What is a Lurp? What does LZ stand for? Who, or what, are the Cav? No time to explain: reading Dispatches, Michael Herr’s gonzo account of the Vietnam War, is like plunging into a thrillingly assured sci-fi world with its own vernacular. You understand immediately why Herr was courted by great film directors to spice up their scripts (he crafted Martin Sheen’s hard-boiled narration in Apocalypse Now and co-wrote Full Metal Jacket with Stanley Kubrick). The book opens in a helicopter, as an officer shows Herr how the Americans had razed hundreds of acres of forest with “giant Rome ploughs and chemicals and long, slow fire”. That image is screaming to be blown up on screen in luscious slow-mo.
I returned to Dispatches with