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Black Virgin Mountain: A Return to Vietnam
From the author of the classic National Book Award–winning novel Paco's Story , an equally classic and haunting memoir of the Vietnam War.
In 1966 Larry Heinemann, a working-class twenty-two-year-old from Chicago, was drafted into the Army just as the American military buildup in Vietnam was going into overdrive. He served one year of combat duty with the 25th Infantry Division, from March 1967 to March 1968, most of it in the vicinity of Cu Chi (of tunnels fame). It was the most horrific and consequential year of his life and served as the raw material for his two subsequent classic war novels, Close Quarters and Paco's Story . The war also devastated his family. Both of his brothers served in the military, and one of them killed himself, while the other has been missing for many years. Truly, the Vietnam War altered Heinemann's life utterly and forever.
Black Virgin Mountain is structured along a railway journey Larry Heinemann took in 1992 from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City as the guest of the Vietnam Writers Association and ends with a crawl through the Tunnels of Cu Chi and a climb up the sacred mountain that provides the title's namesake. From there, he can view the entire compass of his combat experience in-country (including the horrific battle in which Oliver Stone also fought and used as the bloody climax of Platoon ). Along the way, the author encounters Vietnamese veterans of the war and views sites that trigger powerful memories. This memoir is an unforgettable threnody and a moving act of reconciliation.
In 1966 Larry Heinemann, a working-class twenty-two-year-old from Chicago, was drafted into the Army just as the American military buildup in Vietnam was going into overdrive. He served one year of combat duty with the 25th Infantry Division, from March 1967 to March 1968, most of it in the vicinity of Cu Chi (of tunnels fame). It was the most horrific and consequential year of his life and served as the raw material for his two subsequent classic war novels, Close Quarters and Paco's Story . The war also devastated his family. Both of his brothers served in the military, and one of them killed himself, while the other has been missing for many years. Truly, the Vietnam War altered Heinemann's life utterly and forever.
Black Virgin Mountain is structured along a railway journey Larry Heinemann took in 1992 from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City as the guest of the Vietnam Writers Association and ends with a crawl through the Tunnels of Cu Chi and a climb up the sacred mountain that provides the title's namesake. From there, he can view the entire compass of his combat experience in-country (including the horrific battle in which Oliver Stone also fought and used as the bloody climax of Platoon ). Along the way, the author encounters Vietnamese veterans of the war and views sites that trigger powerful memories. This memoir is an unforgettable threnody and a moving act of reconciliation.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2005
About the author
Larry Heinemann
18 books23 followersLarry Heinemann (1944-2019) was an American novelist born and raised in Chicago. His body of work is primarily concerned with the Vietnam War. Mr. Heinemann served a combat tour in Vietnam from 1967 to 1968 with the 25th Infantry Division, and has described himself as the most ordinary of soldiers. Mr. Heinemann's military experience is documented in his most recent work, Black Virgin Mountain (2005), his only nonfiction piece. Black Virgin Mountain also chronicles his return trips to Vietnam and his blunt personal and political views concerning the country and the war. He has often referred to his books about Vietnam as an accidental trilogy.
While serving in Vietnam, Mr. Heinemann fought in a battle near the Cambodian border in which filmmaker Oliver Stone also participated. Mr. Heinemann writes of the battle in his first novel, Close Quarters (1977), and in Black Virgin Mountain, and it also forms the basis for the climactic battle scene in Stone's Platoon.
His fictional prose style is uncompromisingly harsh and honest, and reflects his working class background. His second and critically acclaimed novel is Paco's Story (1986), which won the 1987 National Book Award for Fiction, topping Toni Morrison's Beloved in a decision that some thought controversial.[1] At the time, Mr. Heinemann's only response to the controversy was that the prize, a check for $10,000, was already cashed, and that the Louise Nevelson sculpture, a gift from the National Book Foundation, was not likely to be returned. Paco's Story relates the quasi-picaresque postwar experiences of its titular protagonist, who is haunted by the ghosts of his dead comrades from the war. These ghosts provide the novel's narrative voice. The story deals with the role of the American GI as both victim and victimizer. It is interesting to note that ghost stories are common in both American and Vietnamese literature about the war.
