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About Griffin daily news. (Griffin, Ga.) 1924-current | View Entire Issue (March 10, 1977)
Page 16 Vietnam didn’t produce ‘great war book’ era NEW YORK (AP) — Gloria Emerson has a lot of memories. One is of a young man, an Army veteran she in terviewed for a book recently published by Random House. This particular veteran had been blinded. “I wish you had seen me before,” he said — meaning before Vietnam, before he was wounded. ‘‘l looked like Robert Wagner.” Then he took off his dark glasses and faced Gloria Emerson and asked, “What do I look like now?” Ms. Emerson remembers looking at his damaged face and saying, “You have a scar.” She ran her finger along the scar, in effect showing it to him — across the top of one eye, down between the eyes, along the nose. Gloria Emerson has a lot of memories like that, some from the two years she spent in Vietnam for the New York Times, and some from talking to people in this country since. To make sure she doesn’t forget, and to remind a public what the war was like, she has put them into a long book with a long title: “Winners and Losers: Battles, Retreats, Gains, Losses and Ruins from a Long War.” “Notice the cover," she said during a recent interview. She was referring to the fact that Vietnam was not mentioned. “It could be any war. It could be the Civil War. But everybody knows what it’s about.” What it’s about is Vietnam, and it is one of the very few books about Vietnam published in this country since the North Vietnamese entered Saigon and won the war at the end of April 1975. There have been only two books about the fall itself, “The Last Day” by John Pilger and “Giai Phong!" by Tiziano Terzani. Pilger is an Englishman, Terzani an Italian. So far no books about the end of the war have been published by Americans, a fact which strikes many observers as strange considering the cost of the American role in the war. Official figures put that cost at 55,000 dead Americans and $l2O billion, with perhaps as much more money still to be spent in veterans’ benefits. Unlike the fall of Saigon, Watergate produced a flood of books, both before and after the resignation of President Nixon, and many of those books became bestsellers. Nothing of that sort has happened with books on Vietnam. “Vietnam was just too painful,” said Charles Elliott, an editor at Alfred Knopf. “People were never tormented in that way by Watergate. When Nixon resigned a lot of people were delighted, but no one took any satisfaction in how awful Vietnam was.” Elliott is not surprised at the small number of books about the war since it ended. He points out that great war books tend to gestate in their authors for years. Four of the greatest books about World War I, for example, ap peared in 1929 — Ernest Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms,” Edmund Blunden’s “Undertones of War,” Robert Graves’ “Goodbye to All That" and Erich Maria Re marque’s “All Quiet on the Western Front.” Vietnam, Elliott says, was not just a bitter experience but a confusing one. “It will take time to understand what happened,” he said. “We’re enormously embarrassed at having made such a terrible mistake. A writer must find some way to explain how we could have been so terribly wrong.” With time, he thinks, the first, easy answers will fade, and people will begin to see the war as a whole. In a series of interviews, other New York editors ex- Collectors want laws against the ‘deadbeats’ WASHINGTON (AP) - Bill collector organizations say Con gress should be making laws against “deadbeats" instead of trying to regulate the people who pursue them. Representatives of bill collec tor organizations told a House banking subcommittee Wednes day that people who do pay their bills end up paying higher prices because of those who don’t. The panel hearings end today with testimony from consumer groups. The collectors’ testimony fol lowed a string of witnesses who —— sk' Jr k. ' ' We are pleased to announce the addition of Mr. Kerry I 8 Bunn to our sales staff. Kerry is the son of Richard Bunn, ; 8 long-time automobile salesman in the Griffin area. Kerry and his wife Cathy are the proud parents of a 1 ! 