

86 Tal, Kali, “Speaking the Language of Pain: Vietnam War Literature in the Context of a Literature of Trauma.” In: Jason, Fourteen Landing Zones, pp. 217-218.

87 Tal, in “Speaking the Language of Pain” (cf. previous note) argues that while trauma resulting from war, the holocaust, rape, etc. can be managed, it cannot be completely exorcized, as it can never really be forgotten.

88 Ringnalda, Don, Fighting and Writing the Vietnam War (Jackson, Miss.: University of Mississippi Press, 1994), p. viii.

89 Ringnalda, Fighting and Writing the Vietnam War, p. 91.

90 Fussell, Wartime p. 268.

91 Young, The Vietnam Wars 1945-1990, p. 328.

92 Jason, Philip K., Acts and Shadows: The Vietnam War in American Literary Culture. (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), p. 3.

93 Bates, Milton J., The Wars We Took to Vietnam: Cultural Conflict and Storytelling (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), p. 2.

94 Bates, The Wars We Took to Vietnam, p. 3.

95 Caputo, Philip, “Postscript.” A Rumor of War (1977; New York: Owl Book, 1996), p. 353-354).

96 The novels of Stephen Coonts may be cited as examples: Flight of the Intruder (NewYork: Pocket Books, 1987) about a Navy renegade bomber pilot later adapted into a film, as well as the two sequels to Rambo: First Blood starring Sylvester Stallone (1985/88).

97 Hynes, The Soldiers’ Tale, p. 177.

98 Jason, “Introduction,” Fourteen Landing Zones, p. xiv.

99 O’Brien, Tim, Going After Cacciato (New York: Dell, 1978), p. 237, italics in the original.

100 O’Brien, Going After Cacciato, p. 320.

101 Jacqueline Lawson believes that virtually all the soldier-writer accounts are divided into these distinct phases. See Lawson, “‘Old Kids’: The Adolescent Experience in the Non-Fiction Narratives of Vietnam,” in: Searle, William (ed.), Search and Clear: Critical Responses to Selected Literature and Films of the Vietnam War (Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1988), p. 27.

102 Pratt John Clark, Bibliographic Commentary, “From the Fiction, Some Truths,” in: Lomperis, Timothy J., “Reading the Wind” The Literature of the Vietnam War: An Interpretative Critique (Durham: Duke University Press, 1987), p. 127.

103 Jason, Acts and Shadows, p. 77. It should be said, however, that Pratt’s scheme in “From the Fiction, Some Truths” does contemplate other works besides combat novels.

104 See, for example, the works mentioned and discussed in chapters 4, 7, and 8 of Jason’s Acts and Shadows.

105 There are 666 novels listed in the Third Edition of Newman’s bibliography (1966), while Wittman (1989) lists 582 literary and adventure novels, 481 personal narratives up to 1988. Newman, John, Vietnam War Literature: an Annotated Bibliography about Americans Fighting in Vietnam (Landham, Md: The Scarecrow Press, 1996); Wittman, Sandra M. Writing About Vietnam: A Bibliography of the Literature of Vietnam Conflict (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1989).

106 Pratt, “From the Fiction, Some Truths,” p. 124.