Meditations in Green Paperback – August 12, 2003

Phew - where do you start a review of a book like this?I started reading this one and I found myself struggling. Too much coloring in and conscious stream had me rolling my eyes and rereading too many lines. About 50 or so pages in it started to turn for me. After that, I was devouring it.Not having read Catch-22 (yet) I can't make the analogies some reviewers have. Here's my take, Meditations in Green is a cerebral novel of one man's (Private Griffin) journey through Vietnam interlaced with his life after Vietnam.The book is by chapters and each chapter is loosely broken into 3 parts: 1. The musings of a plant. 2. Life after Vietnam. 3. Life in Vietnam as a soldier. All the players in the book are so well developed that you feel you know them. The writing style is, like the players, laid back but crisp some how. Very descriptive text allows you to somehow "Feel" the story as opposed to just view it. The conversations are real and flow with a banter that is common to all of us. Wright has 100% nailed the whole absurdity and incomprehensible BS that follows the military around and on which the military tends to thrive.Griffin's character is one of intelligence and given to inward analysis along with viewing the world through a skeptical lens. His conversations with his buddies, and anyone in general, drip with sarcasm and a wit that makes you smile. You imagine him as always having that academically bored look all over his face and a sigh with every breath exhaled. Despite seeming older than his years, you feel a kind of naivete from him as he stumbles and resets his way through Vietnam and it's many follies.He tells us stories of his acquaintances in Vietnam who either met untimely death, got sent home, went mad or just accompanied him through his tour. The skepticism he displays and reluctant respect he pays his superiors is spot on and reminded me so much of my time in uniform.One exchange I particularly enjoyed went something like this (paraphrasing):After a US plane crashed on take off and both occupants were killed. Two soldiers stood talking about one of the dead."Damn, he only got here last week""That would make a great epitaph: He only got here last week"That kind of tired, unmoved and unimpressed sarcasm resonates through the book and, I have to admit, I enjoyed it....... a lot.I'll try more of Stephen Wright's work as it's refreshing in a worn out and tired sort of way that pulls no punches and doesn't even start to attempt to be clever. We won't be remembering Wright as a "Shakespeare" or "Jane Austen" but, for those who read his work, he will hold a place in their top 10 I'm sure.

Addict and war veteran James Griffin is fixated on foliage. In between flashbacks to Vietnam and addled encounters with his girlfriend Huey and his vengeance-crazed war buddy Trips, Griffin tries to get into the botanical mindset, contemplating all that is green and leafy. Stephen Wright is an insanely creative author. He writes like a whiz, dropping at least one sentence per page or two that makes the reader stop, rewind, replay and admire all over again. Unfortunately, his cleverness sometimes comes at the expense of clarity, and all the pomo pyrotechnics blow up in everybody's face. There's more drugging than fighting in this war novel, and Wright does a great job of depicting altered states. But the neverending acid trip gets old after while, and I wished Wright would peel back the layer of hallucinatory gauze and engage in some good old-fashioned concrete storytelling. As one of the characters says, "There's no coherence. It just kind of settles over you. Like a musty tent." He said it better than I could. It depends on what you're looking for: If you want to read a great Vietnam novel, read Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried" or James Crumley's "One to Count Cadence." If you want to be dazzled and stunned by literary loop-de-loops, read "Meditations in Green." Hell, it doesn't have to be an either/or situation, read em all.

I got lost in the stream of consciousness. Nonetheless it’s a good story. I would still eat the more traditional narratives first.

Waste of time.

Some of the best prose you'll read on the Vietnam War and its aftermath. Very dark, laugh-out-loud funny and subversive, the narrative treads a familiar path at times but the horror show climax is inspired. I just re-read this book after 30-odd years and it is every bit as affecting as it was when it came out. Military intelligence at its best.

Stephen Wrights prose is excellent. The psychedelic age and the Vietnam war collide in this collection of memorable characters and graphic moments. This book is hip, stylish and never patronizes the war or its victims. Written by a real Vet and probably a real drug user too.

This book is challenging and often like a hallucination, but worth the effort.

Good book explaining delayed effects of war on modern soldier! It is sad that so many had to suffer! We lost good men from past wars due to this mental sickness!

Pleased to get a copy in such great condition, delivery was prompt also.

read the book and the stupidity of war becomes common sence how ever lokking back it was a war that had to be fought in the globle sence do you want a good bully or a bad bully

Fantastic