ENGL 1302 - Charles Miller's class: Circulating Books

Phillip Caputo, Larry Heinemann, Tim O Brien, and Robert Olen Butler: four young midwestern Americans coming of age during the 1960s who faced a difficult personal decision whether or not to fight in Vietnam. Each chose to participate. After coming home, these four veterans became prizewinning authors telling the war stories and life stories of soldiers and civilians. The four extended conversations included in "Writing Vietnam, Writing Life" feature revealing personal stories alongside candid assessments of each author s distinct roles as son, soldier, writer, and teacher of creative writing. As Tobey Herzog's thoughtful interviews reveal, these soldier-authors have diverse upbringings, values, interests, writing careers, life experiences, and literary voices. They hold wide-ranging views on, among other things, fatherhood, war, the military, religion, the creative process, the current state of the world, and the nature of both physical and moral courage. For each author, the conversation and richly annotated chronology provide an overview of the writer s life, the intersection of memory and imagination in his writing, and the path of his literary career. Together, these four life stories also offer mini-tableaux of the fascinating and troubling time of 1960s and 1970s America. Above all, the conversations reveal that each author is linked forever to the Vietnam War, the country of Vietnam, and its people."

The Gulf War and its aftermath have testified once again to the significance placed on the meanings and images of Vietnam by US media and culture. Almost two decades after the end of hostilities, the Vietnam War remains a dominant moral, political and military touchstone in American cultural consciousness. Vietnam War Storiesprovides a comprehensive critical framework for understanding the Vietnam experience, Vietnam narratives and modern war literature. The narratives examined - personal accounts as well as novels - portray a soldier's and a country's journey from pre-war innocence, through battlefield experience and consideration, to a difficult post-war adjustment. Tobey Herzog places these narratives within the context of important cultural and literary themes, including inherent ironies of war, the "John Wayne syndrome" of pre-war innocence, and the "heavy Heart-of-Darkness trip" of the conflict itself.

"In March 1996, "A Public Symposium: The History, Literature and Music of the Vietnam War," was held in El Paso, Texas. Nationally renowned experts on the Vietnam War offered lectures, poetry readings and music related to this turbulent era in American history. Although more than twenty years have passed since America's involvement in Vietnam, the participants in this symposium put forth deeply passionate and moving analyses of the topics they addressed." "The Vietnam War: Its History, Literature and Music is a compilation of the papers presented at the symposium. They cover a broad range of themes and ideas, but the overall thematic unity in all of these works is the trauma the war caused, both in Vietnam and the United States."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved