The Vietnam War

Topics in Contemporary North American Literature

Brenda M. Boyle

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781472510174
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: North American Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Reverberations of the Vietnam War can still be felt in American culture. The post-9/11 United States forays into the Middle East, the invasion and occupation of Iraq especially, have evoked comparisons to the nearly two decades of American presence in Viet Nam (1954-1973). That evocation has renewed interest in the Vietnam War, resulting in the re-printing of older War narratives and the publication of new ones. This volume tracks those echoes as they appear in American, Vietnamese American, and Vietnamese war literature, much of which has joined the American literary canon. Using a wide range of theoretical approaches, these essays analyze works by Michael Herr, Bao Ninh, Duong Thu Huong, Bobbie Ann Mason, le thi diem thuy, Tim O'Brien, Larry Heinemann, and newcomers Denis Johnson, Karl Marlantes, and Tatjana Solis. Including an historical timeline of the conflict and annotated guides to further reading, this is an essential guide for students and readers of contemporary American fiction

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• CHRONOLOGY
• Introduction: The war stories we tell
• 1 Michael Herr’s traumatic New Journalism: Dispatches
• 2 Duong Thu Huong’s Paradise of the Blind and Novel Without a Name, and B.o Ninh’s The Sorrow of War: Corrective, politically i
• 3 “Ten years burning down the road”: Trauma, mourning, and postmemory in Bobbie Ann Mason’s In Country
• 4 War, gender, and race in le thi diem thuy’s The Gangster We Are All Looking For
• 5 The home front and the front lines in the war novels of Tim O’Brien
• 6 The ghost that won’t be exorcised: Larry Heinemann’s Paco’s Story
• 7 American totem society in the twenty-first century: Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke, Karl Marlantes’s Matterhorn, and Tatjana S
• FURTHER READING
• WORKS CITED
• INDEX