War Hangover
Limited edition
by Gregory W Bitz

1987
Angel Wing Press
Trade paperback
ISBN: 0944357679
269 pages

"War Hangover has been called many things. Experimental, lyrical, far out, original, too full of truth. War Hangover is called a novel because the author says it is a novel. There are contradictions everywhere. War Hangover is a novel about war, but it is not a war book. Not a Vietnam book. Vietnam just happened to be the author's war. It is as timeless as it can be. It is full of truth and lies and death and love and weather and no love. There is a bunch of wisdom and a fair amount of humor What is inside is what it is."



The hand-drawn cover, obscure press, and large typeface make this book look dubious, like an idealistic vanity publication from the early 1970s. But a glance at the table of contents lets you know that a structural experiment is taking place, and the novel tells no story, deploying its strangeness in numbered and titled fragments and aphorisms. The writing style is the vanishing point where simplicity meets ambiguity. The noncommercial design is sensitive and a pleasure to read. Because this book is unique, and because I'm down with the underdog, when I make the Vietnam War reading list I'm going to put this above Dispatches and Dien Cai Dau.