Journalists tend to be either good writers or good reporters. Michael Herr, who died June 23, was brilliant at both.
In his most famous work, "Dispatches," he plunged the reader into a confusing world of Hueys, clicks, tracers and sucking chest wounds, deliberately not explaining the military lingo and acronyms to give just a glimmer of the disorientation felt by the Americans fighting in Vietnam.
So many writers today are self-absorbed, shallow, snarky, only out to score points. Herr was none of those things. He was a good enough reporter to make his subjects comfortable, and then he'd just listen. They'd come out with heartbreaking, hilarious, perfect quotations, and then he'd weave those quotes and the details he observed (the peaches in the C-rations) into compelling, powerful sentences.
His writer's voice is unmistakeable, and the people he writes about are unforgettable: the avuncular soldier who simply can't believe that a comrade signed up for another whole year "in country" when he could be killed at any second; Tim Page, the British combat photographer who views "glamour" as an inherent part of war; the veteran with PTSD who only wishes he were as lucky as a blind sidewalk beggar whose sign reads "My Days Are Darker Than Your Nights."
I didn't need to look up any of those details. In fact, I don't have a copy of "Dispatches" anymore; I suspect it's in a former boyfriend's bookshelf. We were both newspaper people back in the early 1980s, and we read "Dispatches" so many times we almost memorized it. It was a stunning achievement of writing and reportage and passion we could only hope to emulate.
RIP.
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