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Late Thoughts on an Old War: The Legacy of Vietnam, by Philip Beidler
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Philip D. Beidler, who served as an armored cavalry platoon leader in Vietnam, sees less and less of the hard-won perspective of the common soldier in what America has made of that war. Each passing year, he says, dulls our sense of immediacy about Vietnam’s costs, opening wider the temptation to make it something more necessary, neatly contained, and justifiable than it should ever become. Here Beidler draws on deeply personal memories to reflect on the war’s lingering aftereffects and the shallow, evasive ways we deal with them.
Beidler brings back the war he knew in chapters on its vocabulary, music, literature, and film. His catalog of soldier slang reveals how finely a tour of Vietnam could hone one’s sense of absurdity. His survey of the war’s pop hits looks for meaning in the soundtrack many veterans still hear in their heads. Beidler also explains how “Viet Pulp” literature about snipers, tunnel rats, and other hard-core types has pushed aside masterpieces like Duong Thu Huong’s Novel without a Name. Likewise we learn why the movie The Deer Hunter doesn’t “get it” about Vietnam but why Platoon and We Were Soldiers sometimes nearly do.
As Beidler takes measure of his own wartime politics and morals, he ponders the divergent careers of such figures as William Calley, the army lieutenant whose name is synonymous with the civilian massacre at My Lai, and an old friend, poet John Balaban, a conscientious objector who performed alternative duty in Vietnam as a schoolteacher and hospital worker.
Beidler also looks at Vietnam alongside other conflicts―including the war on international terrorism. He once hoped, he says, that Vietnam had fractured our sense of providential destiny and geopolitical invincibility but now realizes, with dismay, that those myths are still with us. “Americans have always wanted their apocalypses,” writes Beidler, “and they have always wanted them now.”
- Sales Rank: #3401295 in Books
- Brand: Brand: University of Georgia Press
- Published on: 2007-11-01
- Released on: 2007-11-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.00" h x .63" w x 6.00" l, .71 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 224 pages
- Used Book in Good Condition
Review
Like no other book on Vietnam, this true river of facts and heart runs to the ocean of untouched beauty. Beidler is a master narrator and a hero. I've met a giant pal, and am proud to be in his company. My God, how good.
(Barry Hannah author of Yonder Stands Your Orphan)Now, when the Vietnam War is being transformed into a matrix of fantasy and myth used to promote perpetual warfare, Philip Beidler's lucid memories and meditations become ever more timely and relevant. This book offers both a penetrating analysis of post-Vietnam American culture and a powerful antidote to the most toxic elements of that culture.
(H. Bruce Franklin author of Vietnam and Other American Fantasies)Beidler writes these compelling essays with a sense of urgency, because he knows that the war is receding into American history as the baby boomers who fought it are aging. His powerful language and raw, to-the-point style reveal the anger and despair of soldiers who served and felt betrayed by their government and fellow citizens. . . . In this book, he presents a collection of important and forceful works.
(ForeWord Magazine)Beidler led an armored cavalry platoon in Vietnam, where he certainly saw his share of action. In these thoughtful essays, he keeps trying to understand that war, even though most of the country no longer seems to care. . . . What people need to pay more attention to, Beidler contends, are the ideas of national destiny and exceptionalism that can lead us into disaster. . . . This interesting and well-argued book is strongly recommended for both public and academic libraries.
(Library Journal)[A] powerful and angry personal statement that expresses profound thoughts and misgivings not only about the aftermath of the US’s encounter with Vietnam but also about its current military and ideological direction in a post-9/11 world. . . . Beidler goes beyond critical commentary to speak with sensitivity and gravitas on how the strongest nation on the planet conducts its affairs. Beidler aims at a perfect marriage between critical commentary and moral indignation and, at times, his voice takes on the cast of a Swift or Samuel Johnson. This sobering and illuminating work has application far beyond Vietnam War literature.
(Choice)[An] outstanding, personal―but much larger than that―account of a platoon leader who today often can smell the sweetly rancid smell of the dead. . . . Late Thoughts is an outstandingly lucid description of the war as it was, not as public affairs specialists and politicians described it. Mr. Beidler writes as vividly as Paul Fussell in his books on World War II. . . . It's all here―the films, the music, the senseless killings of innocents―and it is painful. Everybody making decisions for war must read Late Thoughts on an Old War.
(Alan L. Gropman Washington Times)Beautifully written, at times eloquent, Beidler has written [a] gem of a book.
(History News Network)[T]houghtful, insightful, first-person essays . . . Beidler combines an adroit mixture of his own war and postwar experiences and cogent analyses of Vietnam War films, books, music, and history.
(VVA Veteran) From the Publisher
A soldier tells why he'll never put Vietnam behind him—and why we shouldn't either
About the Author
Philip D. Beidler is a professor of English at the University of Alabama. He has written or edited more than ten books. Beidler served as an armored cavalry platoon leader in Vietnam.
