The Beggar's Coin: Short Stories of Vietnam & the epic poem, The 'Nam

People ask: "When were you in Vietnam?"

My answer: "Last night."

In 1971 I came home from the 'Nam and soon began writing about the year I spent there. Short Stories of Vietnam was first published in 1982, just as I was starting to find my voice as a writer. A voice not yet attuned to the nuances of language, but even so, it was a voice undiminished by the passage of time. The hard-wired account of what we did, what we saw, and above all else, what we were thinking. Some of the stories are like rock music recorded on vinyl, with a fidelity that includes the scratches, the pops, and the imperfections. Other stories portray the drug culture deeply entrenched in the Vietnam experience, and that served as Ho Chi Minh's secret weapon. These stories are the flash bulb vision of a moment in time, and provide counterpoint to my ongoing poem of Vietnam, "the 'Nam." For "the 'Nam" came into being only after fifty years of reflection, and is the distilled essence of memory, measured out in a different key.

I hope this revised edition will engender for its readers more than the sum of its parts.

Lee Henschel Jr.

2023