In 1982, John Newman, curator of the Vietnam War Literature Collection at Colorado State University, said of W.D. Ehrhart: "As a poet and editor, Bill Ehrhart is clearly one of the major figures in Vietnam War literature." This autobiographical account of the war, the author's first extended prose work, demonstrates Ehrhart's abilities as a writer of prose as well. Vietnam--Perkasie is grim, comical, disturbing, and accurate. The presentation is novelistic -- truly, a "page-turner" -- but the events are all real, the atmosphere intensely evocative.
Ehrhart documents his troubled return to American society. The account conveys the Vietnam veterans' anger, alienation and moral confusion and reveals the delayed stress in his stateside life.
Between March and September of 1974, as Richard Nixon's presidency unraveled on national television, Bill Ehrhart, a decorated Marine Corps sergeant and antiwar Vietnam veteran, fought to retain his merchant seaman's card after being busted for possession of marijuana. He was also arrested on suspicion of armed robbery in New York City, detained on the Garden State Parkway for looking like a Puerto Rican revolutionary, and thrown out of New Jersey by the Maple Shade police. All of this occurred while the House Judiciary Committee conducted hearings on Nixon's impeachment. Busted shows an acute awareness of the ironies of these juxtapositions, as Ehrhart recounts a surreal cross-country journey in search of justice in a nation that has lost its way, betrayed by its leaders. Picking up the narrative of Vietnam-Perkasie and Passing Time, this third book in Ehrhart's Vietnam War trilogy is an exploration of the contradiction between law and justice in Nixon's America and an examination of why the wounds inflicted on the United States by the war are so slow to heal.
In 1993, Ehrhart began what became a five-year search for the men of his platoon. Who were these men alongside whom he trained? Why had they joined the Marines at a time when being sent to war was almost a certainty? What do they think of the war and of the country that sent them to fight it? What does the Corps mean to them? What Ehrhart learned offers an extraordinary window into the complexities of the Vietnam Generation and the United States of America then and now.
Between March and September of 1974, as Richard Nixon's presidency unraveled on national television, Bill Ehrhart, a decorated Marine Corps sergeant and antiwar Vietnam veteran, fought to retain his merchant seaman's card after being busted for possession of marijuana. He was also arrested on suspicion of armed robbery in New York City, detained on the Garden State Parkway for looking like a Puerto Rican revolutionary, and thrown out of New Jersey by the Maple Shade police. All of this occurred while the House Judiciary Committee conducted hearings on Nixon's impeachment. Busted shows an acute awareness of the ironies of these juxtapositions, as Ehrhart recounts a surreal cross-country journey in search of justice in a nation that has lost its way, betrayed by its leaders. Picking up the narrative of Vietnam-Perkasie and Passing Time, this third book in Ehrhart's Vietnam War trilogy is an exploration of the contradiction between law and justice in Nixon's America and an examination of why the wounds inflicted on the United States by the war are so slow to heal.
Ehrhart documents his troubled return to American society. The account conveys the Vietnam veterans' anger, alienation and moral confusion and reveals the delayed stress in his stateside life.
In 1993, Ehrhart began what became a five-year search for the men of his platoon. Who were these men alongside whom he trained? Why had they joined the Marines at a time when being sent to war was almost a certainty? What do they think of the war and of the country that sent them to fight it? What does the Corps mean to them? What Ehrhart learned offers an extraordinary window into the complexities of the Vietnam Generation and the United States of America then and now.
In 1982, John Newman, curator of the Vietnam War Literature Collection at Colorado State University, said of W.D. Ehrhart: "As a poet and editor, Bill Ehrhart is clearly one of the major figures in Vietnam War literature." This autobiographical account of the war, the author's first extended prose work, demonstrates Ehrhart's abilities as a writer of prose as well. Vietnam--Perkasie is grim, comical, disturbing, and accurate. The presentation is novelistic -- truly, a "page-turner" -- but the events are all real, the atmosphere intensely evocative.
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