8 year old daughter, Kerrell, and reside on McDonough j Road. See Kerry Bunn at Toyota of Griffin, Inc. For All Your New and Used Car Needs 1301 West Taylor St. - Phone 228-0090 BeoeoeeocoeooQOOOQcoeooooGoooeoeoooooooeoqi Griffin Daily News Thursday, March 10,1977 told of harassment of debtors by bill collectors, including late night phone calls and threats. But the collectors urged Con gress to crack down on dead beats instead of writing new re strictions on collectors. “The individual consumer, you and me, must eventually pay the bills for the deadbeats," said Philip Rosenthal, president of the Virginia Collectors Association. Michael Goldberg, incoming president of the American Col lectors Association, said utility bills may be increased “as much as $5 per year to the cus- pressed similar views, but several also cited the practical fact that books on Vietnam have not sold well. With the exceptions of Frances Fitzgerald’s “Fire in the Lake” and David Halberstam’s “The Best and the Brightest,” books on Vietnam generally have been what Samuel Johnson once called “a drug on the market.” Even highly praised books like Ron Kovic’s “Bom on the Fourth of July,” Robert Stone’s “Dog Soldiers,” which won a National Book Award, and C.D.B. Bryan’s “Friendly Fire," were commercially disappointing. “After a series of failures,” said an editor at a major publishing house in Boston, “our editorial board got into an anti Vietnam thing. They didn’t want to hear the word Vietnam, but I should add we haven’t really been offered anything on Vietnam worth publishing.” Tom Stewart, an editor who recently moved from Farrar Straus and Giroux to Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, said he had read a lot of Vietnam novels in manuscript over the last year or two, most of them literary failures. “People who went through it can’t always write about it,!’ he said. “I’ve seen a lot of books which were boring and badly done. World War II epics which had been moved south to the jungle.” Part of the problem, he says, is that the college graduates who might have written books often found ways to avoid military service, while the high school dropouts Wamke approved by 58-40 vote WASHINGTON (AP) - The Senate is giving President Car ter the man he wants to nego tiate nuclear weapons reduc tions with the Russians, but the vote confirming Paul C. Wamke was less then the two-thirds margin that will be needed to ratify any treaty he brings back. Opponents viewed the 58-40 vote Wednesday as advance warning to President Carter and the Soviet Union that a new SALT treaty will undergo the most vigorous Senate exam ination and nothing short of equality will be accepted. Supporters of the former as sistant secretary of defense contended throughout the four day Senate debate that Wamke has the capacity to be a “tough negotiator” despite his frequent advocacy of defense budget cuts, opposition to new nuclear weapons systems, and sugges tions of unilateral initiatives by the United States in arms re straint while calling on Russia to reciprocate. They pointed out that Wamke will be acting under the direc tion of President Carter, who described himself Wednesday tomers who pay their accounts as a result of the money that is written off for bad debts.” And giving examples, Rosen thal picked the Prince Georges County, Md., Hospital in the home district of Rep. Gladys Spellman, D-Md., a sub committee member. He said the hospital canceled more than $4 million in uncollected bills last year. “This lost revenue was made up through employe layoffs, in creased insurance premiums and higher bills for all of the people of Mrs. Spellman’s con gressional district,” he said. Rep. Frank Annunzio, D-111., chairman of the subcommittee, has sponsored legislation to make threats or harassing tac ; tics by bill collectors illegal. He i said his bill would not protect ! people who refuse to pay a debt. [ "I hold no sympathy for any [ one who is capable of paying a i debt and simply refuses to hon ! or the obligation," he said. ! The representatives of the [debt collection industry said ; Annunzio’s bill would limit the effectiveness of collection ! agencies and put some of them [ out of business. John Johnson, executive vice president of the American Col lectors Association, said, [ “There is no need demonstrated 1 for a new federal law in this ! area.” He said the bill’s limits on contacts collectors can make with debtors would force filing of more lawsuits. He said this would place “a substantial ad ditional burden on the court ' system.” | Johnson and Rosenthal also [ complained that the bill would i cover only collection agencies ! and not collection efforts of [ credit granters. as “chief negotiator.” Carter, before the vote, charged that most of those opposing Warnke’s nomination “don’t want to see substantial reduc tions in nuclear weapons in the world.” Twelve Democrats joined 28 Republicans in voting against Wamke, a 57-year-old