Long time passing : Vietnam and the haunted generation /

Everything you've ever heard about ""the Vietnam experience""--reiterated at great (670 pp.), unproductive length. MacPherson, a Washington Post journalist (The Power Lovers), spoke to Vietnam vets of many overlapping sorts (pro- and antiwar, ""disordered,"" disabled, successful); to draft-avoiders, ""exiles,"" and deserters; to Gold Star mothers (pro-and antiwar) and student-protesters. The material is grouped in 35 heterogeneous ways--e.g., ""Draft Board Blues,"" ""The Vet Centers,"" ""Atrocities."" There is a little personal testimony too: how MacPherson became conscious of the Vietnam veteran from seeing Carol Burnett play the mother in TV's Friendly Fire, and thinking of her own 19-year-old son; how she was briefly jailed (""The Supp-Hose Five"") after a 1981 Washington protest. But what is said, in the aggregate, is common wisdom--with some factual ballast (chiefly from Baskir & Strauss, Chance and Circumstance, and the Center for Policy Research/VA Legacies of War). We were divided then, and we are now. Poor whites, and minorities, served disproportionately. Until recently the vets received short shrift. (Perhaps sympathies are now turning against ""the ones who didn't go."") Some of the vets feel guilty; some of the avoiders feel guilty. Some in the antiwar movement became passive, others kept the faith. Today's hardline leaders want to forget the ""lessons."" MacPherson decries forgetfulness--she disapproves vocally of '60s-resisters unconcerned about the vets. But otherwise she has no point of view. And while the book might seem harmless (if wordy and hackneyed) as a kaleidoscopic portrayal of ""the profoundly complex Vietnam War,"" that would be to overlook MacPherson's pervasive uncertainty--confusion, contradiction--about the war's specific nature. Early on, she speaks of the ""relentless guerrilla warfare"" as unnerving; in the next breath, of ""the dehumanizing endemic to warfare""; in the next, of ""Hun"" and ""Nip"" and ""gook"" as equivalent de-humanizers. Later, she says My Lai's ""painful message"" was ""that America is capable, like other nations, of evil in war""; but back a hundred or more pages, an interviewee comments (with rare incisiveness) that only massive avoidance made Lt. Calley an officer. A few individuals do stand out: MacPherson's Washington Post colleague Joel Garreau (Nine Nations of North America)--a workingclass Catholic C.O. (and humorously self-aware); Harvard hawk Eliot Abram--who became neoconservative Midge Decter's sono-in-law; IBM lawyer/bereavedfather/""resident peacenik"" Robert Ransom (""I know I could have saved our son""). And apart from futilely scoring the ""misbegotten war,"" MacPherson does justifiably denounce draft-politics (the deferments and legal loopholes that gave ""the most vocal an out,"" the all-silencing lottery). More heft than weight. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.