“Let me ask you something, Coburn. Some young man in the north says goodbye to his family, knowing he’ll probably never see them again. Then he walks down the Ho Chi Minh trail carrying a couple of mortar rounds or B-40s with ten of his comrades. By the time he gets to this place, maybe eight of his friends are dead because of malaria or B-52s.
This young man comes down here and sits on the riverbank waiting for one of those patrol boats to go by. He sits there with dysentery and no food and finally he sees one of those boats and shoots off his B-40. And misses. The patrol boat calls in an air strike and kills him. And while he’s dying, another ten men say goodbye to their family and march down the trail.”
“So what?” asked Coburn.
“In the south they take a young man, feed him well, put him in good uniforms, give him boots and an M-16 and train him and pay him. And then he goes to war in a helicopter, jumps out and someone shoots at him. What’s he do? He throws away his rifle, throws off his helmet and runs away. So, Coburn, who do you think will win this war?”
And so begins the story of Crazy Razor: A Novel of the Vietnam War, written by decorated combat veteran and Oakland resident, Kenneth Levin. A self-proclaimed student of the war, whose own experiences in Vietnam are combined with the personal interviews of North Vietnamese veterans, Levin deftly explores the nature of man amidst the chaos and horror of war. And while the main character is no prince charming, Crazy Razor demonstrates with stark clarity that the real villain in war is war itself.
I sat down with Levin under the gnarly oak tree in his storybook garden, the sound of his two-year-old granddaughter’s laughter emanating from inside the picture-perfect house he shares with his ever-patient wife of 37 years, Eileen. It surprised me. This seemingly tough guy, this man’s man, shot twice in Vietnam and blinded by an infection he suffered after being dumped in the water, is really just an old softie, wrapped around the finger of an adorable, blonde cherub who has no idea what Grandpa has seen:
ALIVE) In your book, you write with amazing detail about the North Vietnamese soldiers and their side of the Vietnam War. You must have done a lot of research. Or was that a product of your imagination?
KENNETH LEVIN) Both. I wanted the book to be as credible, accurate and realistic as possible. Details of the war from the South Vietnamese and American perspective were readily available, often from my own experience, but not so the details of the north and the National Liberation Front (VC) fighters in the south. When I found I could not get these details from books, libraries, or the web, and my letters to the museums and ministries in Vietnam went unanswered, I had to improvise. Guess. Imagine. Otherwise, I’d have never been able to finish the book. When reviewing the first draft, I decided I needed to fact check my book, to verify that my improvisations were realistic and made sense. So I went to Vietnam, toured the areas I describe in the book, and interviewed combat veterans of the People’s Army and the National Liberation Front. Much to my surprise, I found that my guesses about the other fellows’ lives were pretty accurate.
ALIVE) Your war ended over forty years before you started writing Crazy Razor? Why wait so long?
KENNETH LEVIN) I wanted to write the book, or at least a book, after reading Nicholas Monsarratt’s The Cruel Sea, a wonderful novel based on a Royal Navy officer’s experience during World War II. That was a few years after I returned from Vietnam. But then kids, mortgage, and a job all got in the way. Finally, in 2009, I looked around me and said that if I didn’t write the book now, I never would. So I retired, reached in the bucket, and pulled out the list. Number one was the book.
A) In your book you describe a conversation between an American and a Cambodian mercenary during a night ambush operation that ended tragically. Did that really happen?
KL) That story is based on a conversation I had with a Cambodian mercenary while sitting on a muddy riverbank waiting for the enemy tax collector’s sampan to come into our ambush. That was the first time I questioned what in the hell I was doing in Vietnam and what in the hell was my country doing in Vietnam. For the sake of the story telling, the scene in the book ends differently than what happened on that riverbank. Today we have drones controlled by people sitting thousands of miles away from their targets, while someone, I don’t know where, tells them to shoot or not. In the story, the American is the person who says to shoot or not. And both the character in the story and I had the counsel of a wiser man, the mercenary.
A) I understand your next book has a story in it about the life of a Vietnamese veteran that his daughter told you. How did that come about?
KL) When I was in Hanoi in 2012, I was trying to find People’s Army combat veterans to interview. I had a list of some two dozen questions to ask them. Everything from what did you wear on your feet to did you think you’d survive the war? A young woman in the hotel where I was staying volunteered that her father was a vet and she would be glad to ask him the questions. So I gave her a copy and my email address and went on my travels. About a month after I returned to Oakland, I received an email from her with a lengthy attachment. There were all the answers to my questions and much more. I realized here was a story that needed telling. After nearly a year of email exchanges with the daughter, I had the man’s life story. From the child of a farmer, to a soldier, to a POW, to struggling veteran trying to build a life for his wife and children, to a smiling grandfather. His daughter is a gifted storyteller so together we wrote the short story. But other than the names that she insisted be changed, the story is not fiction. It is true.
A) How would you describe Crazy Razor? What kind of a book is it?
