After Words: Karl Marlantes, author of "Matterhorn" interviewed by Ralph Peters

coming up next book TV presents afterwards an hour-long program will we invite guest host to interview authors this week former Marine rifle platoon commander Karl Marlantes discusses his book matterhorn about his experiences in combat during the Vietnam War the Rhodes Scholar and Navy Cross recipient sets his story in 1969 detailing the exploits of Bravo Company as it tries to recapture a fire support base he talks with author military analyst and former Army lieutenant colonel ralph peters hello it's my great privilege today to interview Carl Maher latus author of the astonishingly good best-seller which would make any writer jealous matterhorn a novel of vietnam Matterhorn is not only superbly written despite the fact that there are no vampires in this no boy wizards no shopaholic nymphomaniacs just a very serious wrenching moving and brilliantly executed novel about the Vietnam War it's been on the New York Times bestseller list for eight weeks and deservedly so Carl welcome and congratulations thank you very much it's really a pleasure to be here yeah so I've got to put you on the spot right away good beyond the flap copy that the publicists work with Iran or cook up themselves what's this really about what is this wonderful novel about it's about a young man learning compassion in the middle of a war which is a very difficult task something that all young men have to learn at some point but that's that's the essence of this novel well that certainly comes across but the road to learning compassion is a very very brutal in fact it's not a road it's a jungle trail exactly yeah and the characters in this are just remarkably well drawn obviously there's one who's although this is told in the third-person there is a a ghost narrator the second lieutenant we know MELAS strict who's a well-educated marine second lieutenant a little bookish sensitive a little bit vain about his intellect at first it's over quickly yeah how much leeway gnome Ellis's Karl Marlantes well you know I like to tell people if I had half of this character's political skills I'd probably you know be over in the Senate office building right now instead of being a writer not him that way at all an amalgam of some people I knew one of whom was a marvelous kingmaker type of politician and quite frankly one is my older brother who was a corporate leader written very good at it but you know a lot of the lot of the flaws and they're the ones that I had to go through I mean I was you know I was an intelligent I was I was the valedictorian of my high school you know yeah and then so I was really smart but man it didn't do me any good in Vietnam at all there was a lot of other things they had to learn and so that part of the character is is partly me too and of course he sees things that that I saw and most second lieutenants who dropped into combat see as a learning curve is a very very steep it's steep or it ends quick but veterans have a point about the writing itself all usually only the worst novels have characters taken completely from life most characters and really good novels and this is a really good novel our amalgam is there a little bit from your your cousin from your brother from some of you new traits from some of you ran into an a diner for half an hour yeah what about that the dark hero of this book lieutenant Hawk ted Hawk who was brilliantly done how much of him came from anybody in particular well I had when I first arrived a company executive officer who was one probably the best marine officer were served under and he serves a great deal of inspired a great deal of hawk now you know a lot of hawk is like he said made up from other people that his name's Tim rabbit and he was a a Marine officer he didn't stay in he got out but he led a company eventually at the end of his tour so you don't as a lieutenant you don't get companies in the Marine Corps unless you're really good and he was and so yeah he inspired that character quite a bit of course this novel is set in the later phases of the Vietnam War right when the homefront has really soured mmm-hmm and we can get to that a bit more later on yep way no Millis the second lieutenant we know melis he goes he doesn't try to evade it right and it's it's not an act of bravado but it seems a very difficult act for him in some respects you you were there in 1969 there's a career I went there in October of 68 he hefted in October 69 yeah so you really you know in the post Tet Marine Corps right yeah post Martin Luther King post our efforts thought that all the cities going up and smoked yeah it was it was after that and one thing you do very well and very honestly is you do without at all exaggerating them severe as they are you deal with the racial issues mm-hmm you know the white Southern Marine Corps versus the urban black draftee Marine Corps there's a character China who's pivotal I think in the muck in his second tier way well and he's he's he's analysis alter-ego yeah I mean they are identically ambitious and identically good at it and so I mean they they are he's they're like half brothers but was that tough not just getting the black idiom which would you certainly do service ibly but also writing about those things em for so long it was you know it was it was it was it was scary because I mean Who am I I mean I I grew up in a state where there's city of Portland has african-americans but I don't think there were any of my County and so I I was early drafts of the novel those black characters were pretty skin fully drawn because I was just afraid to go there but after taking so long to get it published I got older and I think you get beat up by life enough so Ichigo I'd you know I can survive this and if I get it wrong but I couldn't do the novel you can't do Vietnam without dealing with racism I mean I think that's what was going on and it would not have been a true book if I didn't go at it and so I've read the sigh of relief cuz I've had them african-americans in my reading say no it's okay you did okay but it was four it was scary because I thought I could I could blow this well you're not in a book that's almost 600 pages of prose there's a lot you can blow yeah and I gotta say that while I didn't join the military until 1976 so you know I was in the Cold War easygoing relatively speaking military nonetheless I served with a lot of NCOs and officers who were Vietnam vets and this book remarkably closely captures not only what they talked about but what they were reluctant to talk about mm-hmm it's it's just a book that feels true and in addition to the characters which are well balanced the portrayal of the black soldiers and their dilemmas well they're certainly not monolithic that's one of the great things about the book one of the many great things the the blacks are as various as the white characters I mean this isn't like you know Uncle Tom's over here and oh there's Stokely Carmichael's over there they're complex everybody in the book black white so yeah indifferent you know they're they're wonderful characters but all those wonderful characters some of whom meet heartbreaking fates or push through a really powerful narrative I'm going to tell you I when I first saw the title of the book I think was a my time in New York Times Book Review or the Washington Post I thought matter what this Mountaineer that's right yeah but I had pushed on I read the review and the reviews have been so stunningly good that I had by the book but then I felt the weight of this I mean this you could work out with this separate and do I really have time to read this and I sat down on a Saturday morning which is unlike me to sit down on this and started it and I'd finished it by Sunday evening like it was just it's a tremendous book so you owe my wife reimbursement for a loss thank you okay but it's terrific the story you really pulls you through I mean it's lieutenant melis is just thrust into this operation and none of his trains really prepared him for it yeah and he's thrust into combat and not only are the battle scenes extraordinarily well done you manage that to capture the confusion of combat without confusing the readers very very tough it was a very tough artistic challenge combat is about boredom and anxiety and confusion and how do you get that across without having a bored confused reader who throws the book aside and and I mean I rewrote chapter 1 probably 30 times because I kept going while I'm you know it was it was hard but I wanted very much to have the reader experience the being someone else's skin that's that's why I like fiction you can get into some character and then you can actually see the world through that character's eyes and it changes your view of the world and so that was a big motivation for why I wrote fiction about

Channel: BookTV

Views: 8,238

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: book, tv, booktv.org, c-span, cspan

Id: ag7n3N7-2uU

Length: 10min 5sec (605 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 25 2010