Back when the Vietnam war was still a poison dream locked in an ammunition box at the farthest corner of the American basement, a guy who’d returned from those environs with some dire memories described a theme park a fellow vet had envisioned.
From the denial-ridden blankness of the 70s, pulp culture has about-faced so maniacally that it out-‘Namlands ‘Namland. Instead of a theme park, though, we have Vietomania, an incredible simulation. In this Zen-less arcade, cammie-clad carnies pitch the war from every angle–getcha Born Onna Fourth of July, ya Casualties o’ Wah, ya 84 Charlie Mopic. Got some used stuff, hardly any air hours on it: Getcha Platoon, ya Hamburger Hill. Hey, you antique buffs: Getcha Comin’ Home, ya Deer Huntah, ya Pockalips Now, ya Who’ll Stop da Rain, ya First Blood, ya Green Berets, ya Go Tell the Spartans. Got something tasty for you kiddies, too: Getcha China Beach, ya Toura Duty.
For example, Weigl’s excellent Song of Napalm, a 1988 Pulitzer nominee, elicited an author’s advance from Atlantic Monthly Press of only $2,000.
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“I thought that was nonsense, but I did it, and as I did I got a great rush of something–maybe the realization of what a resource I had. It gave me a subject, and a lot of writers don’t have subjects. It was also a way to let some of the stuff out. I don’t believe in art as therapy, but I did go through something.”
During the next decade-plus Weigl finished college, went to graduate school, and began teaching to pay the bills, all the while answering a muse that hovered over his evenings like a lift ship. He wrote and published five books of poetry–A Sack Full of Old Quarrels, The Executioner, A Romance, The Monkey Wars, and Song of Napalm–diving again and again into a well that in other men’s lives has gone undug or been capped. Eventually, his war became a matter of meter and nuance, horror transmuted by scrutiny from an emotional problem into one of aesthetics. The bad dreams continue, but in less stark relief.
because I did what you may have only
