Meditations in Green

Review "The impact of an experience so devastating that words can hardly contain it."-- "New York Times" Product Description One of the greatest novels ever written out of the Vietnam war, by a writer who experienced it firsthand.Deployed to Vietnam with the U.S. Army's 1069 Intelligence Group, Spec. 4 James Griffin starts out clear-eyed and hard-working, believing he can glide through the war unharmed. But the kaleidoscope of horrors he experiences gets inside him relentlessly. He collapses, gradually, in step with the exploding hell around him, and ends up unstrung, waiting for the cataclysm that will bring him home, dead or not.Griffin survives, but back in the U.S. his battles intensify. Beset by addiction, he takes up meditating on household plants and attempts to adjust to civilian life. Through passages gorgeous, agonizing, and surreal, Stephen Wright paints a searing portrait of a nation driven to the brink by violence and deceit. Meditations in Green is a haunting exploration of the harrowing costs of war and yet-unhealed wounds, ""the impact of an experience so devastating that words can hardly contain it."" (Walter Kendrick, New York Times Book Review) About the Author 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.