His third novel, Cooler by the Lake (1992), departed from the topic of Vietnam and was not very successful, either critically and commercially.
Mr. Heinemann's short stories and non-fiction have appeared in Atlantic Monthly, GRAPHIS, Harper’s, Penthouse, Playboy, and Tri-Quarterly magazines, as well as Van Nghe, the Vietnam Writers Association Journal of Arts and Letters in Hanoi, and numerous anthologies including The Other Side of Heaven, Writing Between the Lines, Vietnam Anthology, Best of the Tri-Quarterly, Lesebuch der Wilden Manner, The Vintage Book of War Stories, and most recently Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace edited by Maxine Hong Kingston. His work has been translated into Dutch, German, French, Spanish, and Vietnamese.
Heinemann learned the craft of writing at Columbia College, Chicago which he attended from 1968 to 1971. In 1971 he began teaching creative writing at Columbia, a position he held until 1986, the year Paco's Story was published.
He has received literature fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2002-03 Mr. Heinemann was granted a Fulbright Scholarship to research Vietnamese folklore, legends, and mythology at Hue University.
Mr. Heinemann served as the Visiting Writer-in-Residence at Texas A&M University until 2015.
He died December 11, 2019, of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
While serving in Vietnam, Mr. Heinemann fought in a battle near the Cambodian border in which filmmaker Oliver Stone also participated. Mr. Heinemann writes of the battle in his first novel, Close Quarters (1977), and in Black Virgin Mountain, and it also forms the basis for the climactic battle scene in Stone's Platoon.
His fictional prose style is uncompromisingly harsh and honest, and reflects his working class background. His second and critically acclaimed novel is Paco's Story (1986), which won the 1987 National Book Award for Fiction, topping Toni Morrison's Beloved in a decision that some thought controversial.[1] At the time, Mr. Heinemann's only response to the controversy was that the prize, a check for $10,000, was already cashed, and that the Louise Nevelson sculpture, a gift from the National Book Foundation, was not likely to be returned. Paco's Story relates the quasi-picaresque postwar experiences of its titular protagonist, who is haunted by the ghosts of his dead comrades from the war. These ghosts provide the novel's narrative voice. The story deals with the role of the American GI as both victim and victimizer. It is interesting to note that ghost stories are common in both American and Vietnamese literature about the war.
His third novel, Cooler by the Lake (1992), departed from the topic of Vietnam and was not very successful, either critically and commercially.
Mr. Heinemann's short stories and non-fiction have appeared in Atlantic Monthly, GRAPHIS, Harper’s, Penthouse, Playboy, and Tri-Quarterly magazines, as well as Van Nghe, the Vietnam Writers Association Journal of Arts and Letters in Hanoi, and numerous anthologies including The Other Side of Heaven, Writing Between the Lines, Vietnam Anthology, Best of the Tri-Quarterly, Lesebuch der Wilden Manner, The Vintage Book of War Stories, and most recently Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace edited by Maxine Hong Kingston. His work has been translated into Dutch, German, French, Spanish, and Vietnamese.
Heinemann learned the craft of writing at Columbia College, Chicago which he attended from 1968 to 1971. In 1971 he began teaching creative writing at Columbia, a position he held until 1986, the year Paco's Story was published.
He has received literature fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2002-03 Mr. Heinemann was granted a Fulbright Scholarship to research Vietnamese folklore, legends, and mythology at Hue University.
Mr. Heinemann served as the Visiting Writer-in-Residence at Texas A&M University until 2015.
