Thirtieth Anniversary Edition of The Vietnam War novel that made PTSD Real

After thirty years from its debut, Charles Coleman’s ground-breaking and insightfu
l novel depicting the early signs of PTSD.
Morrisville, NC, November 08, 2010 -- First published by Harper & Row as a gripp
ing drama of the psychological trials and tribulations of a talented Army medic
serving in a besieged surgical field hospital at the height of the Vietnam War,
Sergeant Back Again is being hailed by scholars, medical doctors, historians and
film critics as the first and most penetrating study of combat-related psycholo
gical trauma ever written in presaging today’s diagnosis of PTSD. Often cited as “th
e Vietnam War cult-classic that made PTSD real,” Sergeant Back Again “is the crucibl
e of PTSD.”
“One sees now in all of this a book about a story we probably recognized but did n
ot know at the time how to read, at least in its newest, challenging, creative i
teration. Certainly we saw the relatively familiar outlines of a genre: the lit
erature of shell shock; combat exhaustion; battle fatigue, born of a century of
head cases. But this is the Vietnam War novel that made PTSD real!” writes Vietnam
War veteran, writer, and literary critic Philip Beidler.
Now being compared to Joseph Heller’s Catch 22, Herr’s Dispatches, Kesey’s One Flew Ov
er the Cuckoo’s Nest, and Hemingway’s “A Way You’ll Never Be,” Coleman’s cult-classic is ta
ght in high schools and colleges as well as in medical schools and outpatient cl
inics. As Vietnam War journalist and media critic, Tony Williams, succinctly obs
erves: “By compassionately over-identifying with his wounded patients on the battl
efields and jungles in Vietnam by surgically attempting to put them back togethe
r again, and finding them fragmented again when physical and mental sutures fall
apart again, U.S. Army medical corpsman Specialist Andrew Collins retreats into
a fantasy world unable to reconcile the torturous contradictions between what h
e feels and what he sees. He attempts to distance himself, but as his mirror-lik
e notebook reveals: ‘We are killing ourselves in our obsession and hatred of what
we are becoming.’ Indeed, “the lessons of Sergeant Back Again still remain to echo i
n eternity in the minds of us all,” writes Williams.
“In this sense, Collins’ story is universal, just as relevant now as it was when Col
eman’s novel debuted. Collins is the young recruit who saw too much suffering in I
raq and now sees it in his dreams; he’s the Afghanistan veteran who physically cam
e home but mentally still patrols the caves and mountains,” comments psychiatrist
Harold Kudler, M.D.
“This is not the story of an old war; it’s the story of a young American,” says screen
writer and film critic, Nathan Beck. “The crimson parallax still affects the heart
s and minds of the men and women who serve our country, and just as Charles Cole
man’s novel of thirty years ago made PTSD real, so will a film version of today.”
See http://www.sergeantbackagain.com for more details or you can purchase the bo
ok here:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1450526942/ref=cm_cr_mts_prod_img
Edited by Ted Solotaroff: Ted Solotaroff, Senior Editor at Harper & Row, was Dr.
Coleman’s editor, resulting in what George Kearns describes in The Hudson Review
as: “The strongest, best-written novel by a young writer I have seen for a very lo
ng time is Charles Coleman’s Sergeant Back Again. Coleman’s scenes are never static
presentations; he is a master of narrative rhythms, of allowing each scene to de
velop and move unpredictably, Sergeant Back Again is a novel about evil without
a villain. I have not read all of the books that have come out of the Vietnam Wa
r, but I can’t imagine there will be one finer or more moving.”
Contact:
Charles Coleman
Sergeant Back Again
Morrisville, North Carolina
919-271-4359
contact@sergeantbackagain.com
http://www.sergeantbackagain.com