A painfully beautiful reportage about the atrocities of war. This is not a book strictly about Vietnam, but it is hard to find a more poetic story about people written without holding back. Herr worked as a war correspondent for Esquire magazine, was stationed in Vietnam from 1967 to 1969, and also used his war experience as a co-writer of the films Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket.
But Dispatches is far from being simply “war journalism.” Hardly any book has evoked so many emotions in us. It is a story about the absurdities of war, about its real face, far from fantasies about “honour” and “patriotism”. There is no pathos here. Instead, there is fear subdued by drugs, panic tearing people up from the inside, tears that there is no way to hide, but also madness to kill and mania caused by all the emotions and endless heat. And above all, a sense of hopelessness and senselessness. Herr gets maximum marks, no matter the scale.
Available also in Polish.
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