The post title here refers to the fact that I decided to read all three of these books before any kind of consideration about how they might be tied together. In fact, only with Dispatches did I even have any idea what the books were even about. The other two just connected in unintended ways.
Dispatches – 5/5
Dispatches is a series of memoir, oral history, and reportage pieces from the embedded journalist Michael Herr, who was in his mid-20s when he was in Vietnam covering the war. It’s not a collection of his war pieces (although some of that writing probably is here) so much as a book covering the story of his being there. He makes the distinction within this text that he was a writer, when so many other journalists were reporters. This distinction is not meant to celebrate and is actually meant in a kind of deprecatory way in that he had the leisure and freedom to try different things out, not just report the news. He discusses the others writers he knew in a long section at the end, which includes a maverick British photographer, the son of Errol Flynn, and a German-born writer who went on to become a famous CSPAN host 20 years later. The other pieces in this are attempts to capture what it felt like to be in the war, at certain times, in certain capacities, and in certain places. Places primarily means Khe Sahn, which was a six month siege of a Marine base in which thousands and thousands of mortar rounds and other explosives battered the base while Marines held the line (perhaps for no real good reason), but was also accessible by air, meaning that they could leave if need be. Certain capacities means being on the ground, often going on patrol, and even sometimes picking up weapons. And at certain times means almost exclusively pre-Tet Offensive.
The book is harrowing and familiar. Michael Herr is a cowriter of Full Metal Jacket, so while he was not a soldier, you will find a lot of Joker in him, and Michael Herr in Joker.
No Beast So Fierce – 4/5
A prison and crime novel published in the late 1970s. It’s connected to the other two books by way of it being of the same time period and dealing with a similar set of underworld themes and with a narrator who has been excluded from society. The book was written by Edward Bunker, who you would recognize from being Mr Blue from Reservoir Dogs (it’s the small non-Quentin Tarantino role).
Our narrator gets out on parole after being in prison about twelve years on a forgery stint. He was guilty of plenty more in his time, but that’s what they got him for. His first act is to contact his parole officer, who is a tough but seemingly fair officer, who starts cracking down more and more as the novel progresses. Because he’s a convicted felon, he finds a hard time getting work, having a place to stay that isn’t basically a prison by another name, and with finding anyone to be around that doesn’t potentially violate his parole. And given that his parole officer seems to be enforcing the rules in ways that feels increasingly arbitrary, he’s having a hard time staying straight. So of course, you can imagine where this goes.
What stands out about this novel is that while there’s some noirish elements here and there, it’s mostly not. It’s pretty sympathetic and reminds me a lot of certain things from Native Son, which like this novel is also about an relatively unsympathetic character, but one not give a lot of options in life.
Koko – 4/5
This is a late 1980s Peter Straub novel that begins with several Vietnam vets going to a parade in DC to commemorate the Vietnam war memorial. In the opening section, one character looks for the name of a fallen friend MO Dengler, and is surprised when MO stands for Manuel Orozco, which seems at odds with the German-sounding Dengler. We also learn that a series of murder has continued where people connected to the war have been killed, and the killer has left a calling card — a playing card with the name Koko scrawled on it. This is alarming because similar murder had occurred years earlier in the war with the same calling cards.
So the novel primarily focuses on the lives of several members of the platoon who are looking for whom they believe to be the most likely suspect, a writer named Tim Underhill who stayed in Vietnam and Thailand and began writing a series of novels (thrillers and crime novels) that share some similarity to the murders. But the more they look, the more it seems like any one of them could be guilty.