He died December 11, 2019, of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
May 7, 2011
Vietnam just won’t let go, witness the continuing flood of novels, histories and memoirs to come out of that war. Admittedly, the number of Americans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan doesn’t approach the horrific count in Vietnam (at least one would hope it never does,) but I suspect the nature of the war itself, the fact that there is no draft, the extensive use of video-game-like drones-flown-by-privates-in-Missouri, and the lack of governmental betrayal felt by most troops in Vietnam, may result in fewer self-examinations. Time will tell, of course. Heinemann touches on our most recent ventures briefly, “ 'Since Vietnam, other wars have come our way, including Iraq and Afghanistan...and I don't know about you, but I have watched and been appalled by the horror-struck nonchalance with which we seem to enjoy them. We are fascinated and repelled simultaneously by the endless loop of televised imagery and skimpy narration, oiled with the patina of exaggerated patriotism that begins with the dusty, desert-bred bogeyman, travels clean through the bloody wrath of the Old Testament, and ends with those prickly little tingles in the scalp, the moistened eyes, and the grand old flag...But there remained, still, the itchy, undeniable sense of unfinished business...”
This was not his first trip back to Vietnam, but this time he went with fellow writers to a conference and thence to Black Virgin Mountain, an iconic feature of the landscape. It’s an odd book, filled with sympathetic descriptions of the Vietnamese he meets during his trip and permeated with angry at LBJ and especially Westmoreland. The writing is often intense and harsh: "Every human vitality is taken from you as if you'd been skinned; yanked out like you pull nails with a claw hammer; boiled off, the same as you would render a carcass at hog-killing."
Interesting scene where he meets James Webb, a man he despises, as representing everything wrong about the war. He doesn't like Webb's books about Vietnam either. I've been thinking about this incident after finishing Close Quarters A Novel. I'll have to read Fields of Fire, which is also highly regarded, to see if I can figure out better what the antipathy might be between these two Vietnam Vets. Heinemann was a grunt, Webb a Marine officer, and perhaps that explains part of the difference. There was clearly no love lost between the officers and the soldiers. The experience of the war by the Navy (especially the pilots and ship-board sailors) and Air Force was distinctly different, I surmise; they went back to clean sheets at the end of the day.
The most intense section relates his visit to the tunnels of Cu Chi which had been restarted in 1959 after suspending them following the exodus of “those dogs, the French.” They were dug with ordinary garden tools and the Americans built a major base over the top of part of the tunnel complex and were never able to find them (according to Heinemann.) He describes his claustrophobic visit to tourist enlarged tunnels and remembers Westmoreland’s classic “doofuss” remarks about the “ ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ that give definition to the hopelessness of the military mind.” A tunnel rat’s response when told of the comment by Michael Herr: “What does that asshole know about tunnels.” Struck by the park ranger guide’s deadpan explanation of the tunnels and their uses, Heinemann is struck, “right then and there …. a sudden discomfort gathers in me, rises like a wiggly bug crawling up the back, a tingling from the waste down, as if half my body has gone to sleep. And all at once, I sincerely, profoundly, do not want to be there.” They are given flashlights, one for every other person, and led into the maze. “The ground is almost bare and the ranger invites us to find the tunnel entrance. ‘You are standing within two meters of it, he says.’ ” He reveals a tiny hole hidden under some leaves and jungle trash, pops down and invites everyone to follow. “Once inside there is just enough room to turn around. You squat on your haunches and there before you is the tunnel that takes you to headquarters. The tunnel has been generously enlarged and scoured out to accommodate the hefty American tourists like Larry and me. . .(It was always the platoon shrimps who got tunnel ratting.) “Holding the flashlight in front, you duck-walk, head down for perhaps twenty feet. . . .the atmosphere is close and hot, the flor and walls are clammy and sticky, the air rank and stifling, the walls and rounded ceiling have been carved our with sweeping, scalloped strokes of a gardener’s trowel. Your clothes and the back of your head brush against the dirt and roots. . . You are quickly pouring sweat, claustrophobic and ready to leave, now. Not half way your legs and back ache terribly, your stumble on your haunches, walking, no, staggering, along like a duck. “
Heinemann then describes his platoon’s coming across a tunnel accidentally. Often booby-trapped, they toss down a grenade but move aside because “the guy down there may just throw it back.” Then it’s time to tunnel. You put away the rest of the grenades, “because to use one now is suicide.” You lean into the tunnel, someone holding your ankles, getting accustomed to the dark, alert for the smell of shit and blood, looking for body parts, You eyeball for the threads of tripwires in the dirt and then squirm down into a hole no bigger around than a “thanksgiving turkey platter.” I leave the rest to your imagination; Heinemann doesn’t.
