The wars we took to Vietnam : cultural conflict and storytelling

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Bibliographic Information

The wars we took to Vietnam : cultural conflict and storytelling

Milton J. Bates

University of California Press, c1996

  • : pbk

Available at  / 10 libraries

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Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. 295-314) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Volume

ISBN 9780520204324

Description

What Americans refer to as the Vietnam War embraces much more than the conflict with North Vietnam. Milton J. Bates considers the other conflicts that Americans brought to that war: the divisions stemming from differences in race, class, sex, generation, and frontier ideology. In exploring the rich vein of writing and film that emerged from the Vietnam War era, he strikingly illuminates how these stories reflect American social crises of the period. Some material examined here is familiar, including the work of Michael Herr, Tim O'Brien, Philip Caputo, Susan Sontag, Francis Ford Coppola, and Oliver Stone.Other material is less well known - "Neverlight" by Donald Pfarrer and "De Mojo Blues" by A. R. Flowers, for example. Bates also draws upon an impressive range of secondary readings, from Freud and Marx to Geertz and Jameson. As the products of a culture in conflict, Vietnam memoirs, novels, films, plays, and poems embody a range of political perspectives, not only in their content but also in their structure and rhetoric. In his final chapter Bates outlines a 'politico-poetics' of the war story as a genre. Here he gives special attention to our motives - from the deeply personal to the broadly cultural - for telling war stories.
Volume

: pbk ISBN 9780520204331

Description

What Americans refer to as the Vietnam War embraces much more than the conflict with North Vietnam. Milton J. Bates considers the other conflicts that Americans brought to that war: the divisions stemming from differences in race, class, sex, generation, and frontier ideology. In exploring the rich vein of writing and film that emerged from the Vietnam War era, he strikingly illuminates how these stories reflect American social crises of the period. Some material examined here is familiar, including the work of Michael Herr, Tim O'Brien, Philip Caputo, Susan Sontag, Francis Ford Coppola, and Oliver Stone. Other material is less well known - Neverlight by Donald Pfarrer and De Mojo Blues by A. R. Flowers, for example. Bates also draws upon an impressive range of secondary readings, from Freud and Marx to Geertz and Jameson. As the products of a culture in conflict, Vietnam memoirs, novels, films, plays, and poems embody a range of political perspectives, not only in their content but also in their structure and rhetoric. In his final chapter, Bates outlines a 'politico-poetics' of the war story as a genre. Here he gives special attention to our motives - from the deeply personal to the broadly cultural - for telling war stories.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction: Wars and Rumors of Wars I. The Frontier War 2. The Race War 3* The Class War 4* The Sex War 5* The Generation War 6. Toward a Politico-Poetics of the War Story Notes Works Cited Index

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