Michael Herr, who wrote Dispatches, a glaringly intense, personal account of being a correspondent in Vietnam that is widely viewed as one of the most visceral and persuasive depictions of the unearthly experience of war, died last Thursday. He was 76.
The war in Vietnam and its dehumanizing effect on its participants figured widely in Mr. Herr's writing life. He contributed the narration to Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola's epic adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and with the director Stanley Kubrick and Gustav Hasford wrote the screenplay for Full Metal Jacket (1987), adapted from Mr. Hasford's novel ("The Short-Timers").
The war in Vietnam and its dehumanizing effect on its participants figured widely in Mr. Herr's writing life. He contributed the narration to Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola's epic adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and with the director Stanley Kubrick and Gustav Hasford wrote the screenplay for Full Metal Jacket (1987), adapted from Mr. Hasford's novel ("The Short-Timers").