The Second Tour, by Terry P. Rizzuti, is a fiction memoir of the Vietnam experience and post-war adjustment. The opening chapter attempts to disorient, to suddenly transport readers into the unfamiliar, much as raw recruits are dropped from helicopters into battle zones. The leech becomes metaphorical of American involvement in Vietnam, of the Marine Corps' living off the blood of innocent, naive adolescents. The story is contemporary and experimental, narrated through a series of associated flashbacks.
Part 1 is called "Chaos." It recounts the narrator's early days in Vietnam, when he is trying to understand his involvement there. Part 2, "Survival," describes the middle months of the tour and the narrator's seemingly inescapable entrapment in a deterministic attitude. Part 3 is an elaboration of its title, "Paranoia Plus." It covers the final hundred days of the thirteen-month tour. Parts 2 and 3 expand upon and give fuller meaning to the events of Part 1. All parts are integrated through association with the experience of the narrator after he has returned from his tour in Vietnam. The Epilogue provides final, complete closure for both the story and the narrator.
The Second Tour is an extraordinary view of the Vietnam combat experience, the most contemporary literary account on the subject. The style is experimental, the subject matter contemporary and the overall presentation so close to actual truth it closely borders on memoir. Almost no Vietnam War literature is experimental or contemporary. Most (not all) is billed as nonfiction, written from the intellect while rejecting the heart. The few good works of fiction all take a post- and/or pre-war focus, with a couple of exceptions.
The Second Tour is much more than a Vietnam War novel; it’s experimental fiction that explores contemporary themes of brotherhood, morality, religion and personal growth achieved in the face of tremendous adversity. Additionally, April 30, 2010, will mark the 35th anniversary of the fall of Saigon; and will probably be a fairly important media event that proves advantageous to publishers with well-timed releases of new perspectives on the war. An extensive audience of Vietnam Veterans, medical researchers, professors of literature, history and military or political science, as well as the international community still awaits a well-written Vietnam War novel that simultaneously describes the horror of combat while demonstrating its life-long effect.
In summary, you will find that The Second Tour is a contemporary novel that works in both structure and content toward the reader's perception of the main character, a character illuminated through several layers of time collapsed in his attempt to comprehend his experience of the war and its effects. The point of view here is the novel if we agree that form is an aspect of characterization.
Rizzuti is well aware that it's all in his mind, but he felt he owed a serious debt to some dead friends, one he could only repay through the telling of their story. He has reached the point where he can no longer be objective about its value as literature. Sometimes it seems to him like an excellent piece of fiction; other times an excellent piece of crap. He looks forward to hearing from anyone who has read the novel.
Share
Print
Save