Vietnam-Perkasie
SynopsisPlot
In 1982, John Newman, curator of the Vietnam War Literature Collection at Colorado State University, said of W.D. Ehrhart: "As a poet and editor, Bill Ehrhart is clearly one of the major figures in Vietnam War literature." This autobiographical account of the war, the author's first extended prose work, demonstrates Ehrhart's abilities as a writer of prose as well.
Story
About this book
W.D. Ehrhart's Vietnam-Perkasie is an autobiographical account that moves between two poles named in the title: Vietnam, where Ehrhart served as a young Marine, and Perkasie, the small borough in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where he grew up. The book follows Ehrhart from his teenage years in a quiet American town through his enlistment and into the war itself. It was his first extended work of prose, though by the time of its publication he was already recognized as a significant voice in Vietnam War literature. In 1982, John Newman, curator of the Vietnam War Literature Collection at Colorado State University, described Ehrhart as one of the major figures in that field.
The narrative is structured in a novelistic way, but the events are drawn from Ehrhart's own experience. The contrast between ordinary small-town life and the realities of combat gives the book its central tension. Rather than offering a strategic or political overview, the account stays close to one person's perspective, recording what he saw, felt, and carried with him. Perkasie and Vietnam become two reference points for measuring how the war changed one young American's understanding of the world he came from and the one he entered.
