Not just a walk and a firefight, in action it should have been named the other way around, pick through the pieces and see if you could work together a count, the sponsor wasn't buying any dead civilians. 'Might's well,' he said. Above all, Dispatches feels real, totally, unnervingly real. 1940), U.S. journalist. Thanks for exploring this SuperSummary Study Guide of “Dispatches” by Michael Herr. We're here to kill gooks. Essay Topics. You can help Wikiquote by expanding it. Michael Herr. It was like turning up in the middle of some black looneytune where the Duck had all the lines.”, “And I was thinking, Oh man, so this is a rice paddy, yes, wow! Ohhhh, war is _good_ for you, you can't take the glamour out of that. I mean, how the bloody hell can you do _that_? “I keep thinking about all the kids who got wiped out by seventeen years of war movies before coming to Vietnam to get wiped out for good. First published in 1977, Dispatches was one of the first pieces of American literature that portrayed the experiences of soldiers in the Vietnam War for American readers. It is a well-known fact that a war is a breaking and - more often than not - soul-killing experience for both soldiers and civilians. You don’t know what a media freak is until you’ve seen the way a few of those grunts would run around during a fight when they knew that there was a television crew nearby; they were actually making war movies in their heads, doing little guts-and-glory Leatherneck tap dances under fire, getting their pimples shot off for the networks. Welcome back. They were insane, but the war hadn’t done that to them. We were a nation of high-protein, meat-eating hunters, while the other guy just ate rice and a few grungy fish heads. The book evolves a fragmented narrative, its title referring to the subjectivity of fragmented voices of different troops, politicians, and reporters, all … Out on the Bien Hoa Highway, north of Saigon, there is a monument to the Vietnamese war dead, and it is one of the few graceful things left in the country. Dispatches Michael Herr. Refresh and try again. Michael Herr (b. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of, “I keep thinking about all the kids who got wiped out by seventeen years of war movies before coming to Vietnam to get wiped out for good. Even though Herr’s name is only mentioned once in the book, every moment in the narrative is filtered through his perspective. 'Might's well,' he said. It could do everything but stop.”, “There was a black marine called Philly Dog who'd been a gang lord in Philadelphia and who was looking forward to some street fighting after six months in the jungle, he could so the kickers what he could do with some city ground. Paved swamp, hot mushy winds that never cleaned anything away, heavy thermal seal over diesel fuel, mildew, garbage, excrement, atmosphere. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of. Welcome back. He is the author of… More about Michael Herr Dispatches Michael Herr, Author Vintage Books USA $15 (272p) ISBN 978-0-679-73525-0. We were going to club him to death with our meat; what could you say except, 'Colonel, you're insane?' Which wasn't at all true of me. Quotes from Dispatches “I keep thinking about all the kids who got wiped out by seventeen years of war movies before coming to Vietnam to get wiped out for good. 0 likes. It's like trying to take the glamour out of sex, trying to take the glamour out of the Rolling Stones." However many times it happened, whether I’d known them or not, no matter what I’d felt about them or the way they’d died, their story was always there and it was always the same: it went, “Put yourself in my place.”, “Well, good luck,’ the Vietnam verbal tic...It was as though people couldn’t stop themselves from saying it, even when they actually meant to express the opposite wish, like, ‘Die, motherfucker.’ Usually it was only an uninhabited passage of dead language, sometimes it came out five times in a sentence, like punctuation, often it was spoken flat side up to telegraph the belief that there wasn’t any way out; tough shit, sin loi, smack it, good luck. 3, Dispatches (1977). It's like taking the glamour out of an M-79, taking the glamour out of Flynn." Ohhhh, war is _good_ for you, you can't take the glamour out of that. It was spookwar then, adventure; not exactly soldiers, not even advisors yet, but Irregulars, working in remote places with little direct authority, acting out their fantasies with more freedom than most men ever know.”, “We never announced a scorched-earth policy; we never announced any policy at all, apart from finding and destroying the enemy, and we proceeded in the most obvious way. Either way, it was us looking for him looking for us looking for him, war on a Cracker Jack box, repeated to diminishing returns.”