
{"id":7677,"date":"2009-10-24T12:47:10","date_gmt":"2009-10-24T20:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=7677"},"modified":"2011-07-07T18:00:10","modified_gmt":"2011-07-07T22:00:10","slug":"perry-deane-young-on-the%e2%80%98peculiar-obscenity%e2%80%99-of-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2009\/10\/24\/perry-deane-young-on-the%e2%80%98peculiar-obscenity%e2%80%99-of-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Perry Deane Young on the\u00e2\u20ac\u02dcpeculiar obscenity\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 of war"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure id=\"attachment_7678\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7678\" style=\"width: 150px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/youngB102209.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/youngB102209-150x109.jpg\"  title=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"109\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-7678\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/youngB102209-150x109.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/youngB102209-113x82.jpg 113w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/youngB102209.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-7678\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>Young at a refugee camp near Khe Sanh, 1968.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><br \/>\n<strong>By Taylor Sisk, Staff Writer<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Old men lust after war; young men court it. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the same impulse born of opposite origins \u00e2\u20ac\u201c that of those who needn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t fear having to actually encounter war and those who wish to. In that nexus lies what Perry Deane Young refers to as the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153peculiar obscenity\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of war.<\/p>\n<p>That may be putting too fine a point on it. But it does seem to be what Young suggests when he talks about war.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It was so obviously unnecessary,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he says of the Vietnam War, which he covered as a correspondent for United Press International. <\/p>\n<p>A grunt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s-eye view of war \u00e2\u20ac\u0153is like a car wreck; there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nothing noble about it,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Young said, seated on the porch of his Henderson Street home. Certainly, noble deeds are done. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s stupid, and always has been. When you get out there, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just people killing each other. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s slaughter. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s always been. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153But there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s always been this glorified image \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Thirty-nine years ago, Young began writing a book about a band of young correspondents and photographers covering the Vietnam War. His intent was to write it devoid of romance.<\/p>\n<p>It couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be done.<\/p>\n<p>That book, <em>Two of the Missing<\/em>, is about the disappearance into the jungle along the Cambodia-Vietnam border of photojournalists Dana Stone and Sean Flynn, Young\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s friends, young men drawn into the rush of war and driven to document it. <\/p>\n<p>The book was published in 1975 (Truman Capote called it \u00e2\u20ac\u0153moving and engrossing\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) and reissued in May with a new chapter updating the lives of the major personalities portrayed, excepting Stone and Flynn.<\/p>\n<p>Two of the Missing is reportage, memoir, meditation. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s about war, and about an introverted mountain boy blossoming into \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the fullest flowering of Southern degeneracy\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (Flynn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s description, said with great affection, as quoted in Michael Herr\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s classic, <em>Dispatches<\/em>, another stripped-bare vision of America\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s war in Vietnam), and where the two meet \u00e2\u20ac\u201d the transformative, intoxicating effects of war, indelible and at odds, in a very particular place. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The truth is, we loved [Vietnam],\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Young. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We were overwhelmed by the beauty of the place and the beauty of the people \u00e2\u20ac\u201c they are such exquisite and beautiful people \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 just such a natural grace.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Young\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s is a vivid tale of young men (and a few women) in the midst of war, an old men\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s game in which young men die, having, in the best and worst senses, the times of their lives.<\/p>\n<p>Young, at 68, is still writing. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s revising his play about Thomas Wolfe that was recently staged in Mars Hill, near Asheville, and is contemplating a screenplay for another of his books. He lives a quiet life among friends. And he lives with Vietnam. With Stone and Flynn, with the GIs. With the grace of the people in whose country he was nurtured. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s part of my day, every day. You see the pictures everywhere,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said, gesturing into his apartment. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153An ashtray from the Continental Palace, where we all hung out on the square in Saigon. Just dumb little bits of memorabilia.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d He lives with the realization that was then formed, that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I would never have an experience that would measure up.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Close to history<\/strong><br \/>\nPerry Deane Young was born on March 27, 1941 on a farm in the working-class community of Woodfin, on the northern edge of Asheville. The Young farmhouse sat on a hilltop \u00e2\u20ac\u201c above a cotton mill, a casket plant and two furniture factories \u00e2\u20ac\u201c overlooking some 30 acres. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It was very picturesque,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Young said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153it was beautiful.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n<p>The youngest of 13 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c including nine much-older half-siblings from his father\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s first marriage \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Young was his mother\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Little Lord Fauntleroy.