Craig Hansen Werner

Doug Bradley

For a Kentucky rifleman who spent his tour trudging through Vietnam's Central Highlands, it was Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'." For a "tunnel rat" who blew smoke into the Viet Cong's underground tunnels, it was Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze." For a black marine distraught over the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., it was Aretha Franklin's "Chain of Fools." And for countless other Vietnam vets, it was "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die," "Who'll Stop the Rain," or the song that gives this book its title. In We Gotta Get Out of This Place, Doug Bradley and Craig Werner place popular music at the heart of the American experience in Vietnam. They explore how and why U.S. troops turned to music as a way of connecting to each other and the World back home and of coping with the complexities of the war they had been sent to fight. They also demonstrate that music was important for every group of Vietnam veterans -- black and white, Latino and Native American, men and women, officers and "grunts" -- whose personal reflections drive the book's narrative. Many of the voices are those of ordinary soldiers, airmen, seamen, and marines. But there are also "solo" pieces by veterans whose writings have shaped our understanding of the war -- Karl Marlantes, Alfredo Vea, Yusef Komunyakaa, Bill Ehrhart, Arthur Flowers -- as well as songwriters and performers whose music influenced soldiers' lives, including Eric Burdon, James Brown, Bruce Springsteen, Country Joe McDonald, and John Fogerty. Together their testimony taps into memories -- individual and cultural -- that capture a central if often overlooked component of the American war in Vietnam.

The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War

We Gotta Get Out of this Place

A final sequence highlights the centrality of black music to African American writing, arguing that recognizing blues, gospel, and jazz as theoretically suggestive cultural practices rather than specific musical forms points to what is most distinctive in twentieth-century African American writing: its ability to subvert attempts to limit its engagement with psychological, historical, political, or aesthetic realities.

From Afro-modernism to the Jazz Impulse

Playing the Changes

A study of James Joyce's 1914 novel, "Dubliner", with critical commentary and an analysis of the text.

A Pluralistic World

Dubliners

Discusses Rich's career as a poet, examines the major themes of her work, and analyzes Rich's approach to poetry

The Poet and Her Critics

Adrienne Rich

Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: The Vietnam Veterans' National Anthem -- 1. "Goodbye My Sweetheart, Hello Vietnam": The Soundscape Takes Shape -- 2. "Bad Moon Rising": The Soundtracks of LBJ's War -- 3. "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die": Protest, Pot, Black Power, and the (Psychedelic) Sound of Nixon's War -- 4. "Chain of Fools": Radios, Guitars, Eight Tracks (and Silence in the Field) -- 5. "What's Going On": Music and the Long Road Home -- Notes -- Notes on Interviews -- Sources for Solos and Duet -- Index -- Back Cover

Werner

In Playing the Changes, Craig Hansen Werner presents a polyrhythmic approach to the continuities and discontinuities of the American literary tradition. He focuses on the relationship between two superficially distinct traditions: European (post)modernism and African American culture in both literary and musical forms. A primary contribution of Playing the Changes is its exploration of different "phrasings" of issues important to highly conscious African American artists from the late nineteenth century (Charles Chesnutt's The Conjure Woman) to the 1990s (Toni Morrison's Jazz). A final sequence highlights the centrality of black music to African American writing, arguing that recognizing blues, gospel, and jazz as theoretically suggestive cultural practices rather than specific musical forms points to what is most distinctive in twentieth-century African American writing: its ability to subvert attempts to limit its engagement with psychological, historical, political, or aesthetic realities.

Craig Hansen Werner

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