Here is a review left by a customer on a product. Would you say he was satisfied or dissatisfied?
Title: What can you say? He's a writer.
Review: The problem with writers is that they are writers. As such they are basically dishonest. This is not Vietnam as told by a soldier. This is Vietnam as told by a piece of garbage journalist who is "in-country" to the precise extent he cares to be and hotfoots it out of there when the going gets rough. In the beginning of the book Herr describes the horrors of night patrol by describing his own abject fear. He then informs the bewildered reader that this is a bit too much for him and he's gonna take his journalistic eye somewhere else. The difference between a journalist and a soldier is that the soldier can't leave when he feels like it and so he doesn't have the luxury of drama. Drama is the luxury of the insincere. And this book is drama. Readers interested in reality rather than cranked-up journalistic dramatics would do better to read Vietnam memoirs by actual soldiers, which are in good supply and are usually written in a matter-of-fact way.