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I would go to school with kids in overalls and undershirts, and my mother would dress me in little shorts and Palm Beach suits. I mean, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a wonder they didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t kill me.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n<p>The Youngs were a colorful lot. Young\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s oldest half-brother was dating the woman who would become Young\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mother until the old man stole her away. They had to wait until her 18th birthday to marry (dad was 39). After his father had his first stroke, that older brother returned to run the farm. <\/p>\n<p>Dysfunctional doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t begin to describe the family, Young said.<\/p>\n<p>He was a curious boy who always felt close to history. His father was born in 1889 (in Yancey County, just northeast of Asheville) and his father\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s father, born in 1847, lied about his age to avoid conscription into the Confederacy. <\/p>\n<p>His mother was fascinated by that rich and proximate history. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153She thought it was every bit as good as Shakespeare.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Young began collecting documents when he was 12, and as a teen traversed the mountains collecting artifacts.<\/p>\n<p>It was taken as a given that Perry and his next-oldest brother, Robert, would go off to college. But raw sewage the city began shipping down Beaver Dam Creek devastated the Young farm, and Perry made his way to UNC only after Robert, who had served as student body president, convinced the right folks that his kid brother was a good investment. (Robert, former assistant dean of the Duke Divinity School and minister to the university, passed away on Aug. 31.)<\/p>\n<p>At UNC, Young found a measure of confidence in writing \u00e2\u20ac\u201c though not through conventional channels. <em>The<\/em> <em>Daily Tar Heel <\/em>was sufficiently intimidating that he walked in and promptly out. <\/p>\n<p>Instead, he wrote a letter to the travel editor of the <em>New York Times<\/em>, made a good impression, and produced stories about the Civil War centennial. He continued to write travel pieces for the same editor for many years, including the chronicle of a train ride, post-Vietnam, from Singapore to Bangkok.<\/p>\n<p>Most of what Young learned at UNC, he said, was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153outside the walls.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d He was soon covering the General Assembly for UPI, making $65 a week. <\/p>\n<p>One step ahead of the draft, Young joined the Army Reserve, went to basic training and then military police training school, then back to UPI, moving to New York City in March \u00e2\u20ac\u212267, covering the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153long hot summer of riots\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for UPI, 26 dead in Newark. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I was never so scared in Vietnam as I was in Newark, New Jersey,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said.<\/p>\n<p>(Space limitations preclude a full account of the resolution of Young\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s very brief reserve-military career. Suffice to say that the reason he stopped reporting to his MP unit on Long Island was to go to Vietnam as a reporter, and he assumes he was later pardoned by Gerald Ford. One wonders how many young men went AWOL in order to trek on into the war.)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Saigon<br \/>\n<\/strong>Young had never been west of New Orleans. Why to Vietnam?<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I still don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand it. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all involved with proving yourself as a man, wanting the big story \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 and wanting to travel. I had no money. The only way I could have ever seen the world was going that way.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>On Jan. 29, 1968, Young stepped off a Pan Am flight from Tokyo into a Saigon celebration of Tet, the Vietnamese New Year, and, within 36 hours, smack into the middle of the Tet Offensive.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The weather was like Charleston,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Young recalled, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153it just embraced you. It was hot and humid, and just utter chaos. Total chaos.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I knew that it was a holiday. But I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know about this thing of putting firecrackers from the tops of buildings, completely covering the facade of a building with firecrackers and then setting fire to them, to scare the dragons, the bad spirits, off. And it was insane.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Millions of motorcycles. Noise, noise, noise, everywhere. And the military all around. And there were all these parties to go to. And being me, I went to them all. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Then at 3 a.m., my office called and said if you can get across the street, come to work.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Just down the street, in front of the Long Binh Naval Headquarters, 40 people had been killed in a pitched battle. Young didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t yet have his press credentials.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It was never quite real from then on,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It was all surreal.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Surreal in Hue and Khe Sanh. Stone and his beguiling boyishness. Flynn: quiet, a cougar. And the others \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Herr, Nic Wheeler, Tim Page. Shrapnel buzzing past his head in the doorway of a C-130. The young absent-eyed GI in the corner strumming \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Where Have All the Flowers Gone,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d over and again. His stories \u00e2\u20ac\u0153needled\u00e2\u20ac\u009d by editors back in the States. The drugs. The extended, surreal journey home, zigzagging through Southeast Asia.<\/p>\n<p>Back in the States, Young didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to be where he was. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I desperately wanted to be back there with Flynn and Stone.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d In a Greenwich Village bar, he said to a friend: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I feel like my life is all behind me.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d He was 29 years old. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d ever do anything that would measure up to that,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153And I haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p><figure id=\"attachment_7683\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7683\" style=\"width: 75px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/youngC102209.