. Sometimes, though, it was said with such feeling and tenderness that it could crack your mask, that much love where there was so much war. “I met this kid from Miles City, Montana, who read the Stars and Stripes every day, checking the casualty lists to see if by some chance anybody form his home town had been killed. More By and About This Author. I saw him pouring out about a hundred rounds of .30-caliber fire into a breach in the wall, laughing, 'You got to bring some to get some'; he seemed to be about the only man in Delta Company who hadn't been hurt yet. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. Print Word PDF. Dispatches “Illumination Rounds” Summary & Analysis. Michael Herr's enigmatically titled book Dispatches might be called a postmodern view of the Vietnam War. Not just a walk and a firefight, in action it should have been named the other way around, pick through the pieces and see if you could work together a count, the sponsor wasn't buying any dead civilians. Dispatches is a New Journalism book by Michael Herr that describes the author's experiences in Vietnam as a war correspondent for Esquire magazine. 1. The VC had an ostensibly similar tactic called Find and Kill. Michael Herr was a novelist and war correspondent. "Nothing the matter with _that_ boy, is there? Study Guide for Dispatches. The Vietnamese had a special name for them to distinguish them from all other Americans; it translated out to something like “The Terrible Ones,” although I’m told that this doesn’t even approximate the odium carried in the original.”. We used what was at hand, dropping the greatest volume of explosives in the history of warfare over all the terrain within the thirty-mile sector which fanned out from Khe Sanh. The VC had an ostensibly similar tactic called Find and Kill. I saw him pouring out about a hundred rounds of .30-caliber fire into a breach in the wall, laughing, 'You got to bring some to get some'; he seemed to be about the only man in Delta Company who hadn't been hurt yet. Important Quotes. Featured in the book are fellow war correspondents Sean … “The ground was always in play, always being swept. “You were there in a place where you didn't belong, where things were glimpsed for which you would have to pay and where things went unglimpsed for which you would also have to pay, a place where they didn't play with the mystery but killed you straight off for trespassing.”. Their mistresses were among the prettiest, saddest girls in Vietnam. (In Hue he turned out to be incredibly valuable. Born in Lexington, Kentucky in 1940, he began reporting from Vietnam for Esquire in the 1960s, during the height of the war. [...] I knew one 4th division Lurp who took his pills by the fistful, downs from the left pocket of his tiger suit and ups from the right, one to cut the trail for him and the other to send him down it. He didn’t even know if there was anyone else from Miles City in Vietnam, but he checked anyway because he knew for sure that if there was someone else and they got killed, he would be all right. He didn't think he was the only person in the world, or the only director, or even the only great director. He was really speechless, working his hands up and down to emphasize the sheer insanity of it. "Every time" when "there was a combat" you "had a license to go maniac," everyone "snapped over the line at least once." “I mean, can you just see *two* guys from a raggedy-ass town like Miles City getting killed in Vietnam?”, “We took space back quickly, expensively, with total panic and close to maximum brutality. “The tables are crowded with American civilian construction engineers, men getting $30,000 a year from their jobs on government contracts and matching that easily on the black market. Vietnam, man. We have collected all of them and made stunning Michael Herr wallpapers & posters out of those quotes. Like. Both the film and novel offer a unique and valuable portrayal of the Vietnam War that differs greatly from traditional accounts. They were insane, but the war hadn’t done that to them. I am grateful that he lived to tell the tale, that he survived to write simple descriptions like this one: “He was the kind of kid that would go into the high-school gym alone and shoot baskets for the half-hour before the basketball team took it over for practice, not good enough yet for the team but determined.” Would you let your daughter marry that man? Click and Collect from your local Waterstones or get FREE UK delivery on orders over £25. Dispatches is a masterful collage of stories, dialogue and prose poetry on the Vietnam War from Michael Herr, a writer who spent a year trailing the marines and army on their operations in the hills, jungles and cities of Vietnam. Like his buddies Scan … Herr. OTHER BOOKS. We were going to club him to death with our meat; what could you say except, 'Colonel, you're insane?' )”, “...you could also hear the other, some young soldier speaking in all