Washing ton lawyer, for SALT negotia tor. Forty-eight Democrats and 10 Republicans voted for. Wamke also was confirmed to be director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency by a 70-29 vote, with 56 Democrats and 14 Republicans voting for and 24 Republicans and five Democrats voting against. Senate Minority Leader How ard H. Baker, R-Tenn., said he - .Jr- ■ f-7/ Commercial Bank’s passbook account isagooddeal for the small businessman. • A smart businessman—no matter how small— bit of money, deposited on a regular basis, to knows it pays to put money to work. And a make it add up. Commercial Bank passbook account is a good See your friends at Commercial Bank soon way to do it. It earns a nice substantial 5%, about opening a passbook savings account, no compounded and paid quarterly. The opening matter how small. Your money will earn 5% deposit is just one dollar, so low that anyone can interest, and you’ll get big customer service. Now start saving and earning interest. And after a that’s a good deal. passbook account is opened, it takes just a little COMMERCIAL BANK 4 TRUST COMPANY Chartered in 1889 Member FDIC Downtown/Mclntosh Road/Spalding Square who did go must develop literary skill from scratch if they want to write about what they saw. One who did was Larry Heinemann, a young Chicagoan who spent a year with the 25th Division in Cu Chi, Viet nam, in the late 19605. According to his editor at Farrar Straus, Heinemann taught himself to write in order to capture what he had seen in Vietnam. The result is a novel called “Close Quarters” which will be published in May and which already has begun to capture some attention in the publishing industry. “Until this year, Vietnam books were considered essen tially unsaleable,” said Heinemann’s editor, Pat Strachan, “but this time our salesmen are fairly en thusiastic. It’s not a political book, and it’s not terribly pretty either. There’s a lot in it about the physical ordeal of combat, and there’s an honest picture of the prostitute scene and of racism, both in the Army and toward the Vietnamese. There’s very little sympathy for the enemy who are referred to as ‘gooks’ and ‘slopeheads.’ There’s much, much evil in the book — cruelty, violence and anger. It’s going to be offensive to some people.” Another novel which may breach the public’s disin terest in books about Vietnam is “The Last Best Hope” by Peter Tauber which Harcourt Brace will promote as one of its major books next fall. Tauber’s book, his second, is described as “an epic novel of the 60s” with a huge cast of Warnke saw no direct relationship be tween the size of the vote and Warnke’s effectiveness as a ne gotiator, but he said it was “a signal of sorts in public and in ternational perception of what the Senate is likely to agree to” in treaty form. Senate Majority Leader Rob ert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., said he did not subscribe to the view that Warnke’s influence as a negotiator has been damaged by the Senate debate. But Byrd said he would per sonally resist any executive branch lobbying for ratification of a SALT II treaty. The judg ment, he said, is one for the Senate to reach based on “its own independent study and con sideration — unaffected in any way by partisan or other fac tors." characters including public figures such as Nixon, Eugene McCarthy and Richard Goodwin. Tauber never went to Vietnam, but early readers say the book’s Viet nam sections are among its best. Other books about Vietnam scheduled to appear in the next year or so include: —“Great Spring Victory," by Gen. Van Tien Dung, the North Vietnamese commander who captured Saigon 18 months ago. His account of the campaign, described as a dramatic human history rather than a technical military treatise, originally was published in the Hanoi “Nhan Dan,” or “People’s Daily.” An English translation will be published on April 30, the second anniversary of the fall of Saigon, by Monthly Review Press. Profits from the book’s sale will go to the American group Friendshipment, which is building a hospital in Mylai. —Neil Sheehan, a former New York Times reporter who obtained the Pentagon Papers, is finishing a biography of John Paul Van, an American official killed in Vietnam. The book, which has grown into a broad history of American involvement in the war, will be published by Random House but does not yet have a title. —CBS television correspondents Bernard and Marvin Kalb are working on Vietnam books, but no details have been announced. 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