Insights do with hard reality. In Daddis’s words: “In the macho pulps, brave warriors had fought for honour, for their comrades, for a sense of triumph. In Vietnam, GIs simply wanted to leave the fighting behind … The gaps between truth and fiction seemed insurmountable. “The undiscovered adventure thus generated a lingering sense of anxiety that Vietnam might not be the man-making experience as publicised in the macho pulps. The modern battlefield engendered a sense of helplessness, not heroism … “[M]ore than a few discouraged American soldiers in Vietnam took advantage of wartime opportunities to behave aggressively toward the very people they were there to protect … the pulps played an outsized role in contributing to a portrait of a manly warrior, conquering enemy forces in alien, savage lands, and, frequently, the women who resided there as well. For the men who were schooled by the Cold War pulps, actual experiences in Vietnam proved nothing like what they expected from stories of adventure and domination … [A] climate of deep frustration … might have contributed to violence against Vietnamese people in general and women in particular. After all, had not the macho pulps for years been promising them the sexual rewards of an exotic Orient?” (Daddis, pp. 17273.) I’d wager that most men recognised the fantastic elements of
8 ColdType January 2021 | www.coldtype.net
Pulp Vietnam, by Gregory A. Daddis, is published by Cambridge University Press. Price $29.62 (Amazon).
the pulps – even laughing at some of the more outrageous stories and exaggerated illustrations. But on some level fantasy has a way of informing the reality that we construct out of the cultural
material that surrounds us. Sure, I know I’m not James Bond, and I know that real spy work isn’t an adventure-filled romp as in a Bond flick like Thunderball. But I still prefer a martini that’s been shaken, not stirred. The fiction sold by these men’s adventure magazines glorified war and the warrior even as it marginalised and stereotyped and demeaned foreigners of various sorts. Read enough of this stuff (or watch enough Bond flicks) and you’re bound to be influenced by them. Daddis is to be congratulated for writing a highly original study that sheds new light on why Americans fight the way they do, and for what reasons, fictions, and compulsions. CT W.J. Astore blogs at www.bracingviews.com where this review was first published.
Sue Turnbull
Why Vera is my favourite detective
V
era stands on a windswept headland contemplating the disgruntled North Sea. She’s clad in her usual garb; the battered hat, the annoying scarf and the tentlike mac that swirls around her stocky legs and scruffy boots. When I first met Vera Stan-
hope in the crime fiction of Ann Cleeves, I liked her, but not so much. It wasn’t until Brenda Blethyn brought her to life in the 2011 ITV series Vera (seen on PBS TV in the US and Canada) that I became truly enamoured. Ten seasons later, with series 11 already commissioned,