bloody innocence, saying, 'All that's just a load, man. A five-block walk in that could take it out of you, you'd get back to the hotel with your head feeling like one of those chocolate apples, tap it sharply in the right spot and it falls apart in sections. Of course they were; what would anyone expect them to be?”, “He hadn't been anything but tired and scared for six months and he'd lost a lot, mostly people, and seen far too much, but he was breathing in and breathing out, some kind of choice all by itself.”, “After a year I felt so plugged in to all the stories and the images and the fear that even the dead started telling me stories, you’d hear them out of a remote but accessible space where there were no ideas, no emotions, no facts, no proper language, only clean information. Michael Herr quotes Showing 1-30 of 42. Michael Herr, the author of Dispatches and co-writer of Full Metal Jacket, is dead at 76.. His masterpiece, Dispatches, has been out of fashion for … “Take the glamour out of war! Sometimes, though, it was said with such feeling and tenderness that it could crack your mask, that much love where there was so much war. Dispatches Quotes. 17 Michael Herr Quotes on Dispatches, Country and Dispatches - Quotes.pub. One Sunday, I saw a bunch of these engineers gunning their Harleys up those steps, laughing and shouting in the afternoon sun. "Colleagues," sct. “I keep thinking about all the kids who got wiped out by seventeen years of war movies before coming to Vietnam to get wiped out for good. ''We came to fear something more complicated than death, an annihilation less final … About Michael Herr. All you could say that wasn’t fundamentally lame was something like, ‘He who bites it this day is safe from the next,’ and that was exactly what nobody wanted to hear.”, “Page took the record that was playing on the turntable off without asking anybody and put on Jimi Hendrix: long tense organic guitar line that made him shiver like frantic electric ecstasy was shooting up from the carpet through his spine straight to the old pleasure center in his cream-cheese brain, shaking his head so that his hair waved all around him, Have You Ever Been Experienced?”, “You'd meet an optimism that no violence could unconvince, or a cynicism that would eat itself empty every day and then turn, hungry and malignant, on whatever it could for a bite, friendly or hostile, it didn't matter.”, “You were there in a place where you didn't belong, where things were glimpsed for which you would have to pay and where things went unglimpsed for which you would also have to pay, a place where they didn't play with the mystery but killed you straight off for trespassing.”, “Search and Destroy, more a gestalt than a tactic, brought up alive and steaming from the Command psyche. Dispatches is a 1977 historical, biographical book written by American writer and correspondent Michael Herr. Go and take the glamour out of a Huey, go take the glamour out of a Sheridan...Can _you_ take the glamour out of a Cobra, or getting stoned at China Beach? Me too, every day, compulsively, good luck: to friends in the press corps going out on operations, to grunts I’d meet at firebases and airstrips, to the wounded, the dead and all the Vietnamese I ever saw getting fucked over by us and each other, less often but most passionately to myself, and though I meant it every time I said it, it was meaningless. Our machine was devastating. Either way, it was us looking for him looking for us looking for him, war on a Cracker Jack box, repeated to diminishing returns.”. )”, “...you could also hear the other, some young soldier speaking in all bloody innocence, saying, 'All that's just a load, man. This Study Guide consists of approximately 34 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Dispatches. And with Herr's belated volume of unfiled dispatches from the front, the awareness grows that this war—like no other since WW I—continues to produce a rich lode of literature, part litany, part exorcism, part macabre nostalgia. 'We ain' goin', “Officially, the complexion of the problem had changed (too many people were getting killed, for one thing), and the romance of spooking started to fall away like dead meat from a bone. “I mean, can you just see *two* guys from a raggedy-ass town like Miles City getting killed in Vietnam?”, “We took space back quickly, expensively, with total panic and close to maximum brutality. He later chronicled those experiences in his memoir, Dispatches. when I suddenly heard an electric guitar shooting right up in my ear and a mean, rapturous black voice singing, coaxing, 'Now c'mon baby, stop actin' so crazy,' and when I got it all together I turned to see a grinning black corporal hunched over a cassette recorder. Michael Herr was changed by what he saw, and what he endured. A powerful vision can be very fragile while it's still only in the mind, and people have gone to extraordinary lengths to protect it. