Dispatches is a book comprising six narratives by Michael Herr, each of which originally appeared in periodicals and were first collected in 1977 by Alfred A. Knopf.[1]
An early and outstanding example of the New Journalism, Herr’s rendering of his experiences as a Vietnam War correspondent was a critical success.[2][3][4][5]
“If ever a correspondent managed to be in the right places at the right times—the wrong places and the wrong times from the point of view of survival—it was Michael Herr in Vietnam.”—Journalist Robert Stone (2009)[12]
After freelancing for Holiday magazine in the mid-1960s, Herr approached Esquire’s Harold Hayes and landed a war correspondent assignment in Vietnam. He arrived there in November 1967, age 27, and was attached to combat units with the IV Corps.[13][14] Two months after his arrival the Tet Offensive began, and Herr accompanied units to Cần Thơ, Huế Khe Sanh and other theaters in the war. During this period he published Hell Sucks with Esquire. In October 1968 he returned to New York.[15]
During the next 18 months Herr wrote three more of the six narratives that would ultimately appear in Dispatches: Khe Sanh, Illumination Rounds, and Colleagues.[16][17]
During this interlude of productivity, Herr suffered the loss of several of his co-correspondents which served to trigger an emotional and creative crisis.[18][19][20]
In a June 28, 1990 interview with NPR’s Terry Gross Herr recalled the period between 1969 and 1971:
You know, I came back [from Vietnam] not only feeling a kind of survivor's exultation, but with really a very underdeveloped sense of what I'd really just been through…It led me into a kind of a protracted state of breakdown where I was required to rummage through these various pieces and determine for myself what I believed and what I didn't believe…[21]
Herr added that his condition “was not particularly healthy or wholesome or conducive to making good art.”[22]
Herr discontinued his efforts to complete Dispatches and did not return to the project until 1976, when he wrote the narratives that appeared as Breathing In and Breathing Out. These, along with his four previous narratives, were published as Dispatches in 1977.[23]
Reception
John le Carré called Dispatches "the best book I have ever read on men and war in our time."[24] It was featured in the journalism section of The Guardian's 100 greatest non-fiction book list in 2011.[25]
After publishing Dispatches, Herr disclosed that parts of the book were invented, and that it would be better for it not to be regarded as journalism. In a 1990 interview with Los Angeles Times, he admitted that the characters Day Tripper and Mayhew in the book are "totally fictional characters" and went on to say:
A lot of Dispatches is fictional. I've said this a lot of times. I have told people over the years that there are fictional aspects to Dispatches, and they look betrayed. They look heartbroken, as if it isn't true anymore. I never thought of Dispatches as journalism. In France they published it as a novel.... I always carried a notebook. I had this idea—I remember endlessly writing down dialogues. It was all I was really there to do. Very few lines were literally invented. A lot of lines are put into mouths of composite characters. Sometimes I tell a story as if I was present when I wasn't, (which wasn't difficult)—I was so immersed in that talk, so full of it and so steeped in it. A lot of the journalistic stuff I got wrong.[26]
Similarly, in a separate interview with Eric James Schroeder, he said:
I don't think it's any secret that there is talk in the book that's invented. But it's invented out of that voice that I heard so often and that made such penetration into my head.... I don't really want to go into that no-man's-land about what really happened and what didn't happen and where you draw the line. Everything in Dispatches happened for me, even if it didn't necessarily happen to me.[27]
Retrospective assessment
Dispatches was hailed by critics as one of the finest books published on the Vietnam War, revealing “what it was like to fight there, how it differed from all our other wars.”[28][29][30][31]
When Herr’s Dispatches was published in 1977, critics hailed it as “a classic,” “the best book to have been written about the Vietnam War” and “the best personal journal about war, any war, that any writer has ever accomplished.”[32]
Herr worked on the narration for the movie Apocalypse Now and co-wrote the screenplay for the movie Full Metal Jacket. Several scenes and pieces of dialogue used in the book were later also used in those movies.[34]
↑ Stone, 2016: “What emerged in Dispatches was the transcendence of New Journalism in one of the greatest nonfiction works of its time.”
↑ McCrum, 2016: “[T]he definitive account of war in our time, especially the Vietnam war…”
↑ Page, 2016: The narratives “heralded” when they first appeared in Esquire.
↑ Gross, 2016: “[H]ailed as one of the most important books about the war describing the experiences of disillusioned young American soldiers there.” Feliks, 2016: “Herr’s work in Dispatches has been heralded by critics as one of the greatest pieces of writing about the savagery of war.”
↑ Feliks, 2016: “Herr obsessed over the book during the 18-month writing process, which triggered an emotional breakdown, he revealed in an interview with The Observer.”
↑ Ciotti, 1990: Herr: “I wrote most of the book in 18 months--everything but the first and last chapter. I had a great 18 months working and playing.”
↑ Ciotti, Paul. "MICHAEL HERR: A Man of Few Words: What Is a Great American Writer Doing Holed Up in London, and Why Has He Been So Quiet All These Years?", Los Angeles Times, April 15, 1990.https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-04-15-tm-2121-story.html. Retrieved on 25 February 2018.
↑ Schroeder, Eric James. Praeger: 1992. Vietnam, we've all been there: interviews with American writers, p. 46.
↑ Kulik, Gary (2009). 'War Stories': False Atrocity Tales, Swift Boaters, and Winter Soldiers – What Really Happened in Vietnam. Potomac Books. p.27. ISBN978-1597976374.
Schroeder, Eric James. 1989. "Interview with Michael Herr: ‘We've All Been There.’” Writing on the Edge, Fall, 1989, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Fall, 1989), pp. 39-54 Published by: Regents of the University of California, on behalf of its Davis University Writing Program Stable https://www.jstor.org/stable/43158633 Accessed 26 July, 2025.
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