KL) I call it an anti-war novel, as is All Quiet on the Western Front or Bao Ninh’s The Sorrow of War. The problem is that when it comes to publishing, there is no such formal category called “anti-war novel.” So it is officially a war story or historical fiction. But Crazy Razor is really an anti-war novel.
A) For want of a better word, Crazy Razor ends with a surprising twist that may upset the average reader. Why did you do that?
KL) There is no happily-ever-after ending to a war. If they live, they survive. Real life is not bundled up nicely with no strings hanging out. People are disturbed, life has been disrupted and justice isn’t always meted out. I purposely wanted the reader to feel unsettled and disturbed at watching a vainglorious narcissist in close proximity to a righteous murderer. There is no illusion about the goodness of the human heart. I paint an ugly picture, and that can be disturbing. But that is what I meant to do. War is a terrible thing.
A) You were a naval officer who advised the South Vietnamese Navy in 1968 and 1969. One of your main characters is just that. Is this book autobiographical?
KL) That is the most common question I’ve been asked by readers of Crazy Razor. The book is a novel and by definition fiction. But it is also purposely realistic and detailed. In fact, some have criticized the book for too much detail and realism. In order to achieve the realism, I did a lot of research, but I also relied as much on my own experiences and memories. So in that respect, there’s a whole lot of me in the book. But I would not call it autobiographical. At least I hope not, given the character you mention. He’s not a very nice guy.
A) Tell me about the two women in the book, the language instructor and the intelligence analyst. They’re similar in some ways but so different in others. Why these two women?
KL) Both women are Vietnamese, beautiful, intelligent, and sensuous. But one is selfish, calculating and cold. The other is warm, caring and sacrificing. One is dedicated to herself. The other is dedicated to lofty ideals and is also a traitor to her country. I used them to add a touch of soft femininity to a hard environment. And I used them as symbols, as vehicles—one of South Vietnam, the other of the north.
A) What are your next writing projects?
KL) My bucket list is getting longer and longer with stories I want to tell. My next project is a collection of short stories that is, hopefully, in its final drafts. Crazy Razor is a big book, and it would have been even bigger, but I had to stop somewhere. So the things I wanted to write about, but did not, I put together and made sausage. The next book is a collection of sausage links – short stories — some are grim, some are humorous. And some address the question that once the war is over, what does a person do with all these memories? How can one live with oneself after witnessing and committing what by any standards are atrocities? The project after that one goes off to the publisher is a book based on my late brother’s diary that he kept while an army surgeon in Vietnam during 1965 and 1966. That one will be nonfiction.
A) In your author’s notes at the beginning of Crazy Razor you state that the only villain is the war itself. But at least one of your central characters appears to be quite villainous. How could you say there are no villains?
KL) I’m sticking by my notes. The two characters are men who, if they never went to war, would probably live quiet and lawful lives—one as an academic in a university in Hanoi, the other as a businessman in Hartford or St. Louis. One may be sociopathic but never put in an environment that allows that to come out. But both men do go to war and are put into an environment that allows them to commit heinous and vicious acts of violence. Both do villainous things. But neither would have if not in war. In The Cruel Sea, Monsarratt says that the only villain in the Atlantic in World War II was the sea itself. My feelings that war, not the men fighting it, is the villain are similar to his. A psychologist wrote me and said, “Altogether, I found it a profound book about the motives we use to justify our actions, the ugliness of war and the latitude it gives people to be at their very worst.”
A)Who’s your target audience for this book?
KL) When asked that question by the publishers, I thought for a bit and decided that since Crazy Razor was classified as a war story, the target was probably males over 50. But much to my surprise, women seem to like the book. Several have said that they avoid war stories but did read mine and enjoyed it. I don’t know if “enjoy” can be applied to a book of the horrors of war.
A) How did you come up with the title “Crazy Razor?”
KL) My call sign when I was in-country was Crazy Racer. With a “cer,” instead of a “zor.” It was a little like Alfred Hitchcock popping up in one of his movies for a few seconds.
A) How cathartic was it for you to write this story? Did you get rid of some of your demons for good?
KL) I certainly didn’t write the book for catharsis, but I think it was certainly personally cathartic for me. No, I did not get rid of any demons. But I did learn to live with the memories.
A) Once the war is over, what does a soldier do with all those memories? How can one live with oneself after committing all those atrocities?
KL) I don’t know. Do we manipulate our code of ethics according to the context? Much smarter people than I will have to answer these questions. I’m sure many psychologists at the VA are immersed in this serious and knotty question.
A) You were wounded twice, lost your vision and contracted an Agent Orange connected cancer. Why aren’t you bitter?
KL) No one can be bitter with the family I have, the friends I have and the life I have. I’m doing what I want to do. And when I feel like taking a nap, I just lie down and take one. Beat that if you can.
Kenneth Levin will be at Towne Center Books, 555 Main Street in Pleasanton, CA on Wednesday, August 21 at 7:00 pm. Crazy Razor is also available at Amazon and BarnesandNoble.com.