Why Are We in Vietnam?

Why Are We In Vietnam?

First edition
Author	Norman Mailer
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Bildungsroman
Publisher	G. P. Putnam's Sons
Publication date	1967
Media type	Print Hardback
Preceded by	An American Dream
Followed by	Armies of the Night

Why Are We In Vietnam? is a 1967 novel by the American author, Norman Mailer. The action focuses on a hunting trip to the Brooks Range in Alaska where a young man is brought by his father, a wealthy businessman who works for a company that makes cigarette filters and is obsessed with killing a grizzly bear. As the novel progresses, the protagonist is increasingly disillusioned that his father resorts to hunting tactics that seem dishonest and unmasculine, including the use of a helicopter, which the protagonist refers to as the "Cop Turd". At the end of the novel, the protagonist informs the reader that he is soon going to serve in the Vietnam War as a soldier.

Written while Norman Mailer was in Provincetown, Massachusetts in the Spring of 1966, Mailer initially intended to write a novel about a gang of bikers, hippies, and girls who lived in the sand dunes and thickets. To introduce Provincetown with “such literary horrors” would be a sin, he thought, and instead, Mailer chose to create a prelude about two Texas boys hunting in Alaska. His characters would come from his comrades in the 112th Cavalry out of San Antonio whom Mailer served with in World War II. After writing on the hunt in Alaska he planned to focus on Provincetown, but never did. By the time he finished writing on the Texas duo he realized he had finalized a novel and his two characters had nothing to do with Provincetown. According to Peter Manso's oral biography of Mailer, Walter Minton, his editor at Putnam's, felt that the short book was far too short to satisfy his commitment to Putnam's for a book after An American Dream and, in Minton's eyes, Mailer moved on to the New American Library imprint and then to Little, Brown without completing his commitment to Putnam's.

Randy D.J. Jethroe— The narrator and protagonist of the story, he narrates the trip to Alaska while at a dinner for him in Dallas, TX the night before he is shipped off to Vietnam. Representing the Hipster in Norman Mailer’s essay, “The White Negro,” D.J. represents a non-conformist ideology who lives under the constant fear of nuclear annihilation by the American government’s choices. Therefore, the only rational way to live is by fulfilling bodily needs and in the present with the understanding that death could come at any moment.