Walking Point American Narratives of Vietnam [Hardcover]

Arguing that the unprecedented nature of our first postmodernist war demanded either the revision of traditional modes of war writing or the discovery of new styles that would render the emotional and psychological center of a new national trauma, this study assesses the most important novels and personal memoirs written by Americans about the Vietnam War. Myers examines the work of Tim O'Brien, David Halberstam, Ward Just, Stephen Wright, John Del Vecchio, and others working in the modes of realism, the classical memoir, black humor, revised romanticism, and mnemonic narrative. Drawing on the work of thinkers such as Hayden White, Fredric Jameson, and Michel Foucault--whose understanding of the written text as a battleground of competing historical voices expands any definition of historical text--Myers defines the historical novel as a text that self-consciously and imaginatively shapes lived experience into a readable aesthetic form.

Walking Pointis by far the best commentary I have read on the literature of the Vietnam War: lucid, thoughtful, and full of fresh insights, not only on the writing to come out of the War, but on the War itself. Too often, Vietnam War fiction and memoir has been viewed as a dark and exotic tributary of the American literary mainstream. Thomas Myers performs an invaluable service in showing that its headwaters begin with Crane, Melville, and Cooper, and that it is as much a part of our national literature as the works of Heller, Mailer, Jones, and Hemingway. --Philip Caputo

Intelligent, well cited and wide-ranging. --Journal of American Studies

This book belongs in all research-level literature collections. --Library Journal

The critical method gives the analyses breadth and depth, and the extensive notes and secondary references provide resonance and authority to readings that could stand firmly without the assistance of either....Walking Pointis well concelÓÈ