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. Michael Herr, author of Dispatches, dies aged 76. Dispatches is a New Journalism book by Michael Herr published in 1977. He told me that they cooled things out just right for him, that could see that old jungle at night like he was looking at it through a starlight scope. It was like turning up in the middle of some black looneytune where the Duck had all the lines.”, “And I was thinking, Oh man, so this is a rice paddy, yes, wow! It was spookwar then, adventure; not exactly soldiers, not even advisors yet, but Irregulars, working in remote places with little direct authority, acting out their fantasies with more freedom than most men ever know.”, “We never announced a scorched-earth policy; we never announced any policy at all, apart from finding and destroying the enemy, and we proceeded in the most obvious way. ... Herr meets Davies, a gunner on a hotel terrace, and is invited back to his home to get high. It could do everything but stop.”, “There was a black marine called Philly Dog who'd been a gang lord in Philadelphia and who was looking forward to some street fighting after six months in the jungle, he could so the kickers what he could do with some city ground. Go and take the glamour out of a Huey, go take the glamour out of a Sheridan...Can _you_ take the glamour out of a Cobra, or getting stoned at China Beach? Mini Tet brought the band of brothers back to light. Born in Lexington, Kentucky in 1940, he began reporting from Vietnam for Esquire in the 1960s, during the height of the war. Bio: Michael Herr is an American writer and former war correspondent, best known as the author of Dispatches, a memoir of his time as a correspondent for … Acceptance of fate. Which wasn't at all true of me. He pointed to a picture he'd taken, Flynn laughing maniacally ("We're winning," he'd said), triumphantly. Goodreads helps you follow your favorite authors. “We could see the colonel approaching, a short, balding man with flinty eyes and a brief black mustache. There are more than 17+ quotes in our Michael Herr quotes collection. Would you let your daughter marry that man? Michael Herr was a novelist and war correspondent. Michael Herr This Study Guide consists of approximately 34 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Dispatches. This section contains 1,243 words It's like taking the glamour out of an M-79, taking the glamour out of Flynn." The impacts of utilizing “he” to portray the adversary is to give the Viet Cong a persona and lessen the North Vietnamese warriors down to a solitary being. “When all the projections of intent and strategy twist and turn back on you, tracking team blood, 'sorry' just won't cover it. We're here to kill gooks. We used what was at hand, dropping the greatest volume of explosives in the history of warfare over all the terrain within the thirty-mile sector which fanned out from Khe Sanh. Period.' The idea of “fate” can be interpreted quite differently – with the biggest … Most combat troops stopped thinking of the war as an adventure after their first few firefights, but there were always the ones who couldn’t let that go, these few who were up there doing numbers for the cameras… We’d all seen too many movies, stayed too long in Television City, years of media glut had made certain connections difficult.”, “How many times did someone have to run in front of a machine gun before it became an act of cowardice?”, “Maybe nothing's so unfunny as an omen read wrong.”, “...if that energy could have been channelled into anything more than noise, waste and pain it would have lighted up Indochina for a thousand years.”, “for years now there had been no country here but the war.”, “Going out at night the medics gave you pills, Dexedrine breath like dead snakes kept too long in a jar. Of course they were; what would anyone expect them to be?”, “He hadn't been anything but tired and scared for six months and he'd lost a lot, mostly people, and seen far too much, but he was breathing in and breathing out, some kind of choice all by itself.”, “And I know, because I've been there, that there is a hellworld where you're always expected to have an opinion about everything all the time: a judgment, a take - a 'view,' in the most ordinary sense of the word.”, “After a year I felt so plugged in to all the stories and the images and the fear that even the dead started telling me stories, you’d hear them out of a remote but accessible space where there were no ideas, no emotions, no facts, no proper language, only clean information. It is a modest pagoda set above the road and approached by long flights of gently rising steps. And Collect from your local Waterstones or get FREE UK delivery on orders over £25 bloody hell can you _that_! 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