Tag: vietnam war

Hearts in Atlantis

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King, Stephen. Hearts in Atlantis. Scribner, 1999.

Reason read: Stephen King’s face should be in the dictionary next to the word ‘scary.’ Read in honor of Halloween.

Critics have cited King’s first novel, Carrie, when reviewing Hearts in Atlantis. Like Carrie, Hearts in Atlantis carries a running theme of the Vietnam War and psychological breakdowns. Like a television on in the background where no one is watching, the conflict begins as a faint constant presence, a hum, until it becomes a deafening roar by the end of the book. Despite having five separate narratives Hearts in Atlantis reads like a fragmented novel. The character narratives are sequential in nature, allowing the reading to stay connected to particular characters from beginning to end, even though the locations and stories change.
In the 254 page short novella that kicks off Hearts in Atlantis, “Low Men in Yellow Coats,” eleven year old Bobby Garfield just wants to buy a bicycle. It is his birthday and all his mother can afford is an adult library card. This is when Bobby is introduced to William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and the weird upstairs neighbor, Ted. Suddenly, adults are no longer the protectors he has always trusted. Predators lurk behind faces he has known all his life. Bobby was a good kid who slowly soured on doing the right thing. He sank lower into a life of crime – breaking windows, drinking, theft.
In the next short story, “Hearts in Atlantis,” we leave Bobby and follow Pete who ends up dating Bobby’s childhood girlfriend, Carol. Carol is now college-aged and she is the one who ties “Low Men in Yellow Coats” and “Hearts in Atlantis” together. In fact, she, together with the Vietnam war, are the linchpins that hold all of the stories together.

Lines I loved, “Put a glass of water next to Nate Hoppenstand and it was the water that looked vivacious” (p 262) and “In Orono, Maine, buying a Rolling Stones record passes for a revolutionary act” (p 395). Truth.

Author fact: Stephen King is known for taking ordinary situations and making them scary as hell. In Hearts there are no monsters. Only what war can do to a person; how human nature can turn ugly and sinister.

Book trivia: I loved how the genesis of the peace symbol is explained in “Hearts in Atlantis.” I never knew it was the British Navy’s semaphore letters for nuclear disarmament.

Setlist: Andy Williams Singers, Animals, “Angel of the Morning”, Al Jolson’s “Mammy”, Allman Brothers, Beatles, Benny Goodman Orchestra, Bob Dylan, “Boom Boom”, “Bad Moon Rising”, Bobby Darin, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B Good”, Carpenters, Dave Clark Five, the Doors’ “Break On Through”, Dean Martin, Diane Renay’s “Navy Blue”, “Do You Know What I know?”, “Don’t You Just Know It” by Hury “Piano” Smith and the Clowns”, Danny and the Juniors, Donovan Leitch’s “Atlantis”, Dovells, “Dance to the Music”, Doors, Donna Summer’s “Bad Girl”, Elvis Presley, Four Seasons, Frank Sinatra, Freddie “Boom Boom” Cannon, “Gimme Some Lovin'”, Gerry Miller, “Goin’ Up the Country”, “Hang on Sloopy”, Hare Krishna Chorale, Herman and the Hermits, “Insta Karma”, Jack Scott, Jo Stafford, Jimmy Gilmer’s “Sugar Shack”, “Let’s Work Together”, Little Richard, “Light My Fire”, Liz Phair, “Love is Strange”, “Louie, Louie”, Miracles, Mitch Miller, “Mack the Knife”, Mysterians’ “96 Tears”, “My Girl”, Neil Diamond, “Night and Day”, “Oh! Carol” by Neil Sedaka, Offspring, “The Old Rugged Cross”, “One O’Clock Jump”, “One Tin Soldier”, Paul Anka, Petula Clark, Peter Frampton, Platters, Phil Och’s “I Aint Marching Anymore”, “Queen of the Hop”, “The Rainbows”, Rare Earth, “Red River Valley” Rolling Stones, Royal Teen’s “Short Shorts”, “Silent Night”, Sly and the Family Stone, Supremes, Smokey Robinson, Strawberry Alarm Clock’s “Incense and Peppermints”, “Tequila” by the Champs, Tro Shondell’s “This Time”, William Ackerman, Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, “Where the Boys Are”, and the Youngbloods.

Confessional: whenever I think of “Mack the Knife, “I think of a time when I was in my early twenties. The guy I was dating called a radio station to request a song. No one had a person phone back then. My true love had to run out to a payphone up a hill and around a building. I thought for sure he was going to request something romantic; something just for me. Nope. He requested “Mack the Knife.” When I asked him why Mack he said he just liked the song.
More connections to my life: I went to UMaine and dated a guy named Soucie. His twin was named AnneMarie. I also worked in the Bear’s Den.

BookLust Twist: Book Lust in the chapter called “Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror” (p 213).

Dangerous Country

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Kovic, Ron. A Dangerous Country: An American Elegy. Akaschic, 2024.

Reason read: as a member of the Early Review Program for LibraryThing I am lucky to receive interesting books to read and review.

A Dangerous Country is separated into three parts. Part One is a year-long diary written with a good friend in mind. The entries are short and this section moves along quickly. When Kovic first arrives for his second tour of duty, he is impatient for action; he has a strong desire to learn and has a few sweethearts he wishes would write more often. At goes goes on Kovic is so busy with patrols and scouting that he doesn’t have time to record what the mail did (or did not) bring him. The entire time Kovic is in Vietnam he has a fervent wish to protect our country from the threat of communist slavery. The letter written by Father Harrington to his parents about his injuries ends Part One.
The second section of A Dangerous Country begins a little more than six months after Kovic suffers his paralyzing injuries on January 20th 1968. Part Two is the political awakening Kovic has once he returns to civilian duty as a disable veteran. When you speak out against war you expose yourself to threats of being seen as anti-American because war is our middle name. We are not afraid to join it if the price is right. Criticize at your own peril. Why else would Kovic’s phone be tapped? Why else would he be arrested for speaking his mind? This is the section where Kovic starts to question the reality of God.
Part Three opens in San Francisco, California in 1982. Kovic struggles with finding his place in society. Art, writing, and theater occupy his search for self, both spiritually and sexually. As an aside, Kovic reclaiming his sexual identity was one of the most poignant parts of his story. With devastating guilt comes suicidal thoughts and all-time lows. This is the most painful part of the story. What is unclear is how much forgiveness Kovic has afforded himself by the end of A Dangerous Country. While he will never be completely free of the horrors of war (memory is a powerful weapon of self-destruction), Kovic has made great strides to live in peace. His inner strength and fighting spirit end A Dangerous Country with hope and acceptance.

I love it when two books collide. I am reading City Room at the same time as A Dangerous Country. In Kovic’s book he began his second tour of duty seeing John F. Kennedy as an inspirational leader, calling for young men to be heroes in Vietnam. Gelb, on the other hand, describes President Kennedy differently, telling of Kennedy’s need to stop reporter Halberstam from telling the truth about Vietnam.
Confessional: I had a moment of panic when I read that A Dangerous Country was part of a trilogy written by Ron Kovic. I was worried I wouldn’t get the full picture of A Dangerous Country if I had not read Born on the Fourth of July or Hurricane Street. (Second confession: I had not).
Second confessional: you never find out what happened to Kathy or Karen. They are never mentioned again. I was disappointed they were not a bigger part of his life when Kovic got home.

As an aside, my uncle does not like to talk about Vietnam at all. One day, for whatever reason, he pulled out a battered photo album and started sharing stories about the pictures within. One photograph was especially memorable to me. It was of my uncle and several members of his platoon. They were on a boat, posed with their arms around each other, trying to smile. The men were not remarkable. Their poses were not dramatic. It was what my uncle said while looking down at the smiling faces, “There was a dead man floating in the water behind us when this photo was taken.”

Author fact: I think it goes without saying that everyone knows Ron Kovic whether they realize it or not. If they have seen the movie version of Born on the Fourth of July starring Tom Cruise, they definitely know Mr. Kovic.

Book trivia: even though A Dangerous Country is only 263 pages long with short chapters, I took a long to finish it because war is never an easy subject for me to read about. Primary sources are even harder.

Playlist: “Auld Lang Syne”, “Comfort and Joy”, “Strange Days” by The Doors, “The First Noel”, Eartha Kitt, Gregorian chants, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix’s version of “The Star-Spangled Banner”, John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance”, and The Marine Corp Hymn.

Man in the Box

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Dunn, Mary Lois. The Man in the Box: a Story From Vietnam. McGraw Hill, 1968.

Reason read: I read somewhere that March 8th is Hug a G.I. Day. I read this in honor of the thousands of men kept in little boxes from every war.

If you read this book with a child’s intent, it is a story about a young boy who knows the worth of a human life and tries with heroic measures to save it. If you read this book with an adult’s cynicism, it is a book that glorifies American soldiers in the Vietnam War and completely misses the point of the Vietnamese culture. My advice is to read it as Mary Lois Dunn intended: as a story for children. Chau Li witnesses the horrible torture of an American soldier kept cramped prisoner in a small cane box. His own father suffered in same-such box but did not survive the brutality. Determined to somehow save the American, Chau Li risks everything to squirrel “Dah Vid” away in a cave until together they can safely rejoin the Green Barets hidden somewhere in the deep Vietnamese jungle. As they hide out from the Viet Cong Chau Li and Dah Vid grow close, form a friendship and make unrealistic promises. Spoiler alert: the end is ambiguous which is surprising for a book meant for children.

Author fact: Mary Lois Dunn was a librarian.

Book trivia: The Man in the Box won the Oklahoma Sequoyah Children’s Book Award in 1968.

Nancy said: Pearl called The Man in the Box “harrowing and sad” and although it is long out of print, it is “definitely worth tracking down” (Book Lust p 115).

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Historical Fiction For Kids Of All Ages” (p 115).

Best and the Brightest

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Halberstam, David. The Best and the Brightest. New York: Random House, 1972.

Reason read: the United States pulled out of Vietnam in the month of March.

Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest is a deep dive into the origins of the Vietnam War. It is a scrutiny of the policies and procedures crafted during the Kennedy administration that led to the consequences in Vietnam. The meat of the book takes place between the years of 1960 and 1965 but flows back and forth to earlier and later times to give substance to the timeline. What really helps the narrative is that Halberstam was a reporter during this time. He was at the heart of the perfect storm: the fall of China, the rise of McCarthy and the outbreak of the Korean War. This trifecta of events had a profound and lasting effect on the White House and domestic politics of the time.

A single line I really liked, “In government it is always easier to go forward with a program that doesn’t work than to stop it all together and admit failure” (p 212). Isn’t that human nature in a nutshell?

Author fact: I cannot help but wonder what books Halberstam would have written had he not been killed in a car accident at the age of 73.

Book trivia: I always love the photographs Halberstam chooses for his books. The photos in The Best and the Brightest are no different.

Nancy said: Pearl called The Best and the Brightest “hefty, riveting and definitive” (p 238). Agreed, agreed, and agreed.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust and More Book Lust. In Book Lust in the chapter called “Vietnam” (p 238) and in More Book Lust in the super obvious chapter called “David Halberstam: Too Good To Miss” (p 112).