Meditations in Green

Name: Meditations in Green
Brand: Blackstone Audiobooks
Availability: InStock
Author: Stephen Wright
ISBN: 9781455129195

Author: Stephen Wright

Narrator: Ray Porter

Unabridged: 11 hr 43 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Published: 03/26/2012

Categories: Fiction, Military Fiction

Synopsis

Sardonic, searing, seductive, and surreal, the award-winningMeditations in Greenis regarded by many as the best novel of the Vietnam War. It is a kaleidoscopic collage that whirls about an indelible array of images and characters: perverted Winkly, who opted for the army to stay off of welfare; eccentric Payne, whos obsessed with the film hes making of the war; and bucolic Claypool, whos irrevocably doomed to a fate worse than death, just to name a few. Floating at the center of this psychedelic spin is Specialist 4 James Griffin. In country, Griffin studies the jungle of carpet-bomb photos as he fights desperately to keep his grip on reality. Battling addiction stateside after his tour, he studies the green of household plants as he struggles mightily to regain his sanity. With mesmerizing action and Joycean interior monologues, Stephen Wright has created a book that is as much an homage to the darkness of war as it is a testament to the transcendence of art.

About Stephen Wright

Stephen Wright is a New York–based novelist known for his use of surrealistic imagery and dark comedy. His work has varied from hallucinatory accounts of war, a family drama among UFO cultists, a carnivalesque novel on a serial killer, to a Civil War picaresque. He has taught writing courses at various universities, including Princeton University, Brown University, and the New School.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Vit on July 15, 2023

War and its aftermath: the style of Meditations in Green is fancifully delirious and its narration is stark graphic… Trips struck the match with a cavalier flourish and attempted for the second time to start his first pipe of the day. Lungs wheezing like a pair of mildewed bellows, he sucked furious......more

Goodreads review by Jeff on December 19, 2023

Some of the best prose I've read about Vietnam. A sprawling collage of hallucinatory war scenes and scarifying sketches that feels like it was stitched together into a novel after the fact. The present day PTSD frame narrative is fascinating but under-nourished. Sometimes the lack of structure can b......more

Goodreads review by James on August 23, 2012

The man writes zero boring sentences. And I felt like I didn't breathe during the last 30 pages of this book.......more

Goodreads review by Tung on January 09, 2008

The book cover states that this book is regarded by many as the best book ever about the Vietnam War, and having read most of the works considered part of the canon of that era, I in no small measure agree with the statement. It is nothing short of brilliant. The story (like other works of that era)......more

Goodreads review by Alison on March 18, 2024

I'm not the aficionado of the massive heaps of art, literature, film and music left in the wake of the Vietnam War that some of my friends are . But this book and Robert Stone's "Dog Soldiers" transcend their peers on every possible level. Note: this book is not for the faint-hearted. Additionally,......more