A Rumor of War | 
pickCaputo‘s memoir has a deservedly solid reputation as combat literature. In 1977 it must have been both shocking in its honesty and enlightening in its detail. It‘s still both of those, but it isn‘t altogether successful as memoir in that Caputo often resorts to telling what happened rather than dramatizing it. A must read for students of the US role in Vietnam‘s war. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
It takes Caputo a long time to get past his self-consciously literary tone (page 223 out of 356); I don‘t yet know if, in 1977, that would have been deliberate. Maybe he was waiting until this late in the book for the sentiment to feel earned. It‘s interesting, too, that the death that finally touches the (this) reader is a reported one rather than a witnessed one.
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I‘m about a quarter of the way through Caputo‘s classic memoir and while he seems sometimes self-consciously literary, he is so specific and so vivid on detail that I‘m not going to object (except possibly to the unfortunate rhyme of trees and breeze[s]).❤️📚
Caputo's account of his Vietnam experience is, along with Michael Herr's Dispatches, one of the most powerful and horrifying accounts of war I have ever read.
In the words of my 12th grade social studies teacher: "If you remember only one thing from this class, remember this: war is hell."
#ReadingResolutions @jess7 #nonfiction #history #Vietnam #war #East
pick"We did not belong to it as much as we did to that other world, where we had fought and our friends had died." Cantu captures the experience of the American GIs in Vietnam, and upon their return home in a heartbreakingly real way. A must-read for Vietnam era history.
