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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
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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
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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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