Interview on the occasion of the publication of “IMPERIALIST WARMONGER PIG” or AN OCCURRENCE AT LANDING SITE-ECHO:

* So Mr. Gwynne, how did THE BRONX BOMBING do?

It did fine, as you ask, thank you very much. Although, like my other books, not as well as it should have, but it did get noticed. And appreciated by discriminating readers. In fact — you ask me, THE BRONX BOMBING’s a freaking Meisterstück. So I’m not complaining – though while I await the Hollywood producer’s knock on my door, I’m maintaining the day job.

* Why have you now, with your new novel, IMPERIALIST WARMONGER PIG, gone back to a lost war, of a half a century ago?

Well, you say "lost" war. To borrow from a real draft dodger, "That depends on what the meaning of the word ‘lost’ is". We, the troops over there, won that war, militarily, on the ground. Indeed, by the start of 1973, we had that war in the bag, over and done with: our combat troops were back home, the NVA were mostly back across their own borders, licking their wounds, and South Vietnam was as secure as, say, South Korea was in 1954. A status-quo that was, after all, what our war aim had always been – to keep the communists from taking over South Vietnam.

* And yet they did. So what happened, then?

What happened? What happened was that Tricky tried to be too tricky, got himself wound around the Watergate axle, which allowed the baying mob to run him out of town. In the wake of which there got elected, in November 1974, the most left-wing cohort ever seen in Congress, who quite accurately called themselves "The Watergate Congress", and whose first act, in January 1975, was to vote to cut off all aid to South Vietnam. Not another dime – immediately and forevermore. Which effectively was the death-knell for the government in Saigon, whose troops understandably thereupon lost heart – and the defeated North Vietnamese, scarcely believing their good fortune, instantly regrouped and came crashing right back in… straight into the US Embassy and the Presidential Palace. And the rest was history – at its most ignoble.

* Is all of that true?

Of course it’s true. Absolutely. As Yogi said, "You could look it up."

* Well OK, then. But it’s certainly not the "conventional wisdom".

Well that’s as may be, but it’s the damn truth nonetheless. And anyone who’s honest, anyone who was there at the time, or who cares to go back and look at the historical record of the time – knows it’s the truth. Certainly Oliver North and ex-Senator James Webb know it’s the truth.

Meanwhile, get a load of this – d’you you know who Stefan Halper is, by any chance? That name ring a bell?

* Vaguely. He’s one of those shadowy characters who’s implicated in the Obama Administration’s anti-Trump "Crossfire Hurricane" operation, isn’t he?

Yeah, a thoroughly unsavory – and familiar – spook/college prof-type… and I only bring him up because I just happened to come across a most surprisingly apt quote of his: He said, "In this day and age, it's not so much whose army wins, but whose story wins." That, I’m afraid, is exactly what’s happened to the Vietnam War, and its "narrative".

* Alright. So, is that what the message of IMPERIALIST WARMONGER PIG is?

No, not really; in fact, not at all. I just brought it up as a reaction to your casual reference to Vietnam as a "lost" war.

No, IMPERIALIST WARMONGER PIG doesn’t really have a "political message" qua "political message" at all, unless sharing the protagonist’s revulsion at the cynical dishonesty of the "protest" culture of the time counts as a political message.

Rather it’s just a portrait of a young American type, at a certain critical moment in our history. A time not terribly unlike our current "moment in history", as a matter of fact. Now, I don’t suggest that the analogy between now and then is perfect, far from it: I mean, in 1972 there wasn’t the goddamn Red China Virus, for starters – but there was the same pro-communist mayhem and insurrection rampaging in the streets and throughout society. I mean, hell, there were 1,900 bombings in the United States in 1972 alone -- even Black Lives Matter hasn't managed that!

So against the background of all that, this is the story of young J.J. "The Bush Pig" Henderson, the eponymous "Imperialist Warmonger Pig" (as he was called both by the North Vietnamese enemy and by an appalled female Democrat Congressional staffer back home). His Life and Times, as it were.

* You have a reputation of being a comic writer. Is this new novel… funny?

Well… yes, I suppose it is, to a certain extent – until it isn’t. (Sorry ‘bout that).

* And you seem to have used a lot of bad language in it, real below-deck stuff.

"Below deck"? What’s this, you navy? You an effing squid?

* Never mind me. The language?

Look, that’s how it was. That’s how people spoke. We may have had other problems back then, but being constantly scared shitless of being banished, like in Old Salem, for heretical speech wasn’t one of them. I know that these days, you can’t say boo – but back then, you could. You could say boo and a whole lot more. And people called a spade a spade. so to speak. And anyone who was in the American military until about, oh… 1990, will attest to the particular richness, depth and variety of its profanity. It was a cherished tradition. Most of which, of course, has sadly been declared haram by the enforcement-arm of the New Creed of Political Correctness.

* And what about, uh, race relations? In this new book you seem to deal with all that in a rather… laid-back manner, if I may say.

I do? Huh. Well, one thing I can tell you – even with the very occasional racially-motivated fragging in Vietnam, the shooting of MLK Jr., and the riots in Watts, Detroit and Newark – racial tensions were less fraught, frayed and just plain stupid back then than they are today — despite all the hah-hah-give-me-a-break “good work” done in the ensuing decades by the forces of you-should-pardon-the-expression “diversity” and “inclusivity”.

* Mind the sarcasm.

Mind this.

Anyway, contrary to popular misconception, in the military back then, (and remember, we fought the Vietnam War with the first fully-integrated military in our history), by and large the races — by themselves and between themselves — managed to hammer out a pretty good, pragmatic and even reasonably congenial, modus vivendi.

