The Last Klick

Sherrill O’Connell, as innocent as many of the young soldiers he’s about to join in Vietnam, wants to leave his wife and his comfortable teaching job to report war news for Real Magazine. Inconsolable over the death of his young daughter, he finds himself in a vacuum of hopelessness, unable to continue writing his worthy but misunderstood novels. In Vietnam he hopes his personal sorrow will be diminished by our national sorrow and he will find material for the best book he has in him.

What O’Connell finds is a world of unreality, distorted by the news media. Becuase of an instinctive reaction to sudden danger in the presence of other reporters, he becomes a hero. His own story becomes the good news Americans want to hear.

Unrecognizable to those he has left behind, incomprehensible to fellow correspondents who are jealous of his fame, he recreates himself as a man of action – a real hero, this time, above all to readers of this book, who will be shattered by what they see with his eyes, fascinated by his reactions and ennobled by sharing the workings of his mind.

In The Last Klick lives are sacrificed to protect lies, as in all wars, but the way careerists in print and film media determine the truth is somehow more obscene. While the provocations of maniacs of every political stripe still disgrace our nation, and the sky is still dark with hawks and doves, the truths of this book have a very fresh taste and wield a great silence.

"I've read many books about the Great War and about Stalingrad and the other horrors of World War Two, but THE LAST KLICK, because it comes out of a contemporary sensibility, presents a greater challenge to the feelings. The madness of jungle warfare is matched moreover by the wicked idiocy of press and television. The United States seen from Vietnam is even more distorting than the experiences of combat. Written with passion and great skill." -- SAUL BELLOW

"Twenty odd years ago, I had the pleasure of spending a few days traveling around Vietnam with Robert Flynn who was then a freelance correspondent for True Magazine. Now, after finishing THE LAST KLICK, I know what he was really up to. He has done a wonderful job of recreating the sights and sounds and smells fo Vietnam, and he has captured the ambitions, pretensions and cynicism of the international press corps that covered the war." -- STEVE KROFT, 60 Minutes (CBS)