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/youngC102209-75x112.jpg\" title=\"youngC102209\" width=\"75\" height=\"112\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-7683\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/youngC102209-75x112.jpg 75w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/youngC102209-100x150.jpg 100w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/youngC102209.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 75px) 100vw, 75px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-7683\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Perry Deane Young Photo by Ava Barlow<\/figcaption><\/figure><br \/>\n<strong>Back home<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In fact, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s done plenty: newspaper work, stories for <em>Harper\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s<\/em> and <em>Rolling Stone<\/em>, 10 books, including a <em>New York Times<\/em> bestseller, <em>The David Kopay Story<\/em>, and three plays. In December 1972, Young returned to Vietnam for <em>Rolling Stone<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It was pretty awful,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I was pretty screwed up. I was on drugs most of the time.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Mostly speed, then opium. <em>Rolling Stone<\/em> picked up the tab for the trip, but there were differences of opinion and nothing ever ran, though much of what he wrote ended up in <em>Two of the Missing<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>There were up years and down. He returned to Chapel Hill in 1993 from San Diego, where he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d had a rough time of it.<\/p>\n<p>He ran an ad: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Starving author will exchange work for rent; expert gardener \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and landed the apartment in the basement of the Women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Center that remains his home.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Coming back here, to North Carolina, is what cleared my head,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I needed to be here. Here are my roots. Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s where I belong. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I was traveling around with these boxes of Western North Carolina history. I used to say I was the only correspondent in Saigon who had the 1850 census of Yancey County in his bag. But this is what I knew and this is what I loved, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d sort of been in exile. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I was ready to come home. This has been the most stable thing.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>He recently dealt with prostate cancer. Post-radiation, the prognosis is good. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I feel like I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m pretty well over it,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Young said. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s swimming again, building his endurance. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m probably in better health than I was when I was a teenager.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>But that nothing-would-ever-measure-up part \u00e2\u20ac\u201c it still gnaws, if gently.<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153In the midst of what everybody now regards as the horror of Vietnam,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Young affirms, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153was the great moment of my life. And it was fun, and I loved it, and how do you duplicate it?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s joined a Yahoo group of some 300 Vietnam correspondents: reviving tales, conjuring spirits, easing the ongoing transition. A reunion is planned in Phnom Penh and Ho Chi Minh City next April, and Young intends to be there.<\/p>\n<p>Among the things he carries from Vietnam:<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153You learn the double lessons of man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s inhumanity to man and man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s humanity under stress or in crisis.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n<p>A peculiar genius of the very best among those with whom Young traveled was in exposing the absurdities of war. <\/p>\n<p>He tells this story in <em>Two of the Missing<\/em>: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Once when Dana was out in the field, a company commander called in air strikes on some huts, from which someone had been firing on the Americans. When it was all smoke and rubble, the captain said to Dana, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcThat takes care of that.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcYeah,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 said Dana, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcgives everybody a fresh start.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>And the legacy of those journalists, Young and his colleagues, lies in their ability to expose an authentic face of the war, something Americans were unaccustomed to seeing \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the anger, abject fear, resentment, drugs; a young Vietnamese girl running down the street, scorched by napalm. <\/p>\n<p>That, said Young, is what his buddies in Vietnam did: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153They stripped away the glory.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>But wait. What of that photo on the cover of <em>Two of the Missing<\/em> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c two young rebels, Stone and Flynn, astride motorcycles, the last known photo of them, poised to ride off into \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Whatever their intentions,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Young said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153they are frozen in all our memories like that cover photo taken minutes before they disappeared \u00e2\u20ac\u201c young and alive and heading off on another dangerous adventure.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>A touch of the romantic?<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We have this romance with war,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he allows.<\/p>\n<p>And of that photo of Stone and Flynn: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I love it.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n<p>No contradiction there. Because young men never grow old.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Taylor Sisk, Staff Writer Old men lust after war; young men court it. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the same impulse born of opposite origins \u00e2\u20ac\u201c that of those who needn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t fear having to actually encounter war and those who wish to. In that nexus lies what Perry Deane Young refers to as the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153peculiar obscenity\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of war&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7677"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19529,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7677\/revisions\/19529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}