Most helpful customer reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful.
A Must Read, Especially Now
By M. Johnson
How quickly we forget. The "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" and Ted Sampley run John Kerry through the mill for his "betrayal" of the troops who served in Vietnam in his testimony in the Senate in 1971. Dr. Beidler reminds us that it wasn't the soldiers that were to blame for the atrocity that was the Vietnam War but the blind stupidity of the political and military leadership that led to, and kept us in, a war that we were never going to win. Read this and "They Marched Into Sunlight" to get a refresher on why things were they way they were in the late 60's and early 70's. I particularly appreciate Dr. Beildler's perspective on the totally superficial "sacrifices" of the American public in the current war. In speaking of the soldiers of this war he says, "Don't come home expecting anybody to remotely care". We are too busy on our cell phones.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Trying to come to terms with Vietnam
By R. M. Peterson
Philip D. Beidler served in Vietnam from May 1, 1969 to April 30, 1970 in an armored cavalry unit, first as a platoon leader, then as executive officer. Upon his return to civilian life he went on to graduate school and an academic career at the University of Alabama. After fifteen or so years trying to forget about Vietnam, he realized that that was impossible, and he resigned himself to being one of those "who lives with the war every minute of our lives" and, in addition to his academic specialty of early American literature, he became "a critic and interpreter of literary and popular-culture representations of the war."
LATE THOUGHTS ON AN OLD WAR, which was published in 2004, is a collection of essays from the two or three years on each side of the turn of the millennium. They are worth listing individually:
* "The Language of the Nam" - The in-country vocabulary for virtually everything, from "gook" to "short" to "uniform tango" to "the LBJ" to "VPCOD".
* "Solatium" -- U.S. military compensation paid to Vietnamese citizens to alleviate grief for the death of a family member; the going rate for someone fifteen or older was $35, under fifteen was $14.40.
* "Just Like in the Movies" - Nixon gets inspiration from the movie "Patton".
* "How I Flunked Race in Vietnam" - The racial meltdown in the U.S. Army.
* "Late Thoughts on `Platoon'" - Viewing the movie thirty years after leaving Vietnam and fifteen years after the movie's release.
* "The Music of the Nam"--The "first rock `n' roll war" and its signature songs, especially "We Gotta Get Out of this Place".
* "Viet Pulp" - Paperbacks about Vietnam, most of which - whether nominally first-person memoirs or fiction -- follow a common narrative pattern.
* "Sorry, Mr. McNamara" - The author's reactions to McNamara's apology of sorts in "In Retrospect": "Sorry, Mr. McNamara, but dead is dead, and sorry don't mean s***."
* "Calley's Ghost" - My Lai.
* "Wanting to Be John Balaban" - One American young man's principled alternative response to the conflict in Vietnam.
* "The Years" - The long view and cultural memory; a summation of sorts.
There is some repetition or overlap among the essays, which makes for my only niggling criticism of the book. Of course, not all of the essays are equally strong, but they all are solid. The last four are the best; they might even be deemed essential reading. Although Beidler is a college professor, the writing is far from academic. Indeed, it is top-notch.
Although I didn't serve in Vietnam, I empathize (to the extent possible) with those who did. Still, the war was a terrible mistake, an unforgivably arrogant, stupid, and deceitful escapade of our leaders. We no longer deprecate the service of Vietnam veterans, but, at least in popular culture, we seem to have gone too far in the opposite direction towards rationalizing, romanticizing, and sanitizing our excursion in Vietnam. And, as always, we virtually ignore the three to four million Vietnamese we killed, as well as the tens of thousands we maimed. LATE THOUGHTS ON AN OLD WAR is a valuable corrective. It is one of the more important, and one of the more honest, books I know of in the endeavor to make sense of the biggest event in the lives of my generation of Americans.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
clearest vision of The Nam
By tjsloss
Philip Beidler deserves his reputation as a student, teacher and craftsman of his language. Philip Beidler was once a young combat commander in Vietnam. His gritty reflections, from the ground, of our generation's experience there, are, to me, the truest voice and clearest vision of that time and place. If you were there, Beidler rings true. If you love history, he rings true. If you love well written advocates of social justice, Beidler rings true. I was there and, like the author, continue to chew on what I witnessed and what it still means. I graduated from Cal in History in 1964. I just retired from teaching history, with a focus on social justice, to high school juniors and seniors. If I updated my bibliography for ANY reader interested in understanding this country's war through the experiences of its young participants AND the lessons of exporting war that this nation still hasn't learned, Beidler would be very near the top. Don't mean to oversell "Late Thoughts on an Old War" but Beidler hooked me with his chapter-long critique of the movie, "Platoon", compared with its genre.
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