I posted that belated wrapup of Robert Flynn links as a result of receiving an email from my writing teacher which mentioned (among other things) that his Last Klick novel is now an ebook. It sells for the very affordable price of $1.99.
I’ve read a few novels and short story collections by Robert Flynn. All interesting and thought-provoking, with some religious themes. I have not read Last Klick before (although I heard him read a chapter from it at a Houston bookstore a decade ago). It’s a fictional perspective of the Vietnam war as told by a journalist. Frankly it’s a departure from some of his other works (which are more about life in small town Texas and the clash between Texas provincialism and the cosmopolitanism of city life). But Flynn actually did some Vietnam reporting and served as a soldier during the Korean conflict.
Ironically I still have not read Flynn’s first work, North to Yesterday, which (as I understand it) was a comic cowboy/western novel. It also received a degree of commercial success when it was published in the Sixties.
I should mention that I did an audio interview with Flynn a few years ago about the craft of writing. I still haven’t gotten around to putting it online. But I will. I will.
I just read two blurbs on the back cover of my personal copy:
I’ve read many books about the Great War and about Stalingrad and the other horrors of World War Two, but THE LAST KLICK, because it comes out of a contemporary sensibility, presents a greater challenge to the feelings. The madness of jungle warfare is matched moreover by the wicken idiocy of press and television. The United States seen from Vietnam is even more distorting than the experiences of combat. Written with passion and great skill.
Saul Bellow.
20 odd years ago, I had the pleasure of spending a few days travelling around Vietnam with Robert Flynn who was then a freelance correspondent for True Magazine. Now after finishing THE LAST KLICK, I know what he was really up to. He has done a wonderful job of recreating the sights and sounds and smells of Vietnam, and he has captured the ambitions, pretensions and cynicism of the international press corps that covered the war.
Steve Croft, CBS 60 Minutes
See also: my book review of Robert Flynn’s recent Tie-Fast Country and my linkdump of Flynn essays about various topics.
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