And in the CIA, as far as I could see, the matter of “race relations” didn’t ever even come up. Such black Agency officers as I came across — during training, later in D.C. but mostly in Africa and Europe — gave every indication of being (like the white officers) dedicated patriots, endeavoring to do their jobs professionally. Which was more than I can say for every one of their counterparts in the State Department, by the way.

* I hesitate to ask this, but… how much of you is in this book?

Well, let’s see: thanks to my, heh, Michael Caine specs I wasn’t eligible for the Special Forces, and I never came so much as within waving distance of a Silver Star, but… I was called an "Imperialist Warmonger Pig". And not as an endearment, either.

There, above — that’s a picture of me on one of the last occasions that I wore my uniform.

And here, below, is me a few short months later, in what would be my new "uniform":

* By posting that photo of you in your "Class A’s", (not to mention the photo of you at the top of this page), you "break cover", so to speak. Presumably you’re OK with that?

Sure. At this point, my pseudonym is really nothing more than a handy reminder for those who remember, with varying degrees of fondness, my earlier books. Mox nix, as one of the two actual veterans of what Archie Bunker liked to call "Dubbyadubbyatwothebigone" that I served with up there in northern Laos – used to say.

In fact, as long as we’re, heh, “un-masking”, here — here’s a more recent shot:

* And what about women? I saw that one critic of your novels has suggested that your female characters may not be as fully, uh, fleshed-out as your male ones. What about the women in IMPERIALIST WARMONGER PIG?

Well, I can no more get properly inside women’s brains, (which I truly believe are fundamentally different from men’s – not better or worse – just different) than any other male writer can, so the best I can do is render women as honestly and as fairly as I’ve perceived them to be in real life.

And the three main female characters in IMPERIALIST WARMONGER PIG, Geraldine, Robin, and Bev the Redhead are all, if I remember correctly, pretty sympathetic and attractive sorts. At least, that was my intention.

So naa, I think you’re chasing after a bit of a red herring, here — by and large, I’m quite fond of women. (Though not, perhaps, so much the one who originally called me an "Imperialist Warmonger Pig").

* What’s it like working for the CIA? And do you still?

"No" to the second question. As to the first: I’m reminded of that phrase of the fellow from Nazareth: "In My Father's House Are Many Mansions". Like the Army, the CIA is a huge bureaucracy – "a house of many mansions" – and the satisfaction (or otherwise) that one derives from service in either one depends largely on just where inside those labyrinthine beehives one’s individual ass happens to fetch up.

For me, let’s just say that being a part of, and working for, the Agency was largely a hoot. This was mostly due to my managing to escape the worst of its stifling, liberal "deep state" pettifoggery (though I’m afraid I’m not going to reveal here just how I managed to accomplish that.)

But for most, if not all, of the time, being a spook for your country is the best of all possible worlds: You get to act like an outlaw… for a noble cause. (On the other hand, the remuneration’s nothing to get excited about.)

* A… "noble" cause?

Damn right. Absolutely and without a doubt. … and don’t make that face – to paraphrase The Duke, do you know a better cause? A better country?

* Hey, relax, this is an interview, not an argument. Let’s move on,

No, come on – tell me a better, more noble country than the United States…. That’s right, I didn’t think so.

You know, querulous attitudes like yours make me think of something said by, of all people, Leonard Cohen – the late Canadian singer. He once told a bunch of similar scoffers, "Oh and one more thing: you're not going to like what comes after America."

* Point taken. Speaking of noble causes – and, if I may, betrayal thereof – uh, in IMPERIALIST WARMONGER PIG, your fictional "Meu Jong" of northern Phuland are, in fact, the Hmong of northern Laos, right?

You cracked that, did you?

* Hah hah — now now. Elsewhere in this website of yours, we learn that you think quite highly of the Hmong – that you’ve publicly gone to bat for them, in print, on TV (see photo at the top of this page) and even spoke for them in front of the European Parliament. Yet you don’t seem to stress much of that in this novel.

Well look, a novel tells a made-up story – it’s not supposed to be political advocacy. And this is primarily the story of an American soldier, rather than a defense of his indigenous allies.

But yes, of all our allies of the "Cold" War (and of the many "Hot" wars it contained), the Hmong were among the most noble and, in the end, among the most pathetic. In fact, none other than William Colby, the ex-CIA chief, is on record as saying "Vang Pao (the revered Hmong leader) was the biggest hero of the Vietnam War."

* So what’s next after this?

It’ll be a return to more comic form: in the shape of a Gallic-East European caper called PERSONA NON GRATA. Which will be not only what the Brits call a "wizard wheeze", but it’ll have the added cachet of being a title that cheekily bears the author’s initials.

And also, in a separate venture, there will be the appearance of a monstrous thing called P.N. Gwynne's THE COMPENDIUM, which will, once it’s been up and running for awhile, raise the national IQ by at least 2 full points.

Stay tuned for both. (You’ll thank me later).

* Any final thoughts on the contents of this novel, IMPERIALIST WARMONGER PIG? Or, indeed, on your past military and paramilitary exertions in behalf of our Uncle Sam?

Yeah, two – and they’re related:

* From page 110 of "IMPERIALIST WARMONGER PIG" or AN OCCURRENCE AT LANDING SITE-ECHO: "Henderson was dead tired from the first day to the last – Dead Tired, indeed, seemed to have become his default position."

and

* "What really mattered in combat was what people were like when they were exhausted." -- KARL MARLANTES, in his novel "Matterhorn".

* OK, thanks Mr. Gwynne. See you.

Heh. Not if I see you first.