Dennis Latham: Life, Fiction, and the Pursuit of Madness

Created from a short story I wrote in 1973, Michael In Hell has a long history. I sent the story to Issac Asimov, and I was shocked when he actually wrote back to tell me he liked it and I should turn it into a novel. I did twenty years later. In 1995, I signed on with AEI a new agency in Los Angeles, along with author Steve Alten (MEG). Michael made it to a final marketing meeting at Bantam, where it was rejected (they had one opening slot) in favor of a famous writer because I was an unknown. Close but no cigar. Other majors rejected it because it was too bizarre and brutal during one of the periodic violence in media purges. The Vietnam combat in the novel is in part from my experience. Several incidents are based on events that happened during Operation Shelbyville and Operation Ballistic Charge during late 1967 in Quang Nam Province. Of the 14,000 Marines killed in Vietnam, 10,000 died in Quang Nam Province. It would have made Dante's Hell seem like Disneyland. The novel s...

My third novel (the first two were throw aways) was called I Guess You're Still A Virgin. It was published years later as Driving With Ace . After I finished it, I wrote to Kurt Vonnegut to see if he would read it because someone told me it reminded them of his writing. I liked his writing and thought I would attempt to write to him through his publisher. I received the above response on onion skin paper on his old typewriter. It shows some of what he thought about New York publishing. I was surprised I even heard from him. Now that he is gone, the letter has more meaning to me.

(What I imagined the operation would look like after I was out and having a nightmare.) I had an operation at the Cincinnati VA to remove something called a papilloma from my right nostril. It’s basically a wart. I had two of them, one on the outside of the skin inside the nose and one called an inverted papilloma , with roots that dig under the skin inside the nose. It sounds gross as hell and I’m glad I didn’t have to see the things. They are supposed to be common, but I’ve never heard anyone say they ever had one. The inverted kind can turn into cancer, (10% chance) and no one seems to know what causes them. (Before photo at left) I’ve never been operated on except for my tonsils as a kid and ten years ago when I had another papilloma removed by a civilian doctor. The VA doctors also decided to fix my screwed up septum, since my nose has been broken several times. I went weeks ago in February for the operation and was put to sleep, but when I woke up, I found out that they didn’t d...

The picture is me at age 20 as a Marine on the deck of the helicopter carrier USS Okinawa off the coast of Vietnam sometime in October 1967. I don't remember being so young or what was in my mind at the time. I didn't plan for a future because I expected to die before age 21. The night before I left home I got a drag racing ticket about two in the morning. The cop told me I would have to be in court in July. I told him I would be in Vietnam. "We'll be waiting at your door when you get back," he said. "If I make it back, I'll be glad to see you." I had a real world fatalistic attitude. I tore the ticket up before he drove away and never heard anymore about it. Maybe the judge figured I was in enough trouble. This morning I saw an article about a 25 year old veteran who killed himself after the VA turned him away when he sought help for PTSD. I usually never tell anyone except other veterans that I'm 100% service-connected for PTSD. I have been fo...

The picture is me on the deck of the USS Okinawa, an LPH (Landing Platform Helicopter) probably around September of 1967 . I still had an M-14 rifle, which I consider to be the best combat rifle ever made. I had traded my M-16 to a sergeant who didn't want to carry the weight. They took the M-14 away from me not long after this picture and made me get an M-16. I had three different M-16 rifles in Vietnam and they all jammed every third round and would only work with seventeen rounds in the magazine instead of twenty. The defects in those early versions were paid for with American lives. The picture also shows my second helmet. My first helmet had contained a morbid surprise. I had arrived in Danang from Okinawa aboard a C-130. I was assigned to the 1st Battalion 3rd Marine Regiment. The battalion rear was on Hill 327, but they were getting ready to go on float aboard the LPH. From Hill 327, we could see for what seemed like miles of super-heated ground in a hazy and humid mist....

I took a lot of heat a few years back from the fanatic (you're with Republicans or you're a traitor) people when the war started because I said it would be another Vietnam. Turns out I was right. But that was a no-brainer for someone who had been in military combat. There are no real surprises during war; there are only options, and those options are always limited. Why they couldn't see that in Washington is beyond me? Guess it was because none of them had actually been in combat or active military. They just didn't have a clue... Each time things go bad (or get worse) in Iraq, Korea rears up and draws attention away from just how bad things are in Iraq. Sudden numerous terrorist threats infect the news. Our government scares us with information that North Korea may sell nuclear devices to terrorists. Using common sense, a person could figure that if the terrorists wanted nuclear bombs, they could get them in Pakistan, where they operate base camps and you can buy alm...

People often say I'm a scary guy. My youngest daughter always tells me how all her male friends were terrified of me. I grew up rough, in the tenement Bottoms and Over the Rhine in Cincinnati. By age six, I had fought in over 100 street fights, had been slashed three times with a knife, and had broken my nose in a fight where the other boy almost died from head injury. My Italian mother often fought in the street. She made me fight my first battle at age five: some shoeless kid wearing a womans' stocking on his shaved head because he had ringworm. I didn't know why he wanted to hurt me. I was afraid of him because of the ringworm. The kid kept pushing me. My mother came down, grabbed my arm and pushed me forward. Something snapped inside and I went after him. I punched him down fast and kicked him several times in the head with my heavy shoes. It was over quick. I had won my first fight. My father was ox strong and a street fighter from the West End. My grandfather, Tony ...