Dispatches

By: Michael Herr / Narrated By: Ray Porter

Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins

I may say this a lot, but oh yes: STUNNING

No preface to this review, no intro, just Wham! into it, just as with Dispatches by Michael Herr. No heads up, no time for whimsical memories of Ray Porter’s narration of a holiday Christmas tale, just Wham! into it. From the get-go, this is one well-crafted, well-narrated, simply stunning piece of writing, of savagery and horror stated as it was lived, baldly, almost blandly, eyes as dead as the grunt’s who is on his third tour of Vietnam.

-OR- maybe not exactly as it was lived as Herr had gone into great depths to clarify many times from its publication through to his death in 2016. These musings and “dispatches” are fictionalized experiences, mostly true, but some are Ways That He Saw It All; and they’re Ways He Felt It All. The grunts Mayhew and Day Tripper are somewhat fictionalized, but, as Herr was pretty much everywhere, things were hairy for the 18-months of his sojourn, and as he got to be in the shit with the grunts, to be on patrol, to be relaxed and smoking dope with them, I’ve no doubt that those two fictional characters were representative of life as it was known in Vietnam.

I’m sure MANY of the young men (Boys!) he knew had tours just like theirs… ends just like theirs.

From joining swashbuckling young journalists, those who dressed the part, swaggered the part, wielded cameras like rifles, shooting everything in sight, or who wielded pens like knives, slashing to the very heart of the matter, Herr breathes his Vietnam in, surviving the insects, the mayhem, making his observations of choppers by day, the jungle by night. Until the Tet Offensive, where he HAS to focus, shoot (NOT a camera) to kill, just to survive. Oh the adrenaline high, the swirling joy of not joining the dead. The fatigue and exhaustion… which he and the other journalists get to walk away from.

It’s why some of the grunts want the journalists dead: Who would WANT to be there in each new fresh hell? How could reporters play so carelessly with their very lives? Is nothing precious, nothing sacred? No, they think. And they see the reporters get on choppers, go back to smoke dope in Saigon. “I hope you guys die,” Herr hears more than once.

But most places, journalists are welcomed. What? a commander asks: You all are reporters?! And they’re off to stage action, action, action. The first televised war can mean fame, much-wanted notoriety. TV and newspapers, with their deadlines deadlines deadlines, make things awesome, make them fraught. Herr, sick from terror, stepping off a chopper? Photographed: Fear captured on his face. A headline, or is it just a photographer having a laugh (Most definitely the latter).

Oh how they observe things; oh how so much is presented to the public. A general with his: We had to destroy the village to save it. Yes, we had some personnel losses, but think of the Body Count! I knew a man who was snagged to be a medic during his duty in Vietnam: He said he and his buddies would hear the Numbers and would simply shake their heads in disgust. Because some reporters parroted what they were told. My friend told me that he and the other medics would spend the entire day, evening, night, wrapping dead bodies in ponchos, stuffing them in body bags, moving them out, only to hear later that there were Only One or Two Personnel Losses that day. Herr’s not up for that kind of reporting; he’s up for the real shit.

Tet. Khe Sanh. Dodging bullets and listening to spin from Generals.

And it’s all so lyrically done; this is the poetry of a body going numb, of a mind leaving, of a soul dying. All this gorgeously wrought prose is performed devastatingly well by veteran narrator Ray Porter. But House to House had me ready for good Listening; still? How easily it was to instantly fall into Herr’s Abyss with Porter’s near-perfect rendition of Herr the Bored Man, Herr the Burnt Out Man, Herr the Man Who Is About As Dead As It Gets… until he’s cracking wise and yukking it up with a soldier who’s showing off his photos of dead Vietnamese civilians, burnt corpses, heads separated from bodies: You think “Stars and Stripes” will take these? he asks. Uhm, Porter has Herr musing: Maaaaaaybe not… Porter had me hooked, start, middle, final sucker-punch finish.

Tho’ much is fictionalized here, Herr says he spent his days and nights in Vietnam, notebook and pencil in pocket, always at hand should an image be emblazoned onto his mind, should a thought lodge itself in his brain, writing as an exorcism, a way of making sense of the surreal, the dissonance, the fear-filled, the ennui-filled death all around him. Fiction? Or Truth the way Tim O’Brien posits it: Ya ain’t gonna believe the Truth, so I’ll have to Make Up Enough Stuff that you’ll find believable, so you WILL know what happened?

Whatever. Just listen to this, and… can’t say you’ll enjoy it, but you’ll believe, you’ll know, you’ll feel.

Until you don’t feel anything at all.

Vietnam. Vietnam.

Vietnam.