Some really extraordinary writing.
This was not his first trip back to Vietnam, but this time he went with fellow writers to a conference and thence to Black Virgin Mountain, an iconic feature of the landscape. It’s an odd book, filled with sympathetic descriptions of the Vietnamese he meets during his trip and permeated with angry at LBJ and especially Westmoreland. The writing is often intense and harsh: "Every human vitality is taken from you as if you'd been skinned; yanked out like you pull nails with a claw hammer; boiled off, the same as you would render a carcass at hog-killing."
Interesting scene where he meets James Webb, a man he despises, as representing everything wrong about the war. He doesn't like Webb's books about Vietnam either. I've been thinking about this incident after finishing Close Quarters A Novel. I'll have to read Fields of Fire, which is also highly regarded, to see if I can figure out better what the antipathy might be between these two Vietnam Vets. Heinemann was a grunt, Webb a Marine officer, and perhaps that explains part of the difference. There was clearly no love lost between the officers and the soldiers. The experience of the war by the Navy (especially the pilots and ship-board sailors) and Air Force was distinctly different, I surmise; they went back to clean sheets at the end of the day.
The most intense section relates his visit to the tunnels of Cu Chi which had been restarted in 1959 after suspending them following the exodus of “those dogs, the French.” They were dug with ordinary garden tools and the Americans built a major base over the top of part of the tunnel complex and were never able to find them (according to Heinemann.) He describes his claustrophobic visit to tourist enlarged tunnels and remembers Westmoreland’s classic “doofuss” remarks about the “ ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ that give definition to the hopelessness of the military mind.” A tunnel rat’s response when told of the comment by Michael Herr: “What does that asshole know about tunnels.” Struck by the park ranger guide’s deadpan explanation of the tunnels and their uses, Heinemann is struck, “right then and there …. a sudden discomfort gathers in me, rises like a wiggly bug crawling up the back, a tingling from the waste down, as if half my body has gone to sleep. And all at once, I sincerely, profoundly, do not want to be there.” They are given flashlights, one for every other person, and led into the maze. “The ground is almost bare and the ranger invites us to find the tunnel entrance. ‘You are standing within two meters of it, he says.’ ” He reveals a tiny hole hidden under some leaves and jungle trash, pops down and invites everyone to follow. “Once inside there is just enough room to turn around. You squat on your haunches and there before you is the tunnel that takes you to headquarters. The tunnel has been generously enlarged and scoured out to accommodate the hefty American tourists like Larry and me. . .(It was always the platoon shrimps who got tunnel ratting.) “Holding the flashlight in front, you duck-walk, head down for perhaps twenty feet. . . .the atmosphere is close and hot, the flor and walls are clammy and sticky, the air rank and stifling, the walls and rounded ceiling have been carved our with sweeping, scalloped strokes of a gardener’s trowel. Your clothes and the back of your head brush against the dirt and roots. . . You are quickly pouring sweat, claustrophobic and ready to leave, now. Not half way your legs and back ache terribly, your stumble on your haunches, walking, no, staggering, along like a duck. “
Heinemann then describes his platoon’s coming across a tunnel accidentally. Often booby-trapped, they toss down a grenade but move aside because “the guy down there may just throw it back.” Then it’s time to tunnel. You put away the rest of the grenades, “because to use one now is suicide.” You lean into the tunnel, someone holding your ankles, getting accustomed to the dark, alert for the smell of shit and blood, looking for body parts, You eyeball for the threads of tripwires in the dirt and then squirm down into a hole no bigger around than a “thanksgiving turkey platter.” I leave the rest to your imagination; Heinemann doesn’t.
