Arts of War on the Web

Tim O’Brien’s publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, is rolling out a huge marketing package to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the publication of his iconic collection of interconnected in-country Vietnam War short stories, The Things They Carried. The book has sold some two million copies and is a stable in high school and college English and Vietnam War history classes,

That campaign features, among other things, a new jacket (above) for the book, which is now available in paperback, hardcover, e book, and Kindle; a traditional in-person book tour; and a live webcast that starts at 1:00 Eastern time on Monday, March 22. To sign up for that webcast and to see a list of O’Brien’s live events as well as other O’Brien material, go to the website his publisher has created for the 20th anniversary.

Khe Sanh, 1968

You can get a look at the synopsis of the script for an as-yet unproduced film called A Grunt’s Tale at the moviebytes.com web site. The script, written by by Justine Cowan and based on a true story, centers on an African-American housekeeper for a white suburban family who helps a Marine Vietnam veteran deal with his emotional readjustment after surviving the Siege of Khe Sanh and coming home.

Cowan concieved the idea for the script after interviewing Khe Sanh veterans at their 2007 reunion. “It  been my life’s dream to see it made into a film,” Cowan told us. “It is script is a tribute to Vietnam veterans and I want to see it made.”

To contact Cowan, email juscowan19191@aol.com

“Arts of Ancient Viet Nam: From River Plain to Open Sea” is the title of the first large exhibit of ancient Vietnamese Art in this country. It opened Feb. 2 at the Asia Society in New York City, and will be on view until May 2. The exhibit contains about 110 objects, from the first millennium BC through the 17th century. The objects are on loan from ten Vietnamese museums. This exhibit is the work of curator Nancy Tingley, who began work on this pioneering effort when she visited Vietnam in 1988. It marks the first time these works have been shown in the United States and the first time that many of them have traveled outside of Vietnam.

Objects in the exhibition include ritual bronzes, terracotta burial wares, fine gold jewelry, large-scale Hindu and Buddhist sculptures and ornaments made of jade, lapis lazuli, crystal and carnelian. The exhibit is divided into four sections, which illuminate the different roles of trade and cultural exchange in the early cultures of Dong Son in the north and Sa Huynh in central and southern Vietnam; the trading cities of Fu Nan; the polities of Champa; and the port city of Hoi An.

The Asia Society is located at 25 Park Avenue (at 70th Street), in New York City. The Museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. and Friday from 11:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. General admission is $10, seniors $7, students $5. There is free admission Friday evenings from 6:00 to 9:00.

For more info go to the Asia Society web site.

You read it here first: if you have even the slightest interest in World War II, the U.S. Marine Corps, American history, or–even more importantly–top quality TV drama, you will be glued to your TV sets for ten consecutive Sunday nights at 9:00 beginning March 14, when HBO runs the first episode of The Pacific/

Produced by Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman, this series promises to be on a par with HBO’s famed Band of Brothers series. That is, it will be superbly written, terrifically acted, beautifully filmed, and as realistic as war action gets on film.

That last part will be due primarily to our friend Dale Dye, the former Marine captain who wrote the book on high-grade movie military technical advising since he created the mini-boot camp for actors for Oliver Stone’s Platoon. Dye spent a full year on sets in Australia making sure the movie got it all right. Dye and his crew did “everything in our power to give audiences an insight to the thoughts, emotions and passions of men who faced a brutal, tenacious and unfamiliar enemy in the Pacific campaigns of World War II,” Dye said recently.

You can get a heads up on just about every aspect of the film at the web site HBO has set up to publicize the $200 million series, which depicts the war in the Pacific as fought by the men of the 1st Marine Division from the days following the attack on Pearl Harbor to the return of troops home after final victory over Japan.

Richard Curry, the former Vietnam War Navy corpsman whose novel, Fatal Light, is among the best literary treatments of the war, will be taking part in a series of workshops called “Veterans Tell Their Stories” March 12-13 at Marshall University in Huntington in Currey’s home state of West Virginia

Currey, along with Iraq War veteran and short-story writer James Mathews, will read from his work, do a round table discussion, and conduct workshops. Although the target audience is veterans of all eras, the event is open to all, and is free.

For more information, or to register in advance for a workshop, call 304-696-6637 or email vankirk@marshall.edu