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Haifa dozen years ago, some critics predicted that no good literature would emerge from Viet Nam. The literate men of the generation were in college, or jail, or Canada, said the theory. And yet an able and even distinguished body of war memoirs and novels has been steadily accumulating: Ronald Glasser's 365 Days, Ron Kovic's Born on the Fourth of July, Michael Herr's eloquent Dispatches.
Among the best fiction is James Webb's Fields of Fire. Now a counsel to the House Veterans Affairs Committee, Webb was a company commander in Viet Nam—wounded twice, decorated with the Navy Cross, the Silver Star and two Bronze Stars. His story, about a platoon of Marines hacking through the bush around An Hoa, lacks the zonked frenzy of some Viet Nam prose. But Webb is a shrewd storyteller who seems to have gone through the Nam with a cassette recorder in his inner ear. Snake, a street-tough "grunt," hears the standard, "Where are you from?" Says Snake, with exactly the right tone: "I ain't from anywhere, Lieutenant. It's me and Mother Green, the Killing Machine. Till death do us part."
Webb's book has the unmistakable sound of truth acquired the hard way. His men hate the war; it is lethal fact cut adrift from personal sense. Yet they understand that its profound insanity, its blood and oblivion, have in some way made them fall in love with battle and with one another. Back in "the World," they would never again be so incandescently alive. The point is as old as Homer, of course, but Webb restates it with merciless precision.
THE SEA, THE SEA by Iris Murdoch Viking; 5 12 pages; $10.95
In her 19th novel, Iris Murdoch serves her familiar potpourri—a bit of suspense, a hint of the supernatural, some philosophical musings on truth and art, and Walpurgisnachtian drama, here centered on romantic obsession. Director-Playwright-Cad Charles Arrowby, 60, retires from the London theater to Shruff End, an isolated house on a small rocky promontory. There he expects to find the tranquillity required to transform his diary into autobiography. Destiny has other plans. Lizzie and Rosina, his past mistresses, appear from nowhere to fill the air with recriminations. Arrowby excuses his past indiscretions by invoking the sacred memory of Hartley, a childhood sweetheart who fled just when they were old enough to marry. Hartley appears almost immediately in the nearby village, and her old lover sets out to reclaim her. The author renders her immorality play with painstaking attention to atmosphere: the changing hues of the waves, the slippery amber rocks, the strangely damp house are all made palpable. The old scandals are shrewdly reexamined, and Murdoch's style is as saline as the sea below. Still she remains better at surfaces than at sounding depths. Charles' journey through an emotional purgatory is curiously detached, as if the author were writing a tour guide to hell. Judging from Charles' crowded hours, visitors had better book in advance.
IT WAS A WONDERFUL SUMMER FOR RUNNING AWAY by Charles N. Barnard Dodd, Mead; 216 pages; $8.95