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Larry Heinemann | |
|---|---|
| Born | Larry Curtis Heinemann (1944-01-18)January 18, 1944 |
| Died | December 11, 2019(2019-12-11) (aged 75) |
| Occupation | Novelist,memoirist |
| Period | 1977–2019 |
| Genre | War |
| Subject | Vietnam War |
| Notable awards | National Book Award 1987 |
Larry Curtis Heinemann (January 18, 1944 – December 11, 2019) was an Americannovelist born and raised inChicago. His published work – three novels and a memoir – is primarily concerned with theVietnam War.
Heinemann served a combat tour as a conscripted draftee in theVietnam War from 1967 to 1968 with the25th Infantry Division, and described himself as the most ordinary of soldiers.
He received aB.A. fromColumbia College, Chicago in 1971, taught creative writing there for fifteen years, and meanwhile wrote his own first and second novels. In 1986 he resigned over a furious argument aboutnepotism andacademic freedom.[1]Paco's Story was published later that year.
Afterward Heinemann received literature fellowships from theGuggenheim Foundation and theNational Endowment for the Arts, and aFulbright Scholarship to research Vietnamese folklore, legends, and mythology atHuế University. He also taught on the faculty of theUniversity of Southern California in the Masters of Professional Writing Program. He worked as Texas A&M University's Writer in Residence until his retirement in 2015. He died December 11, 2019, of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease inBryan, Texas.[2]
Heinemann's prose style is blunt and straightforward, reflecting his working-class background.[1] He drew most directly on his Vietnam experience in his first novelClose Quarters which was published in 1977.
His second and critically most acclaimed novel isPaco's Story, which won the 1987 U.S.National Book Award for Fiction[3]in a major surprise that has remained controversial, as Toni Morrison’s novelBeloved was widely expected to win.[4][5][6][7] Other critics and essayists thought the award appropriate and well deserved.[citation needed] At the time, Heinemann's only comment on the controversy was that the check for $10,000 was already cashed and the Louise Nevelson sculpture was not likely to be returned.
Paco's Story relates the postwar experiences of itsprotagonist, haunted by the ghosts of his dead comrades who provide the novel's distinctivenarrative voice. (Ghost stories are common in both American and Vietnamese literature about the war.)The story deals with the seemingly contradictory and morally ambiguous role of the soldier as both victimizer and victim. Nhà xuất bản Phụ nữ (Women's Publishing House) ofHanoi publishedPaco's Story in December 2010, translated by Phạm Anh Tuấn, with an introduction by celebrated Vietnamese novelistBảo Ninh, the first American-written war novel published in Vietnam.
His third novel,Cooler by the Lake (1992), is a comic story about Chicago. A petty thief gets into awful trouble when he attempts to return to its owner a wallet with eight $100 bills in it. Thematically lighter than his first novels, it was less positively received.
Heinemann's military experiences are documented in his book,Black Virgin Mountain (2005), a memoir. It chronicles his several returns to Vietnam and his personal and political views concerning the country and the war. He often referred to his two war novels and the memoir as an accidental trilogy.
Heinemann's short stories and non-fiction have appeared inAtlantic Monthly,GRAPHIS,Harper's,Penthouse,Playboy, andTri-Quarterly magazines, as well asVan Nghe, the Vietnam Writers Association Journal of Arts and Letters in Ha Noi, and numerous anthologies includingThe Other Side of Heaven,Writing Between the Lines,Vietnam Anthology,Best of the Tri-Quarterly,Lesebuch der wilden Männer,The Vintage Book of War Stories,Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace (edited byMaxine Hong Kingston), and most recently inHumor Me, edited by Ian Frazier.
His work has been translated into Dutch, German, French, Spanish, and Vietnamese.
