Dispatches | Michael Herr | War journalism | Books to read
[The soldier] was crying, trying to look away while I tried not to look. Michael Herr, Dispatches.
Dispatches is a classic work of Vietnam War literature—part journalism, part memoir, part literary experiment. An early and outstanding example of the New Journalism, Herr’s rendering of his experiences as a Vietnam War correspondent are immersive and subjective. He writes in a fast, almost hallucinatory, stream-of-consciousness style. Not about military strategy but about the experience–masculinity, violence, brotherhood. Raw, personal and morally unsettled. Exceptionally brilliant.
Herr later co-wrote Apocalypse Now, a film directed by Francis Ford Coppola.