Some really extraordinary writing.
September 7, 2014
I have really mixed feelings about this one. While Heinemann is a decent writer, and while I appreciated the points he made in the book as well as his story-telling, I got really fed up with his profanity. I realize this he is a military man telling a military story. I do feel that there are better ways - more powerful ways to write about this, than by beginning with an absolute sea of expletives. I wondered how it got lost on him (he indicates he is fairly well-read) that repetition of the same words/points over and over causes their meaning/importance/strength to dwindle considerably. (Julius Caesar anyone?) The first several chapters of the book were written with little use of any vocabulary rather than the four-letter variety and several crystal clear statements about how he didn't give a (insert 4-letter word) if his language offended people, because he was going to tell it like it was (insert another 4-letter word). While he certainly portrayed his bitterness and anger, I was far more distracted by wondering how a published writer didn't have any other vocab to draw on to convey said bitterness and anger. Once I was several chapters into the book, he astounded me by demonstrating that he did indeed have a more than ample vocabulary, but apparently couldn't be bothered to demonstrate it till he had sufficiently shown his vehemence with as many usages of the f-word as he could manage. I guess he got most of his fill by about Part 6 and was ready for some real writing, though he generously continued to grace the reader with profanity throughout the rest of the book. It's a pity too, because I enjoy his points of view and really enjoy his ability to show instead of tell. He transports you straight to Vietnam. I didn't care for the unneeded swim I had to take through his sludge, to get there, though.
June 9, 2021
A memoir by a Vietnam vet about his return to Vietnam, but also encompassing a don't-look-away brutal view of his combat time.
There is a bit of stream of consciousness here, talking about his going to war, and a poignant and painful look at the coming home from war experience. The largest section of the book relates a trip back with an authors' tour and their various meanderings. He talks a bit at the end about why he felt compelled to go to Vietnam -- and evidently he made numerous trips there. He said it was to aid his getting over the war. Clearly, most veterans don't "get over" such a searing experience, but it feels like Heinemann was able to come to terms and be at peace with it. His description of going to the Vietnam Wall in Washington is immensely powerful. and his writing about the catharsis of climbing the Black Virgin Mountain is strong.
There is a bit of stream of consciousness here, talking about his going to war, and a poignant and painful look at the coming home from war experience. The largest section of the book relates a trip back with an authors' tour and their various meanderings. He talks a bit at the end about why he felt compelled to go to Vietnam -- and evidently he made numerous trips there. He said it was to aid his getting over the war. Clearly, most veterans don't "get over" such a searing experience, but it feels like Heinemann was able to come to terms and be at peace with it. His description of going to the Vietnam Wall in Washington is immensely powerful. and his writing about the catharsis of climbing the Black Virgin Mountain is strong.
February 7, 2025
Return to the Beginning
In a reflective look back by a returning Vietnam War veteran, we explore various locations in Vietnam where he served. However, this visit is somewhat outdated, based on a 2006 trip by a veterans' group. Likely, the situation in Vietnam has significantly improved by 2025.
What remains unchanged is our lack of awareness and understanding of the desires of the Vietnamese people. We were trapped in an outdated ideology, and our leadership followed it without question until the very end. The aspirations of the Vietnamese people were centered around the end of colonial rule and the cessation of foreign domination in their country. Our failure to recognize this crucial dynamic resulted in the tragic loss of over 50,000 American troops. Additionally, the American public continues to bear the financial burdens associated with the care of these surviving veterans.
