lacing it all together is his own elegiac longing for some solid ground he never really finds

There was a map of Vietnam on the wall of my apartment in Saigon and some nights, I’d lie on my bed and look at it, too tired to do anything more than just get my boots off. That map was a marvel, especially now that it wasn’t real anymore. For one thing, it was very old. It had been left there years before by another tenant, probably a Frenchman, since the map had been made in Paris. The paper had buckled in its frame after years in the wet Saigon heat, laying a kind of veil over the countries it depicted. Vietnam was divided into its older territories of Tonkin, Annam and Cochin China, and to the west past Laos and Cambodia sat Siam, a kingdom. That’s old, I’d tell visitors, that’s a really old map.

If dead ground could come back to haunt you the way dead people do, they’d have been able to mark my map CURRENT and burn the ones they’d been using since ’64, but count on it, nothing like that was going to happen. It was late ’67 now, even the most detailed maps didn’t reveal much anymore; reading them was like trying to read the faces of the Vietnamese, and that was like trying to read the wind. We knew that the uses of most information were flexible, different pieces of ground told different stories to different people. We also knew that for years now there had been no country but the war.

1. Take it a phrase at a time. There was a map of Vietnam. If the current craze for over-the-top drama had affected the writing of Dispatches, Herr might have started with some fiery, guts-spilled war scene. Instead, he starts with a carnal object, and his reflection on it. A “true” thing—maps are meant to convey veracity. We should be able to find our way with them. He starts in a small, almost dull, everyday object that just happens to be left behind in his transient’s apartment.

2. too tired to do anything more than just get my boots off. Herr doesn’t just tell us he’s tired; he gives us dramatic evidence of the extent. It’s another carnal moment of a type we all understand.

3. For one thing, it was very old. It had been left there years before by another tenant, probably a Frenchman, since the map had been made in Paris. Its antiqueness gives the map a kind of special radiance—a spiritual value, if you will. We also see Herr’s mind feeling for the truth, guessing that since it was made in Paris, a Frenchman had probably left it. It’s his first use of the word probably—the qualifier of a more truthful memoirist. He’s showing us his mind in action, his thoughtfulness, and how he tries to deduce the truth based on hard evidence.

4. The paper had buckled in its frame after years in the wet Saigon heat, laying a kind of veil over the countries it depicted. This again is carnal evidence, conjuring the tropical feel of Saigon, a place whose soppy atmosphere insidiously seeps in to warp the map, as the war he’ll show us will warp him and those he meets. The physical veil or mist acts as a physical metaphor, embodying the notion of “spookiness” or mystery. Whatever truth exists about the war is “veiled,” as the map is.

So right off, he readies us for voices weaving together and for radical shifts in tone from light to dark. As a writer you can’t just start jamming stuff together, hoping the reader will magically know what’s in your mind. You have to start out slowly, by laying transitions—like leaving breadcrumbs for the reader. Then the transitions get quicker through the book. As you get used to the method, the breadcrumbs grow fewer and eventually vanish. By the end, it’s all sped-up jump cuts with invisible connections the reader’s already mastered.