Subverting Autobiography: War, Narrative, and Ethics in Michael Herr's Dispatches

Abstract

A repressed autobiographical narrative runs through Michael Herr's Dispatches. Though Herr is associated with the New Journalism and subjective forms of reporting, his revisions and narrative strategies indicate a reluctance to include autobiographical material. This complex dynamic of self-representation reflects Herr's ambivalence toward his role in Vietnam and his preoccupation with the ethical responsibilities of the reporter. Herr's response to the moral obligation to tell the stories of others entails the displacement of his story of development and crisis from the narrative and the work. Dispatches questions the ethics of writing autobiography, offering an alternative perspective on the relationship between autobiography and ethics.