Though Ward Just has distinguished himself as a journalist, he has also produced an impressive body of fiction. As a novelist, he has been compared favorably with Ernest Hemingway. Much of his work centers around war—portrayed by the keen eye of a newsman—as is often true of Hemingway; however, his characters and their settings would be out of place in most Hemingway-like fiction due to their affluence and jaded sophistication. The primary criticism of Just's work is that his action is slow and plodding. Although his characters are articulate and witty, they often do just sit and talk, especially in his novel of Washington during Vietnam, In the City of Fear.Just's unnamed narrator (a device reminiscent of Conrad) insists that in describing Sydney Parade's experiences he is not telling a war story, and indeed ''A Dangerous Friend'' contains little violence. Menace is conveyed through glimpses of Vietcong guerrillas moving at night on black bicycles, of an American officer alone in a Vietnamese village, of blood on the sleeve of a suit. Battle scenes are described obliquely through rumors and field reports discussed around conference tables, their effects hinted at on slips of paper passed anonymously in exclusive Saigon restaurants. Just has a veteran war reporter's eye for the telling detail -- light from phosphorus flares ''so fierce you could see it with closed eyelids'' -- and a reporter's skepticism about his Government's stated objectives. his central character retraces the route his Western predecessors took, stopping in Paris on the way to Saigon, Just begins to establish a convincing allegorical dimension to the novel. We learned from the French, he seems to suggest -- and, then again, we didn't. To young political scientists like Sydney, the success of the Vietcong defies military and political logic: ''We had so much and they had so little; our 19-year-olds were supported by an arsenal beyond the imagination of the guerrillas facing them.''In A Dangerous Friend, Just pictured America on the brink of full commitment to the Vietnam War in 1965. Through the eyes of a misguided civil servant, the book superficially depicts with a bit of hindsight the nation's descent down the slippery slope to folly. The plot eventually turns on the fate of a captured American captain who is also the nephew of a Congressman. The captain was last seen in the Xuan Loc sector near Plantation Louvet, which is managed by a Frenchman named Claude Armand and his American-born wife, Dede. The Armands are living a premodern idyll in an ''ambiance reminiscent of Winnetka, if Winnetka were tropical.'' They have little sympathy for the Americans and want desperately to remain neutral, but the Llewellyn Group has other plans. The ultimate result of this episode does not reflect well on the Americans. As in his previous novels (the National Book Award finalist ''Echo House'' foremost among them), Just uses a somewhat complex network of imagery that leads the reader to see the tragedy of Vietnam in ways that throw into high relief the conflicted array of Vietnamese, French and American interests. The most graphic metaphors include a torture victim and the stillborn Vietnamese children of French and American parents. More subtle is the Panama hat that comes to represent not only the country's climate but the customs and dreams of the Vietnamese, as filtered through the lives of a Vietnamese woman and her American husband, a member of the Llewellyn Group who, in the view of his colleagues, ''had lived in Vietnam for too long and had lost perspective.'' Though his prose occasionally betrays a reporter's fact-laden unwieldiness and a weakness for cliches, he succeeds in evoking the dense, tactile weave of life in country circa 1965. But the author, in spite of the complexity of the novel, is always clear where his sympathy lies. Not only the episode of the downed flyer, but the whole structure of the novel is set up to support a view that is dependent on retrospective knowledge that no one, least of all the Americans involved, could have had at the time. This left me with the feeling that this novel, while well written, had a facile plot that weakened the book's message.
I called this book historical fiction as well as fiction (and those other categories) because it was set in the beginnings of the US Vietnam War. The days when the military were already there and were bombing but "advisors" were still talked about, debated about, and marveled over--as excuses to get into a never-ending war such as the French had been in for two decades. The characters include Sydney Parade, a second level in the fictional Llewellyn Group: ". . . a benevolent arm of the government wholly separate from the Pentagon" (p. 40). Supposedly, Llewellyn Group were to build and keep in repair infrastructure of the sort that the Americans thought would bring Vietnam into the "real world."Ward Just is one of my favorite writers. His books are always slender tomes but each sentence, each phrase packed with references and innuendo. A Dangerous Friend refers specifically to Sydney Parade who has tried to befriend people at different levels but especially a French man and his American wife who have a rubber plantation and want to keep their lives as separate from the war as possible. One key event pulls Sydney, another friend Pablo, a military man captured by local Vietnamese who are ready to turn him over to the VC, and Sydney's ambitious, credit-seeking boss. This leads to a horrible revenge bombing (leave it there for now) and a riff in a tapestry of "friendship" that had barely started and was soon damaged. While A Danger Friend refers to Sydney, it also refers to almost all of the key players.I remember when my husband was finishing Naval Officer Candidate School in Newport, RI, and he and his friends were awaiting their first "orders," all dreading that they might be sent to Vietnam. I also remember how we debated this war--doubting President Kennedy and his administration's involving the USA in it. Then as that war became LBJ's war: "Hey, hey, LBJ/How many kids did you bomb today?" And later meeting John Kerry's wife and seeing the film that our friend (and Kerry's best friend) George Butler gathered on the anti-war protests and testimony. And that film continued into the days when John Kerry ran for President--and will probably come back now during the days of the Iranian/western powers negotiations. "Up the River with John Kerry."
What do You think about A Dangerous Friend (2000)?
This is one of those perfect tragedies with all of the poetic and cathartic elements that remains remarkably spare emotionally. It is one of those books in which one's whole perception of the book and all of the characters altered after the tragic moment and the ways in which each character reacted to or was involved in the massacre allowed the author to speak volumes about each character and the greater geopolitical and historical meaning of the actual and bigger tragedy of the Vietnam War. I r
—janet
This book was interesting on a number of levels. Told from the perspective of a civilian bureaucrat in the early years of the Vietnam war, this book discusses some aspects of Vietnamese history that are generally lacking in typical "war stories." I learned quite a bit about the complex relationship between France and Vietnam, and about Vietnam's relationship to most of the world. There are some terrific insights into Vietnamese culture as well. I've rated the book three stars because the writing style wasn't that appealing to me and the book was pretty slow. This is one of those books that is worth reading once you get to the end, but the final destination really is better than the trip itself ...
—Bambi
A Dangerous Friend was a fantastic book. It really painted a picture of Vietnam early in the US "intervention". The book has many things in it that may make you emotional. This book is very well written and Just produced a wonderful piece that gives us an inside look on how times were. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is very interested in war and hardship that comes with times of war. Just has great reason to be proud of this book. A Dangerous Friend is set in 1965 Vietnam as the U.S. comes close to beginning a war. Just gives readers an incisive vision or look of America's end of innocence. He does this with strongly limned characters who do not forfeit their individuality as they are overwhelmed by the history that has been made. Again, this book has been very well written with many facts about Vietnam War. I would highly recommend this book because of all the information and content that it possess.
—Ashlee Shirk
