Keep Your Head Down: A Memoir

I can relate to this story, because I was a Navy Corpsman in Vietnam. The author Doug Anderson brings out the detail how to rediscover ones self after a horrible experience in a war that no one understood.

Good god, what a book. I thought I'd "have a look" at it yesterday morning, and by the time the fire burned down at night's end I was done with it, and it was done with me. Never mind that Anderson's combat experiences were pretty much the most hellish of any of my vet friends' -- at least the ones who'll actually talk about them. Anderson's meditations about memory and history make me marvel at how well he's able to do it, even if it took a lifetime. More than that, there's no book about that era that recounts the war, the political resistance, and the counterculture, all from direct living of them. Robert Stone's book is a collection of fragments by comparison. A 2000 trip back to Vietnam somehow redeems a whole generation, playing in all three of those registers. I love the ambiguous Snake being, not all bad or all good, perhaps proving more valuable as time goes by..... For all its redemptive ending, the book allowed me little sleep last night. I was afraid to go to sleep and see someone shooting pigs.

In this memoir, one finds a prose narrative that continues on with the themes found in his two extraordinary volumes of poetry, The Moon Reflected Fire and Blues for Unemployed Secret Police. Whether depicting the insanity of the Viet Nam war or the complexities of early adolescence, whether revisiting a hippie bash in Tucson or a pack of unslept marine corp officers in Que Son valley, whether immersed in the roiling connection between sex and love or lack thereof, Anderson's eye for the truth is equally tender and unsparing. This prose is unmarked with sentimentality yet charged with a heart whose course we are privileged to follow as it winds from childhood into early manhood as an artist and a veteran of war.

This book stayed with me long after I reluctantly finished it. Anderson is obviously a poet, and his prose shows that. His story is dark, poignant, honestly and beautifully told. Highly recommend this stunning memoir.

This is a dazzling memoir, written by a quintessential storyteller. "Keep Your Head Down" is a story crafted with all five senses wide open. Because of its visceral sweep, I could say that this memoir is cinematic, but that doesn't quite do it justice. Even the most effective movie can't create and sustain the intimacy of a stellar memoir. And this is a stellar, deeply nuanced memoir. "Keep Your Head Down" is definitely as satisfying as Jeannette Walls' "The Glass Castle" and Frank McCourt's "Angela's Ashes". But I would put it closer to Richard Wright's classic "Black Boy" because of its examination of gender and its deeply reflective quality.