In a reflective look back by a returning Vietnam War veteran, we explore various locations in Vietnam where he served. However, this visit is somewhat outdated, based on a 2006 trip by a veterans' group. Likely, the situation in Vietnam has significantly improved by 2025.
What remains unchanged is our lack of awareness and understanding of the desires of the Vietnamese people. We were trapped in an outdated ideology, and our leadership followed it without question until the very end. The aspirations of the Vietnamese people were centered around the end of colonial rule and the cessation of foreign domination in their country. Our failure to recognize this crucial dynamic resulted in the tragic loss of over 50,000 American troops. Additionally, the American public continues to bear the financial burdens associated with the care of these surviving veterans.
September 12, 2023
Nui Ba Den
I cannot be unbiased as I am a veteran who viewed Nui Ba Den many times from where I served. Mr. Heinemann has written another quality book, just like Close Quarters (I served in the 11th Armored CAV a unit somewhat like he served in). Just like Paco’s Story. His descriptions are wonderful - like Conrad. Be aware this book tells about combat in Vietnam without holding punches. It is not about that, it is about his trips to Vietnam, but he intersperses his personal story wonderfully. Although you are no longer with us Larry, thank you for sharing thoughts and words for many of us who did that initial trip, and then returned much later to see a country at peace.
I cannot be unbiased as I am a veteran who viewed Nui Ba Den many times from where I served. Mr. Heinemann has written another quality book, just like Close Quarters (I served in the 11th Armored CAV a unit somewhat like he served in). Just like Paco’s Story. His descriptions are wonderful - like Conrad. Be aware this book tells about combat in Vietnam without holding punches. It is not about that, it is about his trips to Vietnam, but he intersperses his personal story wonderfully. Although you are no longer with us Larry, thank you for sharing thoughts and words for many of us who did that initial trip, and then returned much later to see a country at peace.
March 14, 2018
A brutally honest series of reminiscences from a (draftee) veteran of the Vietnam War, and his journey to revisit the country and people that left a lasting mark on all involved. Beautifully written and not a single stroke of falsehood about it.
February 21, 2024
Interesting and thoughtful.
August 22, 2010
Why do we keep repeating the mistakes of korea, vietnam, lebanon, iraq one and now two...and afghanistan.
War is stupid. people who are "for war" and who are not willing to go to that war and face death....are cowardly chicken hawks who should be dragged to that war and dropped behind the "enemy" lines.
War is stupid. people who are "for war" and who are not willing to go to that war and face death....are cowardly chicken hawks who should be dragged to that war and dropped behind the "enemy" lines.
December 23, 2008
I came across this while researching a documentary project. Anyone who served in Vietnam will find Larry Heinemann to be honest and quiute interesting as he returns to Vietnam in the 1990's. This is the third of a trilogy of stories he has written about Vietnam, but the first non-fiction.
September 6, 2015
This book often feels more like a travel diary than a book in which a US veteran goes back to Vietnam to be confronted with his memories. It never gets exciting, nor those it get intense or emotional. There are much better books about the Vietnam war out there.
June 6, 2013
An amazing account of the Vietnam war and its aftermath.
June 3, 2016
entertaining, enjoyable read
March 31, 2017
Really a collection of musings. Entertaining at times. Three stars because it's not what I expected.
April 9, 2017
I stumbled across this book at a library book sale last week and it seemed like I should pick it up since my dad is going back to Vietnam this month for the first time since he served. Heinemann reflects on both his experience serving in Vietnam as a young man as well as on the trips he has made back to the country. The writing was a little uneven for me, but there were some moments in here where the writing was so crisp and evocative -- the description of visiting the tunnels, his experiences at the memorial in DC, and the time spent on Black Virgin Mountain at the end -- that it made for a good reading experience. It was also interesting to see how his experience in Vietnam affected his perspective on war and compare that to what I have heard from my dad and his friends. Interesting read.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews