*Fiction International's* "Pain #2" issue was just published and is
pertinent to this list. A few of the selections include fiction by W. D
Ehrhart; Donald Anderson's poignant self-review of *Aftermath: An Anthology
of Post-Vietnam Fiction*; Jon Forrest Glade's review of Jonathan Shay's
*Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character*; and
powerful battlefield art by John Wolfe. The following is an excerpt from
Wolfe's own account of his near-death:
Never one to do things halfway, I eventually walked into a North Vietnamese
ambush in the mountains west of Hue. After three cardiac arrests and 39
pints of blood, the doctors of the 22nd Surgical Group pulled me through.
I cannot explain, in terrestrial terms, the states of mind I experienced
those three weeks on the *USS Repose.* Small devils visited my bunk daily.
Sometimes they menaced and sometimes performed a kind of theater before me.
Apparitions and visions of all kinds tormented me; but the worst, the very
worst, was when I descended into a sinister vacuum which only religious
metaphors about the loss of god's love could begin to describe. Even the
devils didn't visit me there.
The issue is $12.00 and can be ordered from:
Harold Jaffe, Editor
Department of English
San Diego State University
San Diego, CA 92182-8140
619 594-5469
Maggie
mjaffe@mail.sdsu.edu