Jimmy Hoffa disappears. John Mitchell, H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman are sentenced in the Watergate cover-up. Saturday Night Live debuts. 1975 was a year of big events, but one in particular–the Vietnam War–lingers in the American psyche, most powerfully in the form of fiction that illuminates a dark chapter in our history.
So much moving literature emerged from that war: Robert Olen Butler’s “Good Scent from a Strange Mountain,” Bobbie Ann Mason’s “In Country” and Jack Fuller’s “Fragments.”
One day from the war has taken on special historical importance: the fall of Saigon 30 years ago, on April 30, 1975.
It is fitting, then, that we look to a Chicago writer to mark this event. Larry Heinemann’s “Paco’s Story” won the National Book Award but, perhaps more importantly, it contributed to our understanding of the war. In his new book, “Black Virgin Mountain,” Heinemann returned to Vietnam, where he served as an infantryman. This week, we get an early glimpse of the book, and cultural critic Julia Keller catches up with Heinemann.
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Julia’s memories of that time include seeing newspaper photos of Vietnam and hearing a lot of adults arguing about the war. Interviewing Heinemann was a way to fill in the picture. “We love simple stories with neat, tidy endings, and Vietnam is not one,” says Julia. “It just keeps coming back-not only in presidential campaigns but in metaphors, too. Any suggestion about the use of American military force is automatically met with the objection that it could turn into ‘another Vietnam.’ Fortunately, we have a Larry Heinemann-the guy down the street-to remember, and then to look past his remembering toward a new day.”