Meditations In Green

Summary

One of the greatest novels ever written out of the Vietnam war, by a writer who experienced it firsthand.

Deployed to Vietnam with the U.S. Army’s 1069 Intelligence Group, Spec. 4 James Griffin starts out clear-eyed and hard-working, believing he can glide through the war unharmed. But the kaleidoscope of horrors he experiences gets inside him relentlessly. He collapses, gradually, in step with the exploding hell around him, and ends up unstrung, waiting for the cataclysm that will bring him home, dead or not.

Griffin survives, but back in the U.S. his battles intensify. Beset by addiction, he takes up meditating on household plants and attempts to adjust to civilian life. Through passages gorgeous, agonizing, and surreal, Stephen Wright paints a searing portrait of a nation driven to the brink by violence and deceit. Meditations in Green is a haunting exploration of the harrowing costs of war and yet-unhealed wounds, “the impact of an experience so devastating that words can hardly contain it.” (Walter Kendrick, New York Times Book Review)