Taps

By R.Z. Sheppard

VIET JOURNAL

by JAMES JONES

257 pages. Delacorte. $7.95.

When America finally came home from Viet Nam, journalists and their editors were faced with a new problem:How to report back that the light at the end of the tunnel had turned out to be a 40-watt bulb? The editors at the New York Times Magazine had a thought. Anxious for a piece on "the sights, the sounds, the smells of Viet Nam--after the end," they chose Novelist James Jones. Viet Journal, an extensive outgrowth of the trip that produced the magazine article, is pitched perfectly for the mood of the times--a book about Viet Nam for a public that does not want to hear anything more about Viet Nam.

Jones had been an expatriate in Paris for 15 years. He has a nostalgically appealing, soft-core cynicism about politicians and foreign policy reminiscent of those 1930s' middleweight movie heroes. It is what made his first book, From Here to Eternity--with its individualistic little guy battling bravely but tragically against the system--not a war novel but a rich chunk of Depression realism.

At 52, Jones, the ex-World War II corporal and veteran of the watch on Waikiki and Guadalcanal, is no longer disturbed by the glitter of military brass. With a large talent for observation and characterization he is able to separate individuals from the moral horrors of the war. He is also an unabashed admirer of the kind of machismo and professionalism displayed by U.S. officers in Viet Nam, who went out of their way to ferry him to locations from which regular reporters were barred. Jones was fortunate in having as an old social contact a general who pulled the strings, and the U.S. Army is fortunate that he likes it so well.

Viet Journal, though, is really a kind of true-life adventure story by a middle-aged writer who is still honestly concerned about the roots of manhood in a narrow yet undeniably powerful form. He takes calculated risks by flying over V.C.-controlled territory and touring surrounded South Vietnamese-held villages. He proves himself to himself by taking $340 in poker winnings from a group of majors and colonels. The novelist's eye turns outward as well, providing excellent descriptions of landscapes and cities.

Jones' piling up of detail, which at times has overweighted his novels, proves quite an asset in this journal. He has a nose for those human quirks that override ideology. He notes that the clerks' coatroom at the South Vietnamese consulate in Paris is filled with mink coats. He notices that an officer is wearing an unauthorized third dog tag that reads, "If you are recovering my body,--you." He tunes in on a Vietnamese girl, who learned her English from a black G.I., as she tells of her gruesome experiences during the Tet offensive in the funky phrases of the Bedford-Stuyvesant ghetto. Does one gasp or laugh? That is a life problem, not a literary one. Jones just records what he hears.

On his way home, he stops off at Hawaii to visit the locales of From Here to Eternity after a 30-year absence. It is a bit of a self-indulgence, but at his best Jones writes too well to be begrudged the pleasures of his junket. qedR.Z. Sheppard

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