A Temporary Sort of Peace: A Memoir of Vietnam
Jim McGarrah
Indiana Historical Society Press. 2007.

251 pages
ISBN: 987-0-87195-258-5

A Review by Gary E. May 

The title for this work immediately betrays what McGarrah believes about his Vietnam experiences—it is not easily wrestled into submission and there may be additional demons lurking in the recesses of the vast memory files. McGarrah, a Professor of Creative Writing, demonstrates his prodigious writing skills in this engaging, accessible and brutally honest work. His tentativeness, perhaps reflecting anxiety about the unknown, seems to blunt his introspection and critical self analysis.  

After the opening scene set in a VA Mental Hygiene Clinic where he is being assessed for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, while thoughts of Vietnam intrude, McGarrah begins his recollections with his life and upbringing in Princeton, Indiana. He was an accomplished prep athlete with what is described as a forceful, driving father, a mostly unavailable mother and a younger sister. While McGarrah provides a detailed, gut wrenching description of his relationship with his father when he was challenged about being caught in a lie, most of his treatment of his family relationships provide only a tease and leaves much to the imagination to determine what family life was like and how it might help explain McGarrah's rash decision to join the Marines after flunking out of college.

The description of the early years is appropriately seasoned by teen male obsession with sex and ham-handed encounters with dating, petting and romance. McGarrah recounts the loss of the object of his sexual fantasy to a competing suitor, but shirks this experience as unimportant even while he acknowledges the preeminence of this relationship in his life. Much remains unsaid.

McGarrah's Vietnam tour, described in detail that rivals Caputo's Rumor of War, is pretty standard fare by this time. The novelty of Vietnam's particular horrors in the annals of combat has been dulled by its retelling in several popular works over the past few decades. And yet, by the time we get to Vietnam with McGarrah we have a "connection" with him, and we care what happens, not least when he is wounded during the Tet offensive in 1968—his is far from a detached regurgitation of facts only.

Just as we care about McGarrah in Vietnam, we care about him upon his return. This, too, is a familiar scenario of drugs, jobs, broken relationships, soul searching, existential crises, wandering and confusion. McGarrah's writing style connects with the reader. The descriptions of fraternity parties, anonymous sex, youthful naiveté, idealism, geographic remedies, and blatant stupidity are engaging. An informed reader is reminded of psychologist John Wilson's description of Vietnam veterans as teens with a middle aged frame of reference that was launched forward at hyper speed impelled by experiences in Vietnam, although McGarrah seems oblivious to this as he tells his story.

Having achieved the credentials of legitimacy with a MFA degree, McGarrah joined the academy as a Professor of Creative Writing. He taught at the university that employs me. There he distinguished himself as a good, passionate teacher who challenged his students to do their best work. I am personally familiar with exemplary work he did with one student, Joe Sayyah, a Vietnam veteran who died from Agent Orange poisoning. McGarrah gave this student a creative outlet for his angst, an understanding ear, and gentle incentives to do his best work in creating a legacy of his own.

In 2005, McGarrah received a Faculty Research and Creative Works Award to return to Vietnam with his adult son, John. This was obviously a significant opportunity for McGarrah to write the epilogue for the book. He was able to meet with a noted Vietnamese poet, Vo Que. Touring and chatting with this nationally recognized poet was obviously a highlight for McGarrah, as was the peace ceremony where he and Vo Que wrote and recited original poems intended to heal spiritual scars. Overall, the description of the return’s pathos pales when compared to the works of Scurfield and other Vietnam veterans who have returned to Vietnam, many of whom adopted more deeply introspective and evaluative perspectives.

McGarrah's understated account of the return to Vietnam (“home”) embodies a substantial dissipation of energy and enthusiasm for the trip. For example, in a taxi ride, McGarrah and his son pass a temple that was the site of a horrific battle during McGarrah’s tour. His immediate reaction, “Goddamn it.”  When questioned by his son, he says, “I blew that temple up. I’m in the middle of my old base camp. The government must have left it as some kind of reminder, which is ironic since both governments encourage your generation to forget”, to which John responds, “It’s better economics to forget one war,..That makes it easier to start a new one.”  This exchange closes with McGarrah’s understated hope that his son’s awareness of history’s tendency to repeat will lead toward the wisdom to change.

There are contemporary photographs throughout the book.  For someone who shares McGarrah's experiences as a Marine, and as one who grew up in the same county and time frame as the author, I personally found the photos to be an affront to aging.  That's not the way we look today; we've aged, and that's part of the story.   That said, readers of our generation will find in these photos powerful anchors to Midwest America baby boomer upbringing.

This is an important contribution to the growing volumes of "Vietnam books". Its strongest points are the writing style, the engagement of readers, the description of war's aftermath and its tentative hopefulness. The reader is likely to feel unfulfilled and "left hanging" about McGarrah's family dynamics and his underdeveloped insights about "what it all means". Finally, readers will feel hopeful that McGarrah's journey and search for meaning will continue, resulting in a permanent peace, rather than 'a temporary sort of peace,' for him.

Caputo, P. A Rumor of War. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, New York. 1977.

Scurfield, R.M. Healing Journeys: Study Abroad with Vietnam Veterans.  Vol. 2 of a       Vietnam Trilogy.  Algora Publishing, New York, NY.  2006.

Gary E. May is an Associate Professor of Social Work at the University of Southern Indiana, and a Vietnam veteran newly elected to the National Board of Veterans For Peace.