Viet Journal, by James Jones (Delacorte Press, 257 pp., $7.95). Prewitt, Jones’s protagonist in From Here to Eternity, would like this book. So will the reader who yearns for a view of Vietnam that extends bevond the wailings of the apologists for American involvement in Southeast Asia. The novelist weaves a series of sketches which vividly depict troops and civilians attempting to survive the façade of “ceasefire.” He grinds no ideological axe, which perhaps explains his difficulty in securing an entrance visa from either South or North Vietnam. Utilizing several Army contacts, Jones finds his way into Vietnam and about the locations made so hauntingly familiar by the TV news. Leaving philosophy for the armchair analyst, he combines the style of an artist with the toughness of a realist who is finely attuned to the foibles and the fiber of the U.S. Army.
A. L. MILLER
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