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Larry Heinemann (1944–2019)

Författare till Paco's Story

4+ verk 533 medlemmar 17 recensioner

Om författaren

Born and raised in Chicago, Larry Heinemann is the author of three novels and numerous short stories and essays. In his novels Close Quarters and Paco's Story, which won the National Book Award for fiction in 1986, Heinemann used his experience as an infantryman with the 25th Division of the U.S. visa mer Army in the Vietnam War to relate the horrors of war. The novel Cooler by the Lake, written in 1992, was Heinemann's first attempt at writing a book with a theme other than war. Heinemann's short stories and essays have appeared in a multitude of journals and magazines, among them Harper's, Playboy, Atlantic Monthly, Entertainment Weekly, Tri-Quarterly, and the Vietnam Writers Association Journal of Arts and Letters. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, and the Illinois Arts Council. Lecturing and teaching at universities, writer's workshops, and veteran's groups in the United States, Vietnam, England, China, and the Soviet Union have kept Heinemann quite busy, although he still considers himself a "househusband." Larry Heinemann passed away on December 11, 2019 at the age of 75. (Bowker Author Biography) visa färre

Inkluderar namnen: Larry. HEINEMAN, Heinemann Larry

Foto taget av: Texas A&M University

Verk av Larry Heinemann

Paco's Story (1986) 316 exemplar
Close Quarters (1977) 144 exemplar
Cooler by the Lake (1992) 34 exemplar

Associerade verk

The Best American Short Stories 1980 (1980) — Bidragsgivare — 34 exemplar
Changing Chicago: A Photodocumentary (1989) — Författare — 16 exemplar
Playboy Magazine ~ July 1989 (Shelly Jamison) (1989) — Författare — 2 exemplar

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A classic (in the USA) of the Vietnam War, it’s the story of Paco—sole survivor when his unit is wiped out. The story, which we later find is narrated by the ghost of another member of his unit—is told in language heavily redolent of the 60s, including not only American slang of the period but including a substantial amount of military slang as well (some, but not all, of which is explained). I found the voice off-putting at first but it grew on me with one notable exception. Heinemann has the narrator constantly refer to the reader (or the person listening to his story) as James. Heinemann considered the matter significant enough to devote an entire foreword explaining himself: “The ‘James’ comes from the custom of street folks engaging total strangers by calling them ‘Jim’ or ‘Jack’…in a jivy sort of way—if you were looking for directions or exact change for the bus or a light for your smoke, say. But since Paco’s story requires language more formal than street corner patois, I thought ‘James’ more apropos. I also had in mind the tongue-in-cheek punch line ‘Home, James’ [as spoken to an imaginary chauffeur].” This would be fine except that Heinemann employs it to absurd excess; there is hardly a page in the book without at least one “James”—sometimes even two or three times. It’s becomes intrusive and silly. That said, the story follows Paco from the battle and his subsequent hospitalization, though most of the book is about his wandering and temporary stay in a small town that could be anywhere. It is a powerful, affecting story but it is also very much a work of its time. It does not strike me as timeless, and—good as it is—I wonder how well it speaks to someone who knows little to nothing of the American war in Vietnam. I’d be very curious for others’ thoughts. [Final parenthetical thought: I was not entirely surprised to learn that Paco's Story won the National Book Award—a big deal in the USA—in 1987, but I was quite surprised to learn that it beat out the favorite: Toni Morrison’s Beloved.]… (mer)
 
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Gypsy_Boy | 8 andra recensioner | Aug 23, 2023 |
Paco is a soldier in Vietnam who becomes the only survivor of his platoon when they get caught in a massive air strike. He himself barely survives and eventually makes it home to the states with his cane and his chronic pain as tokens of his service. His story - how he travels to some small Texas town because that's how much bus fare he had, finds work at a greasy spoon as a dishwasher, and has thoughts about the gal who lives down the hall from him - is told to the reader (addressed throughout as "James") by one of the other soldiers in that platoon, namely, a ghost.

I tend not to like war stories very much at all (or at least I've convinced myself that I don't, although the reality, I suspect, is that I dislike war *movies* but in fact do enjoy war *novels*). This one, then, was a pleasant surprise. I kinda loved it. Paco is an interesting character who is nicely but subtly fleshed out, and the ghost narrator trick is a nifty one that adds all sorts of complexity and complications to the story itself. Definitely recommended.
… (mer)
½
 
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electrascaife | 8 andra recensioner | Jul 27, 2022 |
I read Larry Heinemann's NBA-winning novel, PACO'S STORY, probably 25 years or more ago and was very impressed, and I'd always intended to read CLOSE QUARTERS, his first novel. Well, Heinemann died last year, and now I've finally read it, and it is a real gut-wrencher, absolutely shocking in its honesty about war and how it changes people. First published more than forty years ago, CLOSE QUARTERS got plenty of great reviews, but I'm not sure how well it sold. But it's still (or back?) in print, so that tells you something - that it has become a war lit classic, in my opinion.

It's not an easy book to read in its depiction of the brutality of jungle warfare in Vietnam. Young Philip 'Flip' Dosier arrives in Vietnam still pretty innocent. A Chicago kid, he is drafted and becomes part of an APC team in a Recon unit. It doesn't take long for him to start changing, from his first fire fight experience, which left him feeling "very small and lonely." Caught in the line of fire, Flip finds himself squirming and writhing backward in the mud, trying to escape. Later he looks at the marks he left in the muck, and thinks back to happier times when he and his brothers would play in the snow -

"And it was snow angels I was reminded of when I peeked over that berm, my breath hot and hissing with fright, and stared at that terrified splay-legged image of a struggle in front of that woodline, only our snow angels were white and as deep as the snow."

From the whiteness of innocence to the muddy darkness of experience - that's what I thought of when I read this, and wondered if Heinemann had ever read Blake. Indeed, not many days later, Flip finds himself in hand-to-hand combat with an enemy soldier, a "little man" who nearly kills him. Dropping his bayonet, Flip grabs the man by the throat and strangles him -

"I squeeze his Adam's apple with both thumbs. I lift his head and push it back into the turf with a muted splash. My fingernails work into the back of his neck. The little man grabs both my wrists. He gurgles and works his jaw ... Lift. Push. Squeeze. Something cracks and my thumbs work easier, deeper. His mouth, his tongue, make thick wet murmurs. Lift. Push. Squeeze. His body shakes as though someone is trying to yank it out from under me. His face and lips and jaw go slack. His head and hands go limp."

Yes. Hard to read. I was wincing as I read it.

Further into his tour, Flip learns in a letter that his brother Eddie, a Marine, also in Vietnam, had been badly injured, and may be blind and deaf. He thinks back -

"... on all those pillow fights and snowball fights and rotten apple fights. All those autumn afternoons lying out on the orchard weeds with our coats thrown open for sun warmth, thistles and burrs clinging to the linings. The nights we whispered back and forth in bed and giggled and laughed and argued about baseball. What is it going to be like whispering to him if he's deaf? What will it be like to lie up at night with a blind man?"

As his tour in Vietnam progresses, you see Dosier harden and sink further and deeper into war's darkness, engaging in casual cruelty against a camp-follower whore, initiating a gang-bang with other squad members. And Heinemann does not shy away from the racism that was rampant among the U.S. troops either, portraying an ugly incident in which Flip and all of his white squad members lie about a fight, sending a black soldier off to LBJ (Long Binh Jail) for months. He gives us too an ultra-descriptive chapter of R&R in Tokyo, where Flip hires a $100-a-day prostitute for a week.

But finally, the horror of the war makes a lasting impression, as Flip admits to himself -

"The war works on you until you become part of it, and then you start working on it instead of it working on you, and you get deep-down mean; not movie-style John Wayne mean, you get mean for real ... I dug free-fire zones because we could kill anything that moved, and all I wanted to do was kill and kill and burn and rape and pillage until there was nothing left."

And because of how much he has changed, Flip also realizes, with a kind of horror, "I can never go home. I just want to see it ... I just want to see it one more time."

But, unlike many of his comrades and friends, he does make it back home, and his encounters there - with his parents, his blind brother, his girlfriend, Jenny - are as touching and gut-wrenching as his combat experiences had been.

This is an awful story, but beautifully, starkly written. I could not help but think of all the tens of thousands of men who went through similar experiences in Vietnam. All that loss of innocence. All that pain, suffering, hurt, misery. So many that never came home. So many that did, and have tried for decades now to tamp down all that awful stuff, to "unremember." Larry Heinemann tried to exorcise those memories by writing them down, by turning them into "art."
He succeeded in the art. The memories though may have stayed and haunted him. No more. R.I.P., Larry.

I will recommend CLOSE QUARTERS very highly, especially to war lit buffs.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the Cold War memoir, SOLDIER BOY: AT PLAY IN THE ASA
… (mer)
 
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TimBazzett | 4 andra recensioner | Aug 13, 2020 |
Didn't like this book, although it has been highly recommended. Quit at 25%.
 
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dbkitchens | 4 andra recensioner | Jan 15, 2019 |

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Statistik

Verk
4
Även av
4
Medlemmar
533
Popularitet
#46,708
Betyg
½ 3.7
Recensioner
17
ISBN
44
Språk
3

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