Kontum Diary

Twenty years after he fought in Vietnam, ex-Army paratrooper Reed had not come to grips with his experiences there. Then his mother unearthed a box Reed had shipped home from Kontum Province in March 1968. It held a North Vietnamese soldier's backpack, snatched by Reed from a battlefield, that contained the poetry-filled diary of the soldier, Second Lieut. Nguyen van Nghia. When Reed learned that Nghia was still alive, he went to Vietnam to return the diary. Impossible as it may seem to spoil the telling of such a tale, Reed and Schwarz (To Love a Child, 1995, etc.) have done it. Most damaging is the narrative's detached, wooden voice, which renders dull even those episodes that should be most exciting, such as Reed's long-anticipated meeting with Nghia. More disturbing is the simplistic portrait of Reed, who's depicted as a damaged soul, perhaps ""brainwashed"" by the U.S. government to hate the Vietnamese, until, in Hanoi, he begins to see not ""gooks"" but fellow human beings. Even Nghia's poetry disappoints (""Spring is coming, see the beautiful landscape""). The book includes all of Nghia's diary (only partly seen by PW), translated by Rich Murphy and Nguyen Dinh. Photos not seen by PW. (June) ~ FYI: Reed's return to Vietnam was filmed as a documentary, Kontum